Page 17 - English Vocabulary in Use (Pre & Intermediate)

5 Problems with pronunciation

Phonetics
With many languages you can look at a word and know (more or less) how to pronounce
it. With English this is not true: it is often very difficult to know the pronunciation from
looking at a word. For example:
cough (pronounced like ‘off’) enough (like ‘stuff’) through (like ‘too’) and dough (like ‘so’)
The only way you can be sure about the pronunciation is to learn some phonetic symbols
which tell you the pronunciation. Dictionaries use them, and there is a table of phonetic
symbols, with examples, on page 246. Phonetic symbols are used next to many words in the
index, and there is a special list of words on page 247, which cause pronunciation problems
for speakers from different countries.

Word stress
When a word has two or more syllables, one of them has the main stress. In these examples,
the main stress follows the symbol ':
‘accent pre'fer edu'cation ‘necessary Ja'pan Japa'nese
If you put the stress on the wrong syllable, it may be difficult for listeners to understand
what you are saying.

lal
Probably the most important sound in English because it is often the pronunciation of the
letters ‘a’, ‘o” and ‘e’ if they are not part of a stressed syllable.
ma'chine /mo'firn/ ‘mother /'mada/ po'tato /pa'teitou/ ‘cinema /'sinamea/

Key letters and sounds
A common problem is that a single letter or combination of letters has more than one
pronunciation, e.g. -ough in section A. Here are some more examples:
the letter ‘o’ is often /p/, e.g. hot; or /a/, e.g. some; or /au/, e.g. no
the letter ‘a’ is often /z/, e.g. hat; or /er/, e.g. same; or /at/, e.g. fast
the letter ‘u’ is often /a/, e.g. run; or /u/, e.g. put
the letter ‘i’ is often /1/, e.g. sit; or /at/, e.g. side

Silent letters and short syllables

There are many words in English where a letter is not pronounced:
fasten plumber calm knee wrong comb
There are also many words where we almost ‘eat’ one of the syllables, and as a result a
vowel sound almost disappears and a word, for example, with three written syllables may
be two (or two and a half) in spoken English. For example:
interested /intrastid/ fattening /fetnin/ vegetable /vedgtabl/
Note: The exercises on the next page practise some words with difficult pronunciation.

14 English Vocabulary in Use (pre-intermediate & intermediate)