English Pronunciation London Meetup With Gerardo, Tsui Yiu and Percy
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.
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 very same word could reasonably be pronounced /pʌt/. But it isn’t. We have the word ‘putt’ for this, and that is an important word for you if you play golf. I don’t want to give you a list of other words in which we pronounce the ‘u’ as /ʌ/ as I have already been over the /ʌ/ sound in my earlier post. So turning back to the /ʊ/ sound, you can see the letter ‘u’ pronounced with this sound in the words ‘bush’, ‘bull’ and ‘cushion’. /bʊʃ//bʊl//kʊʃən/. The infographic below gives further examples.
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 words. These words are the most important to the meaning she wants to give to what she is saying.
Published by BBC News on 24th August 2016
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 knowledge want cough you need to know about the exeptions.
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 ‘curl’ /kɜ:l/ or ‘dirt’ /dɜ:t/. I tend to assume that any of these three combinations would make the /ɜ:/ sound. Of course, they can make other sounds too, but that’s for another day. Today is about how to pronounce fur girl work and other such words.
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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 busy.
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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 can find it difficult to pronounce even simple words. I thought it might be a challenge for you to try and make out what the weather reporter is saying in this clip from the BBC. Read the notes on maintaining composure when broadcasting on live TV then try the short gap fill exercise below. Beneath that you will find the full transcript to the weather report.
Weather Reporter Laughing Through the Weather Report
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 a very standard way. Whatever accent they may have they speak clearly. As newsreaders they also emphasise certain key words and phrases. Of course, they use stress and intonation to add meaning to what they say. However, today we are looking at how to use pauses in English and how this can alert the listener to what they are saying.
BBC News Story About Under-Reporting Calories
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.
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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