h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My mother tongue is German, and a while ago I took some American Accent Training. there I learned a lot of useful stuff, and also a few things I still wonder about… for example everyone who didn’t distinguish between voiced and unvoiced “s” failed the final examination. the same with voiced and unvoiced “g/ch”, as in George (booth times voiced) and Charles (not voiced). for me personally the whole voiced vs. unvoiced is no problem at all. but I’m quite sure that a lot of American native speakers don’t care that much about voiced and unvoiced consonants themselves. also, a friend of mine who spent half of her life in the U.S. doesn’t voice anything as well.

I would like to hear some opinions of other people about this, especially from American native speakers. in a nutshell, is there any need to voice consonants? is it a sign of bad American accent not to voice anything?

greetings
katk.

They do, and so do the Brits. The key is that our ears might not be able to detect those differences. Even harder to detect is the voiceless 'th' versus the unvoiced one, and therefore it is very hard for us not to speak without any accent.