English pronunciation is fairly important; it is actually the first thing people will notice. In case of English, particularly important because of the wide usage of many different sounds and there are so many combinations (such as diphthongs).
Here you will find an interesting, helpful and easy-to-use guide in order to improve your every-day English pronunciation.
We use the 26 letters of the alphabet in english writing. However, when speaking there are roughly 44 different sounds in English. We call these sounds phonemes.
Vowels are letters that are pronounced by forcing air over your vocal cords through your mouth. It is the shape of your mouth that decides which vowel sound comes out.
Consonant Sounds are produced by completely or partially stopping the breath. Consonant Sounds can be voiceless (VL, no vibration of the vocal cords) or voiced (VD, vibration of the vocal cords) and often come in sound pairs.
The suprasegmental symbols are called that because they apply to more than one segment (vowel or consonant). In English, the relevant suprasegmentals are the markings for primary and secondary stress.
Intonation is the name given to sentence stress, or what is sometimes called the "music of the language". Just as words have stressed syllables, sentences contain regular patterns of stressed words.
In words of more than one syllable, there will be one syllable which is more heavily stressed than the others.