Hey there! This is TOP episode 175. Why Is English Hard To Learn? (2)
My name’s Ola, I am an English teacher. I know you can eliminate your language blockade. I record this podcast’s episodes with worksheets, to help you start speaking faster and achieve fluency and enjoy all the things that come with it. Easy, light, pleasant communication. Visit my shop at teacherola.com, get your Worksheet Sets and enjoy your journey to fluency! Happy learning! And hey! Thank you for joining TOPeople!
Hello and thank you for joining me today. Here’s the second episode of a series on reasons why English is in fact a hard language to learn. Part one was about phrasal verbs and it’s episode 171. Today you’ll hear 8 reasons why we hate English pronunciation. Luckily there are some episodes of TOP that deal with pronunciation. At teacherola.com/175 you’ll find the list with links here I’ll just say the episode numbers. To learn more about English pronunciation go to episodes: 29, 33, 37, 41, 45, 49, 53, 57, 61, 65, 69 and 72. The links are at teacherola.com/175. There are shownotes t this episode.
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Let’s see 8 plus reasons why English pronunciation is hard. Shall we? Let’s begin.
One. English pronunciation is hard because the letters we see very rarely indicate how they should be spelt. It’s very confusing, some examples are truly ridiculous. Take the word ‘queue’ as an example. It’s spelt QUEUE but pronounced//kjuː/ just like the first letter of this word. Like, why are there those extra vowels attached to the letter ‘q’? It’s a borrowed word and comes from French and that explains a lot.
Two. ‘Th’ sound. This single sound can put you through hell. Pronouncing words fast is even harder. The Polish language doesn’t know this sound and we need to learn to produce it from scratch.
Three. Another problematic sound is the /r/ sound. It differs a lot from the Polish /r/ sound. Another thing we need to absorb in order to be well understood.
Four. There are words which consist of consonant clusters, and they are very low on vowels. Like the word: ‘crisps’ or ‘strength’. It’s hard to say such words.
Five. There are words that look similar but aren’t necessarily pronounced in the same way. Cheeky monkeys! Consider words like through, thorough, though, rough, bough, and trough. They all look the same but are pronounced completely differently.
Six. Moreover, there are silent letters in English. They occur even at the beginning of the word. Words like: knife, knock, knowledge, gnome, and gnat.
Seven. English town names have ridiculous pronunciation patterns. Listen to these examples but please have a look at the transcript because it’s a joke only when you see the actual spelling. The contrast between spelling and pronunciation is Gloucester, Marylebone, Worcestershire.
Eight. There are different ways of pronouncing the -ed ending. Sometimes it’s the /t/ sound, sometimes it’s the /d/ sound but it might as well be another syllable /yd/. For instance: looked, called, wanted.
Honestly, we could continue and talk about stress. Word stress and sentence stress. We could go on about intonation, voiced and unvoiced ‘s’, about diphthongs. There are words which look the same but sound differently. Homographs for instance: ‘read’ and ‘read’ or ‘lead’ and ‘lead’ and there are words which don’t look similar but sound the same. Homophones, for example: ‘one’ and ‘won’, ‘flower’ and ‘flour’, ‘meet’ and ‘meat’. Let’s not forget the schwa sound! But hey, we gotta stop complaining, ok? Let’s focus on speaking and let’s go on to the practical part. Listen and repeat the sentences out loud:
How long were you in the queue?
I was thankful my coffee was in a thermos.
The rabbit will run with the turtle in the race.
The black cat was sliding across the ice.
The men were expert, thorough and careful.
I have a bruise on my knee.
Stir in water, vinegar, Tabasco sauce and Worcestershire sauce.
He needed time to adjust to the idea.
They laughed a great deal at this.
He blinked and rubbed his eyes.
There you go. Well done, keep going. Don’t get discouraged, pronunciation is hard but we gotta learn it in order to be understood and to understand better. I have just listed 8 reasons why we all hate English Pronunciation. Let’s recap them:
One. The letters we see very rarely indicate how they should be spelt.
Two. ‘Th’ sound.
Three. The /r/ sound
Four. Consonant clusters
Five: Words that look similar but aren’t necessarily pronounced similarly.
Six. Silent letters.
Seven. English town names.
Eight. Different ways of pronouncing the -ed ending
Here you have it! Now, go to your inbox and get the worksheet to test yourself. Translate the sentences into English. If you aren’t a member of TOPeople download the worksheet from teacherola.com/175. By doing that you’ll become a member and receive my weakly newsletter.
If you find this episode useful, tell your friends about my podcast. Thank you so much for doing so! Please rate this podcast wherever you listen. Thanks again! I’ll see you next Wednesday! Happy learning. Take care! Stay fearless and say it out loud! Bye!