This is my 1st semester assignment on "Pronunciation" topic. This assignment will help the reader to understand how to pronounce English phonemes correctly. International Phonetic Alphabet is the tool for English students to practice their pronunciation.
2. Pronunciation
• The act of producing the sounds of speech is called pronunciation.
• In lots of languages, each letter represent only one sound so its easy to
pronounce words just by looking at how the word is spelled. But English is
not like that.
• When you see letters in an English word, they won’t always be pronounced
the same way.
• Take the letter “c” for example. In the word cup it is pronounced as “k” but
it is different to the word “place”. When a “c” is next to “h” it’s often “ch”
like in “chocolate” but in the word “ache” it is pronounced as “k” again.
• There are many strategies for making the pronunciation better but the
International Phonetic Alphabet is such a great tool for English students to
practice their pronunciation with. As we follow British English language.
3. International Phonetic Alphabet
• In the IPA every sound has a unique symbol, so when you read it you
know exactly how to pronounce the English word.
• For example the words though, thought, cough all have the same
letters o-u-g-h spellings but they are pronounced differently.
4. • These symbols seems scary at first but these are so helpful when
learning English pronunciation because it tells exactly how to say a
word.
• There are 26 alphabets in English alphabets. But there are 44 sounds.
• Three sounds are added so now there are 47 sounds.
6. Vowels
There are 5 English vowels,
a, e, i, o, u
But there are 12 English vowel
sounds. Some of them are long
some of them are short.
Vowel sounds come smoothly
from the mouth. These are
smooth sounds.
7.
8. •/ɪ/ pin, English
•/ʊ/ look, put, could
•/e/ bed, head
•/ɜː/ word, heard
•/æ/ cat, bag
•/ɑː/ car, art
•/ɪː/ sea, bee
•/uː/ blue, fool
•/ə/ the, a, woman
•/ɔː/ or, board, door
•/ʌ/ cut, come
•/ɒ/ clock, what
9. Diphthongs
There is another group of
vowel sounds called “Diphthongs”.
These are sounds that change from
one vowel sound to another.
10.
11. •/ɪə/ here, deer
•/ʊə/ poor, insure
•/əʊ/ no, road
•/ɑɪ/ five, height
•/eə/ care, air
•/ɑʊ/ round, doubt
•/eɪ/ take, wait
•/ɔɪ/ noise, boy
12. Consonants
The top row are unvoiced consonants which means that sound is made
by air moving from the back of your mouth, through and out your lips.
There is one extra letter that is unvoiced, down the bottom.
Unvoiced sounds use just air. You can’t feel anything in your vocal
cords.
13. All the rest of the consonant sounds are voiced, which means that the
sound is made with vocal cords.
When you have to produce consonant sounds, first there is blockage of
air in the mouth and then release of air.
14.
15. • /p/ play, stop
• /f/ food, laugh
• /t/ ten, little
• /θ/ method, both
• /tʃ/ chair, match
• /s/ small, scene
• /ʃ/ shell, machine
• /k/ character, quick
• /h/ hot, hair, whole
• /b/ bad, baby
• /d/ day, bed
• /g/ got, exam
• /v/ vain, over
• /ð/ they, father, with
• /z/ zoo, goes
• /ʒ/ measure, vision
• /m/ moon, lamp
• /n/ can, pneumonia
• /ŋ/ string, tongue
• /dʒ/ just, age, soldier
• /l/ look, small
• /r/ real, wrong
• /j/ yes, Europe
• /w/ window, twin
16. Activity
Circle the word that is pronounced differently from the other three
words.
1. accident access accommodate accept
2. suit fruit cruise biscuit
3. author caught laughter daughter
17. Phonetic Transcription
• Phonetic transcription (also
known as phonetic script or
phonetic notation) is the visual
representation of speech sounds
(or phones). The most common
type of phonetic transcription
uses a phonetic alphabet, such
as the International Phonetic
Alphabet.
• Clean
Phonetic transcription is
/kli:n/
It is made up of 4 sounds.
k unvoiced consonant
l voiced consonant
i: vowel sound
n voiced consonant
18. Tips
• Standard dictionaries use the IPA to show how words are pronounced.
• When you are first learning basic phonetic writing, you can practice first
with English spelling, instead of phonetic spelling. The symbols of IPA are
based on more complex symbols that may be difficult for a beginner to
understand.
• Look at the words in a dictionary to get a sense of how to use phonetic
spelling. Copy out the phonetic spelling of your favorite words and note the
phonetic spelling of each word. Practice saying the terms out loud, based
on the phonetic spelling.
• Focus on the sound of the words, rather than the spelling of the words.
19. You can also use an online translator to translate
words into phonetics.
21. Tongue Twisters
• Short phrases or short stories that repeat problem sounds or same
groups of sounds to make it difficult to pronounce when you say it
very quickly.
• Improves your pronunciation.
• Improve your ability to speak more fluently.
