Not only will you learn how to improve your English pronunciation
with some indispensable rules, but you will also learn.
Why we pronounce English as we do.
I promise that by the end of this video, you will see the
English language in a new light.
Once you follow the logic, you will be able to apply this method to English
as a whole rather than learning the pronunciation one word at a time.
And if you're ready, then let's do it
The first thing is to learn the spelling and pronunciation rules.
It sounds obvious, but when we are teaching English pronunciation, we
often focus on the irregular because.
As I'm sure you know, this word is pronounced [WIMMIN] SWORD has a silent W.
But THOUGH, and I've made many videos on this subject, but did you know that more
than 70% of English words follow rules?
And let's have a look at just a few of them.
There are many more, but here, just one or two words ending.
T U R E are pronounced cha, creature moisture, feature capture.
Now you say the sentence, they'll capture the creature in the picture in the future.
There are one or two exceptions.
Mature was the only one I could think of right now.
A G E words are pronounced IDGE manage average advantage.
Say this sentence: they managed the storage of the vintage package.
However, words of one syllable are pronounced.
There are very few exceptions to the rule.
But that's not an everyday word.
If you have one vowel before a double consonant, then it's
I remind you that the long vows are also the names of the letters, A E I O U, But
these vowels have short versions, . , a e, i, o u Let's look at some examples.
Apple Battle, Better written robber billing.
The story of the battle for the apple was written on the robber.
And that's why we double a consonant to make it a short vowel, write as one T,
but written two ts bite bitten et cetera.
The double consonant shortens the vowel.
Words ending I T Y are pronounced itty.
Say this sentence, The density of gravity in the city.
The only exception I can think of is fruity, where the I is silent
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Did you pronounce FOR and FOUR the same?
Native speakers will usually pronounce them differently.
In English, there are substance words and helper words.
The helper words, just lubricate the sentence and make it
conform to the rules of grammar.
While the substance words convey the meaning.
Look at this sentence and you tell me which are the substance words
and which are the helper words.
The pilots and the passengers are arriving for a conference.
The pilots and the passengers are arriving for a conference.
So PILOT PASSANGERS ARRIVING CONFERENCE are substance words.
THE AND OR A ARE are the helper words.
Now these helper words have two pronunciations.
A strong form and a weak form.
For example, FOR is a strong form and [FEH].
Is the weak form of FOR and native speakers will usually use the weak form
So I'd pronounce this sentence like this.
The pilot and the passengers are arriving for a conference.
These words on the screen have both strong and weak forms.
I'm not going to talk about all the weak forms because I've already made
more than one video on them, but in this video, we'll just look at three of them,
So FOR is usually pronounced [fe].
So how would you pronounce these sentences?
For a long time, I did it for many reasons.
By the way, for FOR and for all the weak forms, there is a common
misconception that these are slang forms or informal speech.
They are used in the most formal of situations too.
It's all about the message and making sure that the listener hears the
words of substance in the sentence.
Let's just look at two more cases.
How do you pronounce this sentence?
The criminal was sentenced to two years in prison.
Once again, if you pronounced TO and TWO the same
Most of the time you'll pronounce two as [TE].
The criminal was sentenced to two years in prison.
I also said WEZ for WAS, which is another week form.
Okay.
to be on, to be, That is the question
Normally you'd pronounce it [TE].
Because of course you want to emphasize BE and not the infinitive marker TO.
However, if you are giving the soliloquy really slowly, then you
have no choice but to say TO because you cannot linger on the [TE].
No.
So that's why you'll hear both versions.
But non theatrically, it'll always be to be on, not to be.
Even as a prefix TO is pronounced [TE] today.
Tomorrow, I promise you a third example and here it is: OF is
pronounced [ev] Say this sentence.
The reason I mentioned this is because sometimes non-native
speakers say OF but it sounds like OFF, which can be confusing.
So try to say [EV] if possible.
Let's move on to the next rule, but you might see that it's connected
to the weak forms rule, and this is the correct pronunciation of TH.
This will be easier for speakers of some languages that have the TH
sound such as Spanish and Greek and Arabic, while many others don't.
German, French, Japanese, they don't have that TH sound.
However, whatever your first language, you should be aware that there are two TH
sounds, the voiced TH and the unvoiced TH and there are rules for when to pronounce
each one first of all, let's look at how to pronounce them very briefly.
The voiced TH has this phonetic symbol and you'll find it in words
such as the THIS, THAT in order to pronounce it, make an uh, sound.
Okay?
The vibration comes to the back, the.
And it's making a humming sound.
And now continue with this sound.
But, but then make the sound come from the front of your
And then say the th words, uh, this, that, then you got it.
But the unvoiced th just exhale like, Then put your tongue between
your teeth and blow think athlete.
Okay.
But how do you know, but how'd you know when a word is a voiced?
Th or an unvoiced TH And as I said, there is a connection with
weak forms we just talked about.
If you remember, I said that some helper words have weak forms.
Okay.
Well, have you ever noticed that the common helper words with TH are
pronounced with a voiced TH while substance words have an unvoiced,
TH by substance words, I mean nouns, adjectives, verbs, and ad verbs.
So, for example, the helper TH words include this, That these, those them
themselves, they, that they're therefore either neither another together.
Other though, although notice that that them than themselves, not only have a
voiced TH but also have a weak form.
Than, for example, is thehn.
In addition to the helper words, you'll also find the voiced TH
in family names: mother, father, brother, and in words ending t h e.
You have a bath, but to bathe a breath, but to breathe cloth, but to
clothe teeth, but teethe to loathe.
To loathe, by the way, is a synonym of to hate
And a swathe means a large area of something.
So, for example, swathes of the rainforest have been destroyed in recent years,
but in almost every other case, it's an unvoiced TH a thought, a thing thistle.
Thin strength, apathy, birthday, truth, health, thick, thin, footpath wealth.
There are a few voiced TH sounds amongst substance words.
For example, weather to gather.
And very rarely a TH is pronounced as a T.
These usually occur when two words merge into one or with real names,
Thompson the goatherder in the lighthouse in Thailand will tell you.
Sometimes when we are talking about pronunciation, we tend to
focus on the individual words.
However, equally important is the rhythm of the phrase.
My final tip today is to focus on the phrase rather than the
You must be kind of blind as to how the phrase is written on the page.
So instead, fix your mind on these things.
Where are the vowels and which is, or which are the most
important words in the phrase?
this?
Often learners of English will try to pronounce a phrase like
this, separating every word and give equal weight to each word.
But a native speaker will end on a vowel and start with a consonant,
and if you do that, then the phrase looks something like this.
note also that, do we have OR followed by A, And in most forms of
British English, we would pronounce r.
As R without the R sound, but because the next word begins
with a vowel, we add the R sound.
So this is called the linking R, and there's also a linking R with car and
OR, and the words we want to stress in the sentence, are car and cat.
So finally the phrase sounds something like this.
Was it a car a cat I saw was it a car a cat I saw?
And if you haven't noticed it yet, that was a palindrome.
Okay.
Here are a couple more examples.
The words we want to emphasize in the sentence may differ.
So then we'd say he'd only been in prison for five months.
Notice we use, he'd only only been in prison for five months.
Notice we use [FEH] and not FOR as we saw earlier.
It could be oat milk, if that's a thing that you've run out of and not anything
else, or it could be run out of, if that's the only thing you're talking about.
You're discussing oat milk, so let's stress the run out of, and
by the way, in phrasal verbs, we stress the second word normally.
So get up, break down, put off, et cetera.
So how would you say the sentence then
Okay.
And if you're hitting in the consonants first, it reads like
this, We've run out of vo milk.
In English, we like to have the consonant vowel consonant combinations, and
that's why we have the linking R so as to avoid two consecutive vowels.
But you'll also add an R when one is not there, such as in this sentence.
SAW ends in [OR], and it's followed by another vowel and we
don't like that so we add an R.
This is called an intrusive R.
Sometimes we add a Y sound for harmony too.
Even within words you'll hear, some speakers will say
Not every speaker adds an intrusive R or an intrusive Y in fact, some don't
like it at all, but it makes sense to do it, to maintain the melody and
the rhythm of the English language.
. Sometimes we add consonants, sometimes we take them away.
Look at these sentences and tell me how you would pronounce them.
So leave out the T when it proceeds a word starting with a consonant.
Get back is ok when we're speaking slowly
but when we're speaking quickly in order to maintain the
consonant vowel consonant rhythm we'll skip it
so it becomes get back, get down.
This even happens with individual words.
So when speaking quickly, may sound like six, just the same as six.
This is the sixth time I've seen you today.
, that's difficult, but it's often reduced like CLOSE in fluent speech.
So you hear many native speakers saying, I put on my CLOSE.
You can hardly tell the difference.
I put on my clothes, I put on my close.
Do note that there are still consonant clusters in English
and many exceptions to this rule.
S you've got consonants before that, then you'll probably pronounce them
depending on the context masks.
Okay.
So forget about what's written on the page and focus on the pronunciation
of helper words, weak forms, and the TH , on regular pronunciations and the