English Pronunciation London Meetup This was our first week of English Pronunciation London Meetups for conversation since the summer break. People from a number of countries, including for the first time Haiti, came to practice their fluency and pronunciation in class.
How to Pronounce Put Foot Could Woman How to Pronounce Put Foot Could Woman Perhaps you already know how to pronounce put foot could woman. We pronounce the vowel sound in all of the words above as /ʊ/. Whilst you may be familiar with the pronunciation of the word ‘put’, you must see that this […]
Basic Word Stress The BBC published a video about the discovery of a new planet. The surprising thing is, not only is it close to Earth, but it could be capable of supporting life. As you can imagine, this is an interesting and surprising news story. The Science Correspondent uses basic word stress to emphasise certain […]
How to Pronounce Knowledge Want Cough The spelling of the /ɒ/ sound is usually a straightforward affair. We usually spell this sound with the letter ‘o’. Some examples are ‘long’/lɒŋ/, ‘bottom’/bɒtəm/, ‘dog’/dɒg/, ‘god’/gɒd/, ‘song’/sɒŋ/, ‘top’/tɒp/ and ‘wrong’/rɒŋ/. Then we have ‘project’/prɒdʒekt/ (the noun, not to be confused with the verb ‘to project’/prədʒekt/). If you want to know […]
HOW TO PRONOUNCE FUR GIRL WORK Unlike with the spellings of other sounds I think three spelling combinations can claim more or less equal status as representing the sound /ɜ:/. I would say that ‘er’ seems the most obvious choice as in ‘jerk’ /dʒɜ:k/, but there are plenty of words with ‘ur’ or ‘ir’. Take […]
HOW TO PRONOUNCE IN BUILD BUSY Usually we have one clear way of spelling the /ɪ/ sound in the English language, and that’s with the letter ‘i’. However, there are a few sneaky words with less obvious ways of spelling that very same sound. So let’s have a look at how to pronounce in build […]
Understand Native English Speakers When They are Laughing You may find it difficult to understand native speakers when they are laughing. Sometimes when we start laughing we cannot stop – we say that we ‘have got the giggles’ and usually this is happens to children. But adults go through it too. When we laugh we […]
How to Use Pauses in English BBC English This is a news story on the BBC published on 8th August 2016 and read by Simon McCoy. The BBC has long been known to broadcast in received pronunciation. Some newsreaders do have slight regional accents but on the whole you will find most still speak in […]
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 […]
HOW TO PRONOUNCE CAR HEART LAUGH In English we pronounce all words with the same vowel sound – the long /a:/. If you want to know more about how to pronounce car heart laugh please read on.
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