English Pronunciation

**•0سحآبة خِير0•** · 19-06-2008, 05:20 PM

ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION

Improve your English pronunciation using these lessons and other resources.
Pronouncing English Sounds
We use the 26 letters of the alphabet in English writing. However, when speaking there are roughly 44 different sounds in English. We call these sounds phonemes.
Pronouncing Vowels
Vowels are letters that are pronounced by forcing air over your vocal cords through your mouth. It is the shape of your mouth that decides which vowel sound comes out.
Pronouncing Consonants
Consonant Sounds are produced by completely or partially stopping the breath. Consonant Sounds can be voiceless (VL, no vibration of the vocal cords) or voiced (VD, vibration of the vocal cords) and often come in sound pairs.
English Suprasegmentals
The suprasegmental symbols are called that because they apply to more than one segment (vowel or consonant). In English, the relevant suprasegmentals are the markings for primary and secondary stress.
Stress and intonation
Intonation is the name given to sentence stress, or what is sometimes called the "music of the language". Just as words have stressed syllables, sentences contain regular patterns of stressed words.

**•0سحآبة خِير0•** · 19-06-2008, 05:26 PM

PRONOUNCING ENGLISH SOUNDS
We use the 26 letters of the alphabet in English writing. However, when speaking there are roughly 44 different sounds in English. We call these sounds phonemes.

If you're concentrating on the sounds of English, there are 44 characters to represent them all. One way of doing this is to use the 'phonemic alphabet', which has some extra characters to represent the sounds in English for which there is no clear equivalent letter or letters.

Writing with phonemes
You can use phonemes to write out the pronunciation of words and in many dictionaries for English learners you will see the pronunciation written out. To show that what is written are phonemes (sounds) and not letters phonemic transcriptions are written between slashes, / /.

For example, the pronunciation of the word 'pet' is written:/pet/

There are different kinds of sounds, consonants and vowels.

**•0سحآبة خِير0•** · 19-06-2008, 05:46 PM

PRONOUNCING ENGLISH VOWELS

Vowels are letters that are pronounced by forcing air over your vocal cords through your mouth. It is the shape of your mouth that decides which vowel sound comes out. There are many tape or video cassette lessons available from schools, libraries and stores which will help you with your pronunciation. You can also learn a lot by listening to the radio and watching television and films.

This section discusses the symbols used for the vowel phonemes in three major English accents: Received Pronunciation, General American, and General Australian.

Received Pronunciation

General American

General Australian

**•0سحآبة خِير0•** · 19-06-2008, 08:36 PM

ENGLISH SUPRASEGMENTALS

The suprasegmental symbols are called that because they apply to more than one segment (vowel or consonant). In English, the relevant suprasegmentals are the markings for primary and secondary stress.
Primary stress: '
Secondary stress: ,
Primary stress is indicated by the symbol " ' " before the stressed syllable; secondary stress by the symbol " , " before the syllable, for example: battleship .

English does not actually have a distinction between primary and secondary stress. The apparent difference is due to intonation: When making a statement, the last stressed syllable will be more strongly stressed than the other stressed syllables. However, as soon as you move a word out of final position, the extra stress is lost. It moves to whichever word is now final, so it doesn't really belong to the word itself, but to the statement. Consider the isolated word Arachnophobia, with stronger stress on the syllable pho than on the rach, versus Arachnophobia's playing at the Bijou, where the stress on rach and pho is equal. Because people usually say a word in isolation when transcribing it, they tend to mark primary and secondary stress, but this is not necessary for English.

**•0سحآبة خِير0•** · 19-06-2008, 08:39 PM

PRONOUNCING ENGLISH CONSONANTS

**•0سحآبة خِير0•** · 19-06-2008, 08:43 PM

STRESS AND INTONATION

Stress

In words of more than one syllable, there will be one syllable which is more heavily stressed than the others. We say that this syllable carries the primary stress (eg. apartment). In some longer words, other syllables may carry secondary stress. The most important thing is to recognise where the primary stress is - and remember that it can change between words derived from the same base (eg. photograph, photographer, photographic). If you stress a word incorrectly, it can be very difficult to understand, so it is important to learn how a word is stressed at the same time as you learn how to pronounce it. If your native language does not have a word stress pattern like that of English, you will need to be especially conscientious in learning the English forms!
Make sure you write down the word stress when you record new vocabulary - you could even mark the stressed syllable with a coloured highlighter!
When you pronounce new words, exaggerate the stressed syllables until it becomes natural for you to put the stress in the right place

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Intonation

Intonation is the name given to sentence stress, or what is sometimes called the "music of the language". Just as words have stressed syllables, sentences contain regular patterns of stressed words. In addition, the voice tends to rise, fall or remain flat in various different types of phrases and sentences. You will need to pay attention to intonation if your native language has different intonation patterns from English, and especially if you normally use a flat intonation - in English, this tends to signify boredom or sarcasm!
Listen as carefully as possible to the intonation patterns of native speakers, and try to copy them.
If you find it hard to hear the intonation patterns, ask your teacher to give you some examples.
Ask your teacher whether there are particular areas where you have difficulty with intonation, and focus on those areas.
Write down some everyday sentences, and try to indicate the intonation patterns with stress symbols and arrows - check them with your teacher if you are unsure.

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