HOW TO PRONOUNCE FRIEND ANY SAID

A lot of my students have problems pronouncing ‘friend’. Even when I tell them the correct pronunciation they still make the mistake of pronouncing the ‘i’ and the ‘e’ separately. They have been saying friend like that for so long that they can’t lose it and don’t manage to say /frend/. Essentially the /e/ is not a difficult sound to make. However, we are not just looking at how to pronounce friend any said but other ways of spelling the /e/ sound.

THE SPELLING OF /e/ CAN LEAD TO A LOT OF CONFUSION: SAY SAYS SAID

You might also find it difficult to change the way you pronounce ‘says’ and ‘said’. You probably use these words all the time and fall into the trap of pronouncing them /seɪz/ and /seɪd/. They are quite simply /sez/ and /sed/. Of course ‘say’ is pronounced /seɪ/ and this is a source of confusion. Some of my students don’t believe me when I break this news to them, even though I am a native English pronunciation Teacher.

FURTHER ISSUES WITH ‘ea’

You should watch out for words we spell ‘ea’ because we also use these two letters in different vowel sounds and diphthongs. So take ‘spread’ ‘head’ and ‘dead’ as exceptions [/spred/ /hed/ /ded/]. Even more confusingly we pronounce the verb to ‘read’ as /ri:d/. Whereas the past simple, which we also spell ‘read’, we pronounce /red/. This is something most particular and we say it the same way as the colour ‘red’. Then we say /ri:dɪŋ/ for ‘reading’ unless you are talking about the town ‘Reading’ /redɪŋ/.

Overall, ‘e’ is by far the most common spelling of /e/. You should consider all the other letters or combinations of letters I’ve included in the infographic below as exceptions.

WHAT ABOUT ‘ei’?

Also note that I when I made the infographic I overlooked another mention: that of the ‘ei’ as in ‘leisure’ /leʒə/. The only other time I can think that we pronounce ‘ei’ as /e/ is in Leicester /lestə/. This problematic looking place-name is a city in the East Midlands of England. You may have been to Leicester Square in London but now a lot of people are familiar with the football club Leicester City as they are the English league champions. It should be said that Leicester is more of a rugby union town though.

A lot of people think ‘entry’ is pronounced with /ɪ/. But it is not the case, unless you’re speaking Australian English. The letter ‘e’ can sometimes make the /ɪ/ sound as in England and English /ɪŋglənd/ and /ɪŋglɪʃ/ but not here. The answer is a) women/wɪmɪn/, all the more confusing because in this word the letter ‘o’ also makes the /ɪ/ sound. This is a particularly tricky one and an exception in English.