My Top Tip for English Pronunciation (1)

The problem is the pronunciation where it becomes quite confusing.

How do you pronounce the word?

Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here, and today I'm gonna do a video about

English, about English spelling, spelling and pronunciation.

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Okay, so most of my videos here Are about learning other languages because

I'm in the position of an English speaker learning other languages.

So I give advice to people who are learning other languages.

Although I am aware that many of my, uh, subscribers and viewers are

people who are learning English, and they find it interesting to

listen to what I have to say because it helps them with their English.

So today I'm gonna talk a bit about English spelling

and English pronunciation.

So I gave it some thought.

Well, first of all, I created a text.

A text where I sort of combined all of the inconsistencies of

English spelling in, in a bit...

not all, a number, a few of the inconsistencies in English spelling

and put them into a lesson at LingQ.

And I'm gonna show you how I would use that lesson to tag some of these

words in order to focus in on how very often the same vow or the same word

is pronounced in, or the same letter, rather, is pronounced in different

ways in English and how there seems to be an absence of any clear pattern.

I mean, there are some rules, but it's a bit confusing.

But first, so I gave some thought to this whole issue of pronunciation.

When I look at languages that I have learned, okay, I've learned

Chinese, there's a bit of a hint as to the pronunciation, but you

essentially have to learn each character as an individual character.

You have to learn how it's pronounced.

You have to learn the tone of that character, although you

acquire a lot of that naturally.

It's very difficult.

You can't necessarily deduce from the character how that is

pronounced, what tone it is.

It's not obvious.

You actually have to know the word.

And then I go to, say Greek and um, Persian, arabic, where there is also

inconsistency between the writing system and how things are pronounced.

I also found that in many cases I had to know the word before I could confidently

pronounce it in a number of languages.

Russian, English another example, you don't know where the emphasis or

how the word, the intonation of the word, if you don't know the word.

There are other languages like Polish or Spanish, which are very consistent.

Uh, the spelling, the intonation matches up to the spelling, the,

you know what the intonation.

Uh, there are, you know, diacritics to help you.

So some languages are easier that way.

English is not that easy.

So in a way, my basic advice is to disconnect the writing, the

spelling from the pronunciation.

So if we're only dealing with the issue of spelling, like you're only

writing, you're not worried about how words are pronounced, still the

sound of the word, the pronunciation.

Pronunciation comes into it, into play because you hear the word in

your brain and you're not quite sure how it's spelled because of the

inconsistency of English spelling.

If there were no sound there, you would just take each word as a separate word,

like a Chinese character and you would just know the word believe, meaning

to believe, uh, is IE, I before E.

Whereas receive is EI.

You would just learn that as the word.

You wouldn't be fooled by the fact that it's the same sound, uh, that

the word need, and in other words to need do is K N E A D, whereas

to need something is N E E D.

It's confusing, but if you separated out the sound, you

didn't worry about the sound.

You just remembered that word as a word.

That's how you spell it.

The spelling on its own I think would be an easier problem.

The problem is the pronunciation where it becomes quite confusing.

How do you pronounce the word?

And in the end, and I've seen so many people because the way

the value of letters in our own language, are so, so hardwired.

There's this tremendous tendency to pronounce words in English based on how

they would be pronounced if they were Spanish words, or, you know, Polish words.

So I've often mentioned that my father who lived in Canada for, you know,

30 uh, years, uh, he continued to say Nova Scotia instead of Nova Scotia.

He would say "vord" instead of word, even though he had a phenomenal vocabulary in

English, was completely fluent in English.

But the, the value of those letters in his original Czech language

was such that he couldn't let go.

Uh, I had, we had a Spanish person working with us and she kept on saying

"sward" and I'd say no, no, it's sword.

Oh yeah, okay "sword".

Like people can't let go of the value of those letters in their native language.

So, and I think one has to kind of divorce.

Don't worry about the letters because you're going to wanna

pronounce them the way they are pronounced in your native language.

You have to totally rely on what you hear.

So let me just read this text that I wrote and which I put in as a lesson in LingQ,

and I'll show you how in that lesson I go in and I tag words that might give

me trouble for pronunciation so that I can then review them, uh, in a group.

In, in the vocab section.

But first I'll read you this lesson for those of you who are learning

English, and you'll see that I start with A's and I work my way through E.

Oh, it's in fact, I may not read the whole thing.

You can do the lesson, but I say beware of English spelling.

I want to warn.

Warn, okay?

I want to warn all of you about variations in pronunciation.

After all, you see how the A is pronounced so differently, after all,

maybe if you are aware of these changes, you may not make so many mistakes.

The hard part is that I can warn you, scare you, prepare you, and what happens.

You see how the A is pronounced differently each time.

I won't read through the whole thing.

You can go and find it if you're interested, but I mean, even like

the letter E, we have a letter, letter, letter E, Those are all E's.

Then you have, you know, uh, heard, there's an E, but then you can get the

"ur" sound with bird or word or squirrel.

Um, you know, or, uh, you know, E and...

E And A together can be pronounced like here, but also like bread

or head, uh, and so on, like, so, so you'll see this lesson.

I've recorded it, I've put it into, uh, our library at LingQ.

Uh, just to illustrate how inconsistent, uh, you know, very famous, of course,

everyone always refers to the whole OU situation where, you know, you have,

um, so I say here, Uh, you wouldn't be able to get out OU to travel

about without going through the door.

Although I've heard of people going through the window that could be

tougher or even rougher, blah blah blah.

And then look out the window.

You see a man plowing with his plow.

Plough is the same as rough, same spelling.

Sewing the field while his wife is at home sewing.

So he's sewing the field OW his wife is sewing, SEW, his shirt

at home, and so on and so on.

Okay, so I will show you how, how I would use this lesson to

work on my English spelling.

The lesson is an attempt to show how certain letters can be

pronounced in very different ways.

And it's very difficult sometimes to tell how they are pronounced.

So I start with a little, with a letter A.

So it says, Beware of English spelling.

I want to, I want to warn you about variations in pronunciation.

So we see here that in this first paragraph, I have a lot of words with

the letter A, all pronounced differently.

So I might decide that I wanna save the word warn.

Uh, so I might even know what the meaning is, but I want to be able to...

so I save it and then I decide that I want to tag it.

So I'll tag it and I'll create, call it, let's see, pronunciation.

So that now all of the words, because it's not just a letter A, I'm gonna

go through this lesson and you'll see.

Uh, do the same for other letters.

So variation, maybe I feel Okay, A in variation.

I don't have trouble pronouncing, so I won't go for that.

But again, aware, you know, here's another one.

Uh, so I'll save it and I'll give it a tag and I'll call it again...

and as I start, you know, uh, typing in the word pronunciation is there,

so I save that as the tag for that.

All right, so changes, you know, A is pronounced change is mistakes.

I'm not so concerned about that.

Scare, warn, aware, scare, maybe I also want to give that a tag so I, you

know, save it and then I give it a tag.

And again, I go pronunciation.

Okay.

And I save.

So, And patterns probably, I'm not so worried about.

Beware, careful, patterns.

Okay, now then we go to E here.

So believe IE some people might be confused.

So I would go in there and then I would tag it and I would again go pr...

and that gives me pronunciation and uh, so that.

And of course, letter, believe, letter, me.

Um, and so letter can be, it can be letter.

Uh, um, so I say seeing is believing.

I think by this time, believe probably I'm not gonna save that, but heard

has an E in it and is pronounced "er".

So, I might say that, and then I go in there and I say, Let's

tag it for pronunciation.

And, uh, I tag it that way.

And you can go through the whole lesson.

Uh, heard, bird, heard, I go through, uh, whoops.

Okay.

Uh, you know, wou,d, although plough, need.

Bread instead of heard.

So, lots of examples of the inconsistency of English spelling.

And what I'm trying to show you is that you can, uh, if I go to my vocabulary

section now and I choose to filter by, uh, pronunciation, then I'm gonna see

all the words that I have saved for pronunciation, so there only happened to

be four, and so I could use the vocabulary section as a way of trying to focus in on

words that I have difficulty pronouncing.

So I hope this is, uh, helpful to you.

I hope even that the lesson uh, helps you work on your English pronunciation.

If you have any suggestions on similar types of, uh, lessons that,

uh, we could create in different languages, um, please let me know.

Go and do the lesson if you are learning English, if you're having trouble with

spelling and if you find this useful, again, I just did this on a, on a whim.

Uh, let me know if this helps.

Uh, I've made a similar lesson in French, as you know, so if this is useful, I

can go and create lessons in different languages, which focus in on some of the

aspects that people have trouble with.