Germans have difficulty pronouncing the sound ‘th’ correctly. A few years ago, a German couple went to London. At the airport, an immigration official asked the gentleman how old he was. The man while answering his age, pronounced the sound ‘d’ instead of ‘th’ in the word thirty by mistake. This is what he said, I’m dirty, my wife is dirty too.
A student while reading a story came across the sentence “I fell on my knees…” He mispronounced the word ‘knees’ as ‘niece’. The meaning of “I fell on my knees” is entirely different from that of “I fell on my niece”. Mispronunciation can lead to misinterpretation or miscommunication of the message intended by a speaker.
Pronunciation is a major problem for English language learners if English is not their first language. Non-native speakers of English find it difficult to master English pronunciation. Unlike many languages, English is not a phonetic language. There is no one to one correspondence between the spelling and the pronunciation of many words. The pronunciation of a word is not based on its spelling.
The letter ‘a’ has many different sounds in English. The ‘a’ in the word rather is like in father. The ‘a’ in gather is like in mat, bat, rat, cat, sand, and land. The ‘a’ in gate is like in fame, make, shake, cake and lake. The ‘ear’ in heart is like the ‘a’ in dark and park. Look at these examples:
‘tch’ as in chain, chapel and chapter
‘k’ as in Christ, chemistry and chemical, and
‘sh’ as in chef
The sound ‘tch’ as in church is heard in words of English origin. The sound ‘k’ as in Christian is heard in words of Greek origin. The sound ‘sh’ as in chef is from French.
Here are some commonly mispronounced words:
Pronunciation: The second syllable ‘nun’ is commonly mispronounced as ‘noun’ because the verb form of pronunciation is ‘pronounce’. There are five syllables in the word and as the word ends in ‘-tion’, the stress is on the penultimate syllable that precedes the sound ‘-tion’
Laboratory: The British pronunciation of the word has five syllables: la-bo-ra-to-ry and the stress is on the second syllable. The American pronunciation has four syllables: lab-ra-to-ry and the stress is on the first syllable.
Coup: It is a French word and the last letter “p” is not pronounced. The word “coup” rhymes with “too” and “loo”
Oust: It is often mispronounces as oost. The correct pronunciation of the word rhymes with roust, and proust
Forte: This word can be pronounced in two different ways: as fort (as a monosyllabic word) that rhymes with sport or for-te (as a disyllabic word)
Plumber: the letter ‘b’ is silent. It rhymes with summer
Debt: the letter ‘b’ is silent. It rhymes with set, and bet
Tips to improve pronunciation:
Good speakers are good listeners. Listening to good speakers/ news readers helps one improve
Install a good e-dictionary on your computer and refer to it when you are not sure of a pronunciation
If you have a smartphone, install pronunciation apps on it to practice
— rayanal@yahoo.co.uk