At the level of individual sounds: There are a few tricky issues you should be aware of. ■■ th sound It is not terribly difficult to get the two different th sounds right. It just takes a bit of practice. At the beginning of words like “this” or “that”, you need a voiced th sound. That means that you should be able to feel the vibration at the beginning of these words when you place a finger lightly on your larynx (your Adam’s Apple on the front of your neck). By contrast, the sound at the beginning of words like “thing” and “theory” is voiceless, so there is no vibration to be felt. Hadar Shemesh, who hosts the very useful website and YouTube Channel “The Accent’s Way – English with Hadar”, does a wonderful job of explaining and demonstrating the subtleties of this sound in her insightful video “The TH Sound in English”. Please watch it (search for it yourself or scan this page with the QuickMedia app). ■■ v versus w, e.g. veal – wheel, vow – wow A lot of non-native speakers make the mistake of overusing the English ‘w’ sound. To pronounce the ‘v’ sound, make sure your bottom lip touches your top front teeth and vibrates against them. Rachel Smith of “Rachel’s English” (another highly recommendable YouTube channel) brilliantly explains how to do this in her short video “Mixing Up V & W sounds: American English Pronunciation”. ■■ j versus ch, e.g. Jane – chain, jump – chump One of Harry Potter’s favourite girls is called Cho Chang. Her first name should never sound like “Joe”. Also, the name “Jerry” must not sound like “cherry”. If a woman called Jill has a tendency to get nervous, her friends might say to her, “Just chill, Jill!” This is also important at the end of words. For example, the word “batch” sounds different from the word “badge”. Again, the ‘ch’ is unvoiced, without vibration, while the ‘j’ is voiced. ■■ a versus e, e.g. bad – bed, mass – mess, band – bend The most important thing is to open your mouth wide when you say the ‘a’ in words like “bad” or “band”. By contrast, your mouth should be quite narrow when you pronounce the ‘e’ sound in “bed” or “bend”. Also, the ‘a’ is longer than the ‘e’. ■■ t versus d and p versus b, e.g. ton – done, pet – bet Depending on where you are from, this one might be difficult for you if people in your region tend to disregard this distinction in their native language. For example, a lot of Austrians pronounce the word “packen” (almost) exactly like the word “backen”. In English, however, you cannot pronounce the word “pack” like the word “back”. Hold your hand in front of your mouth. When you say “pack”, you should feel quite a strong stream of air. Other common areas of difficulty include: ■■ s versus z, e.g. seal – zeal, sink – zinc ■■ c versus s at the end of a word, e.g. race – rays, gross – grows At the level of words: There are quite a few words in English that are often mispronounced. Make your teacher and yourself happy by pronouncing them correctly. Some of them are given in the following exercise. Learning to pronounce some tricky words Do you know how to pronounce the words in the following list? Try pronouncing them, then use an online dictionary (Cambridge, Oxford Learner’s or Merriam-Webster; 1 5.4 for URLs) to check if you were right. a b To do [K] 5.5 ■■ carbon dioxide ■■ comfortable ■■ country ■■ debt (+ indebted) ■■ ecological ■■ ecologist ■■ hotel ■■ physician ■■ politician ■■ psychological ■■ psychologist ■■ psychiatrist ■■ racism ■■ receipt ■■ reiterate ■■ sew ■■ the EU ■■ the UN ■■ vegetables ■■ vitamins ■■ width ■■ women If you are feeling particularly adventurous, learn to pronounce the following two sentences: “Yes, English is weird. It can be understood, though, through tough thorough thought.” 49 Key aspects Strategies Sample task 5 Marketing & advertising Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv
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