People often make judgments about others based on their speech patterns. If you slur your words, mispronounce familiar words, or speak with a dialect that sounds unfamiliar to your audience, you may be seen as uneducated or socially inept. When you sound “odd” to your listeners, their attention will be distracted from what you are saying to the way you are saying it. In this section we cover articulation, enunciation, pronunciation, and dialect as they contribute to or detract from speaking effectiveness.
Articulation, Articulation refers to the way you produce individual speech sounds. Some people have trouble making certain sounds. For example, they may substitute a d for a th, saying “dem” instead of “them.” Other sounds that are often misarticulated include s, 1, and r. Severe articulation problems can interfere with effective communication, especially if the audience cannot understand the speaker or if the variations suggest low social or educational status. Such problems are best treated by a speech pathologist, who retrains the individual to produce the sound in a more acceptable manner.
Enunciation. Enunciation refers to the way you pronounce words in context. In casual conversation it is not unusual for people to slur their words— for example, saying “gimme” for “give me.” However, careless enunciation causes credibility problems for public speakers. Do you say “Swatuh thought” for “That’s what I thought”; “Harya?” for “How are you?”; or “Howjado?” for “How did you do?” These lazy enunciation patterns are not acceptable in public speaking. Check your enunciation patterns on the tape recordings you have made to determine whether you have such a problem. If you do, concentrate on careful enunciation as you practice your speech. Be careful, however, to avoid the opposite problem, inflated, pompous, and pretentious enunciation. Very few speakers can make this work without sounding phony. You should strive to be neither sloppy nor overly precise.
Pronunciation. Pronunciation involves saying words correctly. It includes both using the correct sounds and placing the proper accent on syllables. Because written English does not always indicate the correct pronunciation, we may not be sure how to pronounce words that we first encounter in print. For instance, does the word chiropodist begin with an sh, a ch, or a k sound?
If you are not certain how to pronounce a word, consult a dictionary. An especially useful reference is the NBC Handbook of Pronunciation, which contains 21,000 words and proper names that sometimes cause prob1ems. When international stories and new foreign leaders first appear in the news, newspapers frequently indicate the correct pronunciation of their names. Check front-page stories in the New York Times for guidance with such word. In addition to having problems pronouncing unfamiliar words, you may that there are certain words you habitually mispronounce. For example,
how do you pronounce the following words?

Unless you are careful, you may find yourself slipping into these common mispronunciations:
nuculer
athalete

Mispronunciation of such common words can damage your ethos. Most of us know what words we chronically mispronounce and are able to pronounce them correctly when we think about it. The time to think about it is when you are practicing your speech.
Dialect, A dialect is a speech pattern typical of a geographic region or ethnic group. Your dialect usually reflects the area of the country where you were raised or lived for any length of time, or your cultural and ethnic identity. In the United States there are three commonly recognized dialects: eastern, southern, and midwestern. Additionally, there are local variations within the broader dialects. For example, in South Carolina, one finds the Gullah dialect from the islands off the coast, the Lowcountry or Charlestonian accent, the Piedmont variation, and the Appalachian twang.22 And then there’s always “Bali-stalin” where you buy a “lodge budded pup con” at the movies!
There is no such thing in nature as a superior or inferior dialect. However, there can be occasions when a distinctive dialect is a definite disadvantage or advantage. Listeners prefer speech patterns that are familiar to their ears. Audiences may also have stereotyped preconceptions about people who speak with certain dialects. For example, those raised in the South often associate a northeastern dialect with brusqueness and abrasiveness, and midwesterners may associate a southern dialect with slowness of action and mind. Comedian Jeff Foxworthy has noted:

A lot of people think everyone in the South is a redneck. . .. I went to
Georgia Tech. I was an engineer at IBM. I just sound stupid. I can’t
help this, because where I grew up everybody else talked this way.
People hear the accent and they want to deduct 100 IQ points.

You may have to work to overcome such a prejudice against your dialect.
Your dialect should reflect the standard for educated people from your geographic area or ethnic group. You should be concerned about tempering your dialect only if it creates barriers to understanding and identification between you and your audience. Then you may want to work toward softening your dialect so that you lower these barriers for the sake of your message.
ask
government February
nuclear
athlete
library picture secretary just get
government February
ask
liberty pitcher sekaterry
jist git