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Three Tips on Pronunciation PDF Print E-mail
  Monday, 06 April 2009
Tip 1: Make your long vowel long enough and short vowel short enough.

 

         Most mistakes in pronunciation are related to vowels, namely, a, e, i, o, u, to the way each of these vowels is pronounced. While in many languages a vowel tends to have only one sound, English vowels can each have two to four or even more different ways of pronunciation. This causes a lot of troubles to students of English. My advice in this regard is to make your long vowel long enough and short vowel short enough.

        Related to this is the pronunciation of diphthongs such as [ i] in boy, [ou] in boat, and [au] in loud. Care must be taken in pronouncing them, too.

        What follows is a list of the different ways vowels are pronounced.     (For technical reasons, it is impossible to give all the phonetic transcriptions. Students can go to a dictionary, find them, and then fill the blanks with them.) 

 
 

 Vowel
 Pronunciation
                Word
        Pronunciation
       a
       [ei]
               bake, mate
            [beik] [meit]
       a
       [   ]
               bad, back
            [b d]   [b k]
       a
       [a:]
          father, Prague
            [fa:     ] [pra:g]
       a
       [   ]
               Latino
            [ l 'ti:nou ]
       e
       [ i:]
               Peter
            [ 'pi:t   ]
       e
       [ e ]
            bed, better
            [ bed] ['bet   ]
       i
       [ai]
            kite, night
            [ kait] [nait ]
       i
       [ i ]
            litter, minute
            [ 'lit    ] ['minit]
      o
       [ou]
               notebook
            [ 'noutb k ]
      o
       [    ]
            not, mocking
            [ n t ] ['m ki ]
      o
       [    ]
               mother
            [ 'm   t   ]
      u
       [ju:] 
             mute, abuse
          [mju:t] [ 'bju:z ]
      u
       [    ]
          nut, butter, lucky
        [ n t] ['b t ] ['l ki]
      u
       [ u]
          butcher, Buddha
         ['but    ] ['bud   ]

 
Tip 2: Not every word in a sentence is read with a stress.
 

         Usually, it is the nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and action verbs that are stressed. One-syllable prepositions, articles, and helping verbs are not stressed as a rule[1] they are read fast and softly. “Verb to be (am, is, are, etc.)” is not stressed unless one wishes to give it a special emphasis.

        To read the usually unstressed words such as an article or a one-syllable preposition with a stress is, to say the least, jarring on the ear.

        Stressed words take a little longer time to read than unstressed words.

        Here are just a few examples with a sign given to words, or rather, syllables, that are stressed in reading.

·        ' Time and ' tide ' wait for ' no 'man.
·        ' What ' goes ' up will ' come ' down.
·        A: ' It’s a ' pleasure ' meeting you.
          B: The ' pleasure is ' mine.
·        You ' must ' find a ' job that you are ' passionate  a' bout.
·        You will ' never be  ' truly  ' happy  un' less you are  ' grateful and for-
   'giving.
 
       Tip 3: Some Chinese need to be especially careful with explosive sounds.
 

        A considerable number of Chinese students have difficulty with explosive sounds such as [t], [d], [p], [b], [k], [g]. The general rule is that if any two of them come together, it is necessary not to pronounce the first one but leave a little space for it as if it were pronounced.

        For instance, “a silen(t) dog,” “a bi(g) brother,” and “a gadge(t) that doesn’t work.”

        Now, try to read the following paragraph:

       Steve Jobs said at the 2007 commencement ceremony of Stanford University: “Getting fired from Apple was the bes(t) thing that could have ever happen(ed) to me. The heaviness of being successful was replace(d) by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It free(d) me [2] to enter one of the mos(t) creative periods in my life.””
[1] Did you know Home Depot’s ad: “You can 'do it and we can 'help”? Compare it with “ We 'shall 'win,” or “ 'Yes, we 'can.”
[2] One follows the same rule when an explosive sound is followed by a consonant like m.
Last Updated ( Thursday, 05 August 2010 )
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