Hello again!
I know you’re more than ready to improve your English pronunciation. You need two things a native English speaker and a super fantastic tool called the IPA, the international phonetic alphabet (Click here to get it).
Don’t worry. I will tell you all about it in just a minute!
For now, let me remind you that READING English is not SPEAKING English. You most definitely need to SPEAK English with a good English Teacher to improve your spoken English voice And to SPEAK English just like an American. Click here to begin SPEAKING English with me to learn to SPEAK just like an American.
Now, let’s get back to this reading. In many languages, each letter represents only one sound, so it’s easy to try and pronounce words just by looking at how to spell a word. But English is not like this. English words won’t always be pronounced the same way when you see letters in an English word. Take the letter C. For example, “C” in the word ‘cup’ is the same as in ‘cut.’ But that’s different from the phrase place when a ‘C’ is next to an ‘H’ as in “CH.” It’s spoken as in the word chip or chocolate. But in the word cake, it’s pronounced as in cut.
Again, here is why the International phonetic alphabet is such an excellent tool for English students to practice their pronunciation. I use it all the time when I am teaching pronunciation lessons. Every sound has a unique symbol in the IPA, so you know exactly how to pronounce the English word when you read it.
For example, though, thought and cough these words have the exact ‘ough’ spelling but are pronounced differently. ‘Though’ ‘thought’ and ‘cough’ now the symbols in the IPA might seem a little scary to you, especially if you haven’t seen the IPA before. But they’re helpful for you when you’re learning English pronunciation because it tells you exactly how to say the words.
So even if you’ve never heard of these symbols before. Don’t worry! Today’s lesson will go through the International phonetic alphabet together. There are 26 letters in the English alphabet right, but there are 44 different sounds, way more than letters. That’s why I use the IPA to help my students when they’re studying English pronunciation.
Let’s look at vowels first!
There are five English vowels, aren’t there? But there are way more English vowel sounds. Some of them are long. Some of them are short, and some of them are just lazy. Let’s go through them a, e, i, o, o, u. There’s another group of vowel sounds called diphthongs. Now don’t worry about remembering that crazy name. All you need to do is place the sounds.
Diphthongs are sounds that change from one vowel sound to another but in the same syllable. You can mouth position change as anyone make each of these sounds ear, air, or Al. We’ve been through vowels and diphthongs.
Now we’ll move on to consonants.
There are unvoiced consonant sounds which means that the sound is created by air moving from the back of your mouth through and out your lips.
There is one extra letter that is unvoiced. The rest of the consonant sounds are voiced, which means that the sound is made here with your vocal cords. Unvoiced sounds use just air. You can’t feel anything.
We will continue this conversation about English pronunciation. But, always remember that READING English is not SPEAKING English. You most definitely need to SPEAK English with a good English Teacher to improve your spoken English voice. Click here to begin SPEAKING English just like an American.
Talk with you again soon!
Bye for now…
