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How to learn English pronunciation? | ||
Tags: Pronunciation | English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5049 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes  Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese | Message 9 of 35 12 August 2012 at 10:53am | IP Logged | ||
There aren't specific words, but thanks. Thanks for the suggestions everyone! Especially shadowing sounds interesting. I'll give it a try. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6904 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 10 of 35 12 August 2012 at 1:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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There are many books and courses that aim at improving your pronunciation (either
British or American English). It's really a great luxury. I used e.g. "The American Accent Training", "Say it Right" (this one is a Polish course, though), and a couple of others of which I don't remember the titles because pretty all of them include "American" and either "pronunciation" or "accent" ;). For British, from what I've heard, e.g. "How Now Brown Cow", "Sheep or Ship" and "English Pronunciation in Use" are supposed to be good. Plus a lot of input (in the beginning, preferably mostly in either British or American English), learning IPA (if you haven't), looking up the pronunciation of every word you're not sure about and some words you're sure ;)), shadowing, reading aloud, repeating after recordings etc. I still don't get all the sounds right (especially vowels), and my intonation is sometimes off, but all in all, my pronunciation has improved significantly and I keep on working. This involves a lot of "relearning", though. One of my discoveries was the word 'cucumber'. For many years, I pronounced both u's the way the first one should be pronounced. I shared this discovery with a Polish friend of mine, and it turned out she pronounced both u's the way the second one should be pronounced... I guess there is still a lot more to discover. Edited by Julie on 12 August 2012 at 1:29pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| linkman226 Bilingual Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5330 days ago 26 posts - 39 votes Speaks: English*, Kannada*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, French | Message 11 of 35 12 August 2012 at 4:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Usually what I find works well for me with regards to pronunciation is:
1. IPA. Learn it if you don't know it, but it appears you already do, which is good. 2. Find minimal pairs. Listen over and over until you can at least hear the difference. FSI is really good at this, though I'm afraid there is no FSI English. However, you can find the specific phoneme pages on wikipedia, they have audio. Listen to those. 3. Now, still while listening to minimal pairs, attempt to mimic the speakers after they have said each phoneme. You will know with a fair bit of accuracy if you're getting the sound right or not just by ear because you can now distinguish the two sounds, because of step two. This can be frustrating sometimes, because since the speaking lags behind listening, you can clearly tell that you are not producing the sound right, but you can't always pinpoint why. Just keep at it, it will come eventually. 4. Languages obviously aren't so neatly divided into tiny little phonemes, of course; to get the overall prosody of words in your TL, the rhythm, as well as how sounds influence other sounds around them (sandhi), I use Pimsleur, FSI, or shadowing. Since the first two won't work for English, use shadowing. This step is similar to the last, in that you try to mimic the speaker as best as you can, but this time with whole words, sentences, and paragraphs rather than isolated phonemes. 5. Lots of native media. 6. Ask a native speaker if you're doing it right. 7. Remember that perfect native pronunciation is very difficult, and keep your goals realistic. You should be able to get pretty close to native if you apply yourself, but expect to have a slight lilt to your speech. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6438 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 12 of 35 12 August 2012 at 11:12pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes. I bet English is hard like this for foreigners, though. "Wood" has the same vowel sound as in the word "put," but "poop," which uses the same vowel combination, has a long "u" sound instead." How confusing! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| linkman226 Bilingual Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5330 days ago 26 posts - 39 votes Speaks: English*, Kannada*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, French | Message 13 of 35 12 August 2012 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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When you become highly proficient at English, you will, like a native, develop the ability to intuit the pronunciation
of a word with a great deal of accuracy, even if you have never seen it before, just based on the spelling. However even native speakers will occasionally mispronounce a new word they see for the first time in print. For example, I used to say 'chaos' with a 'ch' rather than a 'k' sound from when I was 9 till someone corrected me at age 12 or 13. This link will help you get there. I was taught with a system much like that to learn English pronunciation back in elementary school, except designed for children. However, until then, don't rely on orthography to figure out spelling. Use a dictionary with IPA, or better yet, find an online dictionary with audio recordings. i'd personally recommend dictionary.com Best of luck. Edited by linkman226 on 12 August 2012 at 11:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 14 of 35 13 August 2012 at 11:50am | IP Logged | ||
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You need to get a decent pronunciation dictionary.
I recommend the Longman one! If you're motivated, you can learn the pronunciation of all words in 3 months (''studying'' at least 12-15 hours a day). ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5049 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese | Message 15 of 35 13 August 2012 at 5:27pm | IP Logged | ||
I'd rather learn Arabic to fluency in such a long time. ._. Edited by Takato on 13 August 2012 at 5:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Heriotza Groupie Dominican Republic Joined 4681 days ago 48 posts - 71 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 16 of 35 14 August 2012 at 7:06pm | IP Logged | ||
It's a lot of more easier than you think, but it's still a hard and daunting task for a speaker of a very phonetic written language as Spanish. I was reading some time ago how native speakers of English learn traditionally to read and that really made clear to me why is so commonly assumed that the spelling of English is not "phonetic". Native English speakers are taught to read through something they called "sight words". So, they are not taught phonetic rules, as if English doesn't have them, but are introduced to word practically in isolation and without any care for developing a system to decoding unknown words and they are thus left with the idea that the English spelling is a some kind of eternal mystery. The truth is that English does not use a pictography written system. Yes, English need desperately a Spelling Reform, but there is still ways (with many excepcion -that for sure-)to extract phonetic rules and develop a system Edited by Heriotza on 14 August 2012 at 8:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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