Hi. Welcome again to www.engvid.com. I'm Adam. Today's lesson is about pronunciation and
phonetics. Now, I said there's going to be a secret on how to improve your pronunciation
in English - here's the secret. Are you ready? There is no secret. It takes hard work, it
takes practice, it takes perseverance. You have to do things, you have to practice things,
you have to use your dictionary. You always have to keep working at it, that's the secret.
But I'll give you a little bit of a tip on how to make this a little bit easier for yourself.
Okay?
What we have here is a list of words, each one looks very similar, but it has a different
phonetic sound. Now, "phonetics" means the sound of the syllables in the word. "Syllables"...
I'll just write that word here. A "syllable" is the sound part of a word. For example:
the word "cat" has one syllable. The word "beautiful", "beau-ti-ful" - three syllables.
Okay? So we're going to learn how to look at syllables, how to find the sound for each
syllable in a word to know how to pronounce the full word.
So we're going to start with these words because, again, these are very common words. These
are words that all sound very similar, plus I had a request on www.engvid.com in the comment
section on how to pronounce these.
Let me say all these words first. "Look", "lock", "luck", "lack", "lake", "like", "lick",
"leek", "Luke", "bloke", and "let". Now, "bloke" and "let" are obviously different words, but
there's no such word as "loke" and there's no such word as "lek", so I had to improvise.
But we have a bunch of other ones. Now, for some of you, a lot of these words sounded
exactly the same I'm guessing. Right? They're not. They're very different.
So "lock" and "luck" have completely different meanings. They have no relationship to each
other except that they share one, two, three; one, two, three similar letters. "Aw", "ah",
very similar vowel sound as well. So, what you notice above each of these words is the
Now, there are different phonetic lists. Everybody has their own list. Find one that you like.
I took these symbols from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, that's the American dictionary.
If you want to find it online: www.m-w.com. It's a good dictionary and that's where I
got these symbols from. Once you start studying phonetics, stick to one list. Okay? If you
want to study British English, use a British dictionary; American English, use an American
dictionary. Most of the words are going to be the same or similar; some of them will
be completely different. So choose your dictionary, stick to it, practice.
Now, if you look at these words in the dictionary on Merriam-Webster, you will find the phonetic
spelling. The "phonetic spelling" means they spell the word according to its sound. So
this "u" with a dot-I hope you can see that dot-"look", "uh". "Book", "took", "bull".
It doesn't matter what the letters on either side are, the vowel sound is going to be the
With "lock", you have "a" with two dots on top of it. "Lock", "rock", "sock", "font".
If you're not sure what a font is, if you have Microsoft Word or whatever typing tool
you use, there are different fonts; Times New Roman, Agency, and Calibri, or whatever
they're called. These are font, but the sound is "aw".
"Luck", "ah", sort of like an upside down, an inverted "e". "Luck", "truck", "duck",
"brother".
"Lack", just a regular "a", "sack", "pack", "apple".
"Lake", "a" with a line across it makes it a bit longer, it's called a diphthong because
it's "ae", it's like almost two vowel sounds in one. "Shake", "bake", "trade".
"Like", "i" with a long symbol on top of it, "i". It's also a diphthong. "Bike", "spike",
"flight". All the same vowel sound.
"i", regular "i" with nothing on top. "Lick", "ih", "stick", "pick", "little". Okay?
"e", "e" with a long line on top. "Peek", "seek", "freedom".
"Luke", "Luke" is a man's name, it's also from the Bible. "u" with two dots, it looks
like a bit of a happy face with a little dimple. "Fluke", "hookah". Now, before I continue
- what is a "hookah"? How many of you have read Alice in Wonderland? You know when Alice
was walking through the forest and she sees this caterpillar, this big worm smoking a
hookah? Still not sure? Hold on. What do I have here? A hookah. I'm missing the little
smoking part of it, but this is a hookah. It's pronounced: "hoo-kah". Okay. If you ever
tried them, they're actually quite tasty, but we won't get into that.
"School", "oo". "Bloke", now, I had to find a word that had "ok" in it. "Bloke" is a British
slang, it means guy, man - whatever. "That bloke over there is a very well-dressed."
I don't know why I used that example. "Spoke", "joke", "lower". "o", also a diphthong. "o",
And "let", regular "e", "eh", "jet", "bet", "arrest".
Now, why am I showing you these things? Like why am I comparing different words? (A): because
once you understand the phonetic symbol of a word, any word that you don't know how to
pronounce - just open the dictionary, find the symbol. Remember what other word you do
know that has this symbol. All of you know this word "pack", I assume. All of you know
the word "jet". You see this word, "arrest", you think: "Okay, not really sure what it
is. I'm not sure how to pronounce it.", "Ah" like "uck", "luck". "Arrest", "e", "eh", "arrest".
You have one, two syllables. Find each syllable's phonetic symbol, learn how to pronounce it.
Another good thing about the Merriam-Webster's site, online site, you can press a button
and it'll say the word; you can hear it as well.
Now, what do you do with this? So, let's look at these words. Now, remember English is the
hardest language to understand in terms of pronunciation because spellings don't mean
anything. This "ea" and this "ea" don't sound the same. If you look at the dictionary, you
will find out that this word is pronounced: "feather". This "ea" sounds like this "e",
"eh", "fea", "feather". This "ea" sounds like "e", "feature" like-where are we?-"leek".
"Leek", by the way, is like the thick, long, green onion. It's very delicious as well when
you cook it nicely. "Leek", "e", "fea", "feature", "feature".
Now, this, you're thinking: "Fasco", "fiasco", no, it's: "fiasco". Again, the "e", "fi-as-co".
Three syllables, "fi-as-co". What is a "fiasco"? It's a big mess of a situation. The government tried to implement a new policy
and it was a big fiasco; it was a disaster, nobody bought into it. Okay?
I'll give you another example. How do you pronounce this word? I'll give you a chance.
Separate it into the two syllables. This one sounds like this one. This one sounds like
this one. So, "bull-et", "bullet". "Pew", bullet. Right? Okay. Again, this is just an
Keep yourself a list. Get yourself a notebook, write down these words. Start making a collection
of sounds. These are just some of the sounds in English; there are others. Make yourself
a list of sounds. When you learn a new word, put that word into that sound category, and
that's how you start building your pronunciation skills. Believe me, at the beginning, it will
be very difficult. The more you do it, the easier it will become, the more like a native
I do have a little bit of a tricky quiz on www.engvid.com. It's about rhyming. Oh, by
the way, all I'm doing here is rhyming; making words sound similar. A good way to practice
as well is go to... Just Google "rhyming dictionary" and you can look for words that sound similar.
Again, but they're usually one or two syllables so not as useful. Go to www.engvid.com, try
the quiz. And, of course, there's a comment section - ask me any questions. And I'll see