I wrote this a couple of year ago
Things i've noticed
Ensure, entirely, encounter... en- words, one students says she's
always pronounced an, like in French, she was surprised it was /in-/ or
with a schwa sound.
Fail to do.... she heard fair cos she knew fair but not fail. You hear what you know. (She found it hard to understand the concept of fail to ...)
-ure words are all troublesome to many many Spaniards, and it gets really annoying. What works best is to find syllable-equivalents in their language. For Catalan and French speakers it is much easier as they have the same sounds.
measure, pleasure, treasure -sure like genètica, je
Fail to do.... she heard fair cos she knew fair but not fail. You hear what you know. (She found it hard to understand the concept of fail to ...)
-ure words are all troublesome to many many Spaniards, and it gets really annoying. What works best is to find syllable-equivalents in their language. For Catalan and French speakers it is much easier as they have the same sounds.
measure, pleasure, treasure -sure like genètica, je
As for -ture, it's pronounced as tchetchenia in Catalan
future, structure, literature, nature
procedure
decision, television, intrusion... sound like genètica, something that even advanced students have trouble with!
but -ssion, with double s is a different sound, is like shhhhh! the sound you make when you want silence.
s when the first sound of sugar,
usually, sugar, usual, sounds like Joan, the name in Catalan. decision,
issue sounds like mixu in Catalan without the initial m. It works.
busy like business, after all they have the same root!
contrast with bus, boss, biz..busy
In Spanish:
Another question sometimes students is have is the unstressed an stressed sounds involving short i sound and the schwa, and how different the strong vowels sounds sound in different accents and varieties in English. This is a reply I gave to a user of el blog del inglés:
Como probablemente sabrás los sonidos están influenciados por los sonidos precedentes y siguientes, o si estas vocales aparecen en sílabas tónicas o átonas.
Otros ejemplos del problema que nos planteas son minute and chicken or kitchen. Las primeras vocales son i corta, mientras que las segunda vocal que pronunciamos a veces suena un poco más como i y muhcas otras un poco más como schwa verdad?
La sílaba tónica, la fuerte, tiene un sonido muy claro y bien definido. Si hay un diptongo en la palabra, lo más probable es que el diptongo sea la tónica. La pronunciación de estas vocales de sílabas tónicas varía ligeramente entre los diferentes acentos y variedades del inglés. Es normal. Yo creo que es cuestión de acostumbrarse. Por otro lado la/s sílabas átonas, sin acentuar, a menudo tienen la schwa, esta vocal tan común en el idioma inglés que tu dices. Mónica la llama la vocal tonta y la describo como el sonido que emitirías si produjeras un sonido cuando estas durmiendo con la boca ligeramente abierta, una apertura natural, sin hacer ningún esfuerzo con la boca, labios, lengua. Como embobados!
Esta schwa puede ser letras a, una e, una o, una i , u, ou de country , terminaciones como -ure (en inglés británico: future, /fiutcha/ inglés americano fiutchar/, etc. En la misma palabra puede haber tres vocales iguales, letras a, con tres pronunciaciones distintas, siendo la átona, una schwa lo más probale. Manhattan.
En escocés por ejemplo la i corta de fish, sit, bitch, suena muy neutra sin llegar a serlo.
O sea, es normal que suene distinta según los acentos, según los dialectos. Si consultas varias transcripciones fonéticas quizas veas diferentes transcripciones. Además yo a todo esto añadiría que en inglés los sonidos se han tendido a relajar a lo largo de los años, antes las palabras, no solo verbos, se conjugaban y esta conjugación (declinación, como en latin), se fue transformando en una schwa hasta desaparecer. Pues, esto, es como que los sonidos se relajan a veces!
Final sounds, they don't hear them, they don't say them! then you have things like tall for told, fine for find, chain for change (particular obvious in Spanish-only speakers as opposed to catalan-speakers), call for cold. As said, they drop teh final sound and often are not aware of the vowel sound, either! No need to mention the -ed past tense marker! Solution: Liaise, link words noting that the final sounds is pronounced.
I have this French girl whose English doesn't sound too bad to me, but it's more familiarity with her accent than it being truly good: lack of awareness of sounds, she does not speak clearly, she mumbles, which prevents understanding. It's interesting to see how much familiarity with an accent can hide true problems in communication. I have searched for videos of other french people speaking English and when it wasn't all all that clear to me she did understand. Found it funny and saw herself in them.
Another question is that Catalan language has a few more sounds than Spanish which makes it easier for them to pronounce slightly better.
Lack of awareness of o and ou=neutral vowel u (like hope).
That's been an eye-opener and she'll concentrate on:
vocalising, stop mumbling, and fake an accent.
pausing where due and practising good intonation patterns
pronouncing the final sounds of words
liasing when possible, learning the sound of chunk of words, apaatfromthis, wierol(we are all), ...thèalotzev..there are lots of...
learning the different sounds so that she can distinguish words
look at how meaning changes with one sound or another, position of stress, etc
We will look at:
weak forms, when she has gained an understanding of different similar sounds (vowels particularly)
minimal pairs
vowel distinction and homophones
reading phonetically transcribed texts
The experiment continues. Just the mere fact of concentrating on slow reading has made her become aware of sounds and seem a lot clearer. First step is to do it well in class, and next, little by little extend this to real-life situations like the meetings she has to attend, phone calls. This should lead to increased confidence in producing but also in understanding (providing she is familiar with topic, no need to say, which you would expect if work meetings)
I am going to be using stuff from the pronunciation tips link from the bbc learning english website. Great! thanks bbc for all the very useful material you provide us with!
Books, websites and work-related news articles to be found on the net to read out to expand vocab, style and pausing/pronunciation
procedure
decision, television, intrusion... sound like genètica, something that even advanced students have trouble with!
but -ssion, with double s is a different sound, is like shhhhh! the sound you make when you want silence.
s when the first sound of sugar,
usually, sugar, usual, sounds like Joan, the name in Catalan. decision,
issue sounds like mixu in Catalan without the initial m. It works.
busy like business, after all they have the same root!
contrast with bus, boss, biz..busy
In Spanish:
Another question sometimes students is have is the unstressed an stressed sounds involving short i sound and the schwa, and how different the strong vowels sounds sound in different accents and varieties in English. This is a reply I gave to a user of el blog del inglés:
Como probablemente sabrás los sonidos están influenciados por los sonidos precedentes y siguientes, o si estas vocales aparecen en sílabas tónicas o átonas.
Otros ejemplos del problema que nos planteas son minute and chicken or kitchen. Las primeras vocales son i corta, mientras que las segunda vocal que pronunciamos a veces suena un poco más como i y muhcas otras un poco más como schwa verdad?
La sílaba tónica, la fuerte, tiene un sonido muy claro y bien definido. Si hay un diptongo en la palabra, lo más probable es que el diptongo sea la tónica. La pronunciación de estas vocales de sílabas tónicas varía ligeramente entre los diferentes acentos y variedades del inglés. Es normal. Yo creo que es cuestión de acostumbrarse. Por otro lado la/s sílabas átonas, sin acentuar, a menudo tienen la schwa, esta vocal tan común en el idioma inglés que tu dices. Mónica la llama la vocal tonta y la describo como el sonido que emitirías si produjeras un sonido cuando estas durmiendo con la boca ligeramente abierta, una apertura natural, sin hacer ningún esfuerzo con la boca, labios, lengua. Como embobados!
Esta schwa puede ser letras a, una e, una o, una i , u, ou de country , terminaciones como -ure (en inglés británico: future, /fiutcha/ inglés americano fiutchar/, etc. En la misma palabra puede haber tres vocales iguales, letras a, con tres pronunciaciones distintas, siendo la átona, una schwa lo más probale. Manhattan.
En escocés por ejemplo la i corta de fish, sit, bitch, suena muy neutra sin llegar a serlo.
O sea, es normal que suene distinta según los acentos, según los dialectos. Si consultas varias transcripciones fonéticas quizas veas diferentes transcripciones. Además yo a todo esto añadiría que en inglés los sonidos se han tendido a relajar a lo largo de los años, antes las palabras, no solo verbos, se conjugaban y esta conjugación (declinación, como en latin), se fue transformando en una schwa hasta desaparecer. Pues, esto, es como que los sonidos se relajan a veces!
Final sounds, they don't hear them, they don't say them! then you have things like tall for told, fine for find, chain for change (particular obvious in Spanish-only speakers as opposed to catalan-speakers), call for cold. As said, they drop teh final sound and often are not aware of the vowel sound, either! No need to mention the -ed past tense marker! Solution: Liaise, link words noting that the final sounds is pronounced.
I have this French girl whose English doesn't sound too bad to me, but it's more familiarity with her accent than it being truly good: lack of awareness of sounds, she does not speak clearly, she mumbles, which prevents understanding. It's interesting to see how much familiarity with an accent can hide true problems in communication. I have searched for videos of other french people speaking English and when it wasn't all all that clear to me she did understand. Found it funny and saw herself in them.
Another question is that Catalan language has a few more sounds than Spanish which makes it easier for them to pronounce slightly better.
Lack of awareness of o and ou=neutral vowel u (like hope).
That's been an eye-opener and she'll concentrate on:
vocalising, stop mumbling, and fake an accent.
pausing where due and practising good intonation patterns
pronouncing the final sounds of words
liasing when possible, learning the sound of chunk of words, apaatfromthis, wierol(we are all), ...thèalotzev..there are lots of...
learning the different sounds so that she can distinguish words
look at how meaning changes with one sound or another, position of stress, etc
We will look at:
weak forms, when she has gained an understanding of different similar sounds (vowels particularly)
minimal pairs
vowel distinction and homophones
reading phonetically transcribed texts
The experiment continues. Just the mere fact of concentrating on slow reading has made her become aware of sounds and seem a lot clearer. First step is to do it well in class, and next, little by little extend this to real-life situations like the meetings she has to attend, phone calls. This should lead to increased confidence in producing but also in understanding (providing she is familiar with topic, no need to say, which you would expect if work meetings)
I am going to be using stuff from the pronunciation tips link from the bbc learning english website. Great! thanks bbc for all the very useful material you provide us with!
Books, websites and work-related news articles to be found on the net to read out to expand vocab, style and pausing/pronunciation
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