How to pronounce names in English

Throughout the years we have posted on the online pronunciation dictionaries below, but we have decided to bring them to your attention once again to remind you of these useful tools, which might help you get around the pronunciation of difficult English or foreign names.

What's the correct pronunciation of these names: Rachel Weisz, Rebecca Romijn, Hermione, Granger, Joe Pesci?

The Name Engine provides the correct name pronunciations of athletes, entertainers, politicians, newsmakers, and more. Even well-known names are often pronounced in different ways, leaving you to wonder what the correct pronunciation is. You'll find the right answer here. Better yet, you'll actually hear the right answer.

Another site that can help us get around the problem of pronouncing difficult names is Pronounce it right, run by Patrizia Serra and Laura Mazzoni.

Patrizia and Laura have organised the names by categories and nationalities. In addition, they include categories like 'the newest 100 pronunciations' and even a pronunciation test.

Drop by Pronounce it right and explore it.

Also, do not overlook two great online pronunciation dictionaries, where you might also find how to pronounce a lot of names:

A tongue-twisting poem

Back in 1922 Dutch poet, traveller and teacher Gerard Nolst Trenité wrote a poem, The Chaos, to test a person’s English pronunciation.

For Gerard Nolst Trenit, only a true Englishman can pronounce all of the words in the poem, which contains around 800 bizarre irregularities in the English language.

Self-study activity:
Try to read the poem first without listening to the recording. Then listen to the recorded version to check how good your English pronunciation is. Finally, shadow-read the poem, that is, read the poem while listening to it at the same time.



Dearest creature in creation,

Study English pronunciation.

I will teach you in my verse

Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.

I will keep you, Suzy, busy,

Make your head with heat grow dizzy.

Tear in eye, your dress will tear.

So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Pray, console your loving poet,

Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,

Dies and diet, lord and word,

Sword and sward, retain and Britain.

(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)

Now I surely will not plague you

With such words as plaque and ague.

But be careful how you speak:

Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;

Cloven, oven, how and low,

Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,

Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,

Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,

Exiles, similes, and reviles;

Scholar, vicar, and cigar,

Solar, mica, war and far;

One, anemone, Balmoral,

Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;

Gertrude, German, wind and mind,

Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,

Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.

Blood and flood are not like food,

Nor is mould like should and would.

Viscous, viscount, load and broad,

Toward, to forward, to reward.

And your pronunciation’s OK

When you correctly say croquet,

Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,

Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour

And enamour rhyme with hammer.

River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,

Doll and roll and some and home.

Stranger does not rhyme with anger,

Neither does devour with clangour.

Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,

Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,

Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,

And then singer, ginger, linger,

Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,

Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rime with very,

Nor does fury sound like bury.

Dost, lost, post; and doth, cloth, loth,

Though the difference seems little,

We say actual, but victual.
Compare alien with Italian,

Dandelion and battalion.

Sally with ally, yea, ye,

Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.

Say aver, but ever, fever,

Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.

Crevice and device and eerie.

Won’t it make you lose your wits,

Writing groats and saying grits?

Islington and Isle of Wight,

Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough

Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?

Hiccough has the sound of cup.

My advice is to give up!!!

BBC Learning English: Towards Advanced

In ealry July BBC Learning English started the latest of their online courses for English students, Towards Advanced.

As the name of the course suggests, Towards Advanced is aimed at students who want to climb up the ladder from an upper-intermediate level to C1.

As the other BBC Learning English courses (Lower-intermediate, Intermediate and Upper-intermediate), Towards Advanced consists of 30 units. As a unit goes online on a weekly basis, the course will fully be available at the beginning of 2017.

Each unit is divided into five sections: English Masterclass (grammar), News Review (where an outstanding news story is thoroughly dealt with), Lingohack (headlines of the week's main stories), Vocabulary (idiomatic expressions) and Tim's Pronunciation Workshop.

youglish -an online pronunciation dictionary

One of the great advantages of the internet for the language learner is the possibility of using online dictionaries to check the pronunciation of a word as well as its meaning and examples in sententences of how it is used.

The Cambridge Dictionaries Online, the Macmillan Dictionary,  the Oxford Dictionaries and many others offer this feature.

In addition, students have at their disposal some online pronunciation dictionaries like Forvo or Howjday, which come in handy when we want to find out how names are pronounced.

A few weeks ago Jeffrey Hill posted on youglish on The English Blog. youglish uses YouTube videos to illustrate how words are pronounced. The videos come complete with subtitles and  youglish  sports a repeat button so that we don't have to rewind the video to hear the word again. We can even specify whether we want the British, American or Australian English pronunciation.

Pronunciation poem: The problems of spelling and pronunciation

Here's the famous poem by T.S.Watt (1954) which originally appeared in The Guardian and that has been used countless times in the English class.

The poem is read by Joanne Rudling, from How to spell.

The words highlighted in bold in the poem are those which I think an Intermediate 2 student should know. The rest of the words the poem illustrates would fall into the advanced level.



I take it you already know
 Of tough and cough and dough?
 But what about, hiccough, thorough and through?

 Beware of heard, a dreadful word
 That looks like beard and sounds like bird,

 And dead: it's said like bed, not bead
 For goodness sake don't call it 'deed'!

Watch out for meat and great and threat...
 They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

(meat-suite, great-straight, threat-debt.)

 There isn't a moth in mother,
 Nor both in bother, or broth in brother,

 And here is not in there
 But ear is in dear and fear
 But not in bear and pear;

 And then there's dose and rose
 But lose, goose and choose,

 And cork and work and card and ward,
 And font and front and word and sword,

 And do and go and thwart and cart
 Come, come, I've hardly made a start!

 A dreadful language? Man alive!
 I'd learned to speak it when I was five! 

 But will I write it before I die?
 I hope so, I say with a sigh!

Pronunciation of -ED by Woodward English

A few weeks ago Woodward English published this video in which they look at the 3 different ways of pronouncing the ending -ED at the end of regular verbs in English.



They go into detail about the rules necessary to know the correction pronunciation of any -ED ending: These rules are  for regular verbs in the past tense, for regular past participles and for adjectives that end in ED.

There is a special section about voiced and voiceless (or unvoiced) sounds in English.

You will also find the Woodward -ED Pronunciation chart where you will hear how each each word is said.

You can find more details about the correct pronunciation of ED at the end of words in English here.
Pronunciation of ED in English Game (20 questions).
Pronunciation of ED in English Game 2 (50 questions).

Train your accent

Train your accent is a site where Randall Davis, the person behind Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab, presents a collection of activities for students to develop their pronunciation and improve their English accent while learning daily expressions.

Train Your Accent provides learners with samples of relaxed, North American English that reflect everyday activities and helps them sound more natural. Furthermore, understanding reduced speech will help English learners understand others better.

The lessons are on the short side and include a full transcript, a second transcript showing the changes that take place in fast speech and some activities for students to do.

There are around 15 lesson on the site around these topics:
Apartment Rentals       
Breakfast       
Cell Phones   
Clothing       
Dental Care       
Driver's Education   
Exercise       
Family Relationships       
Lunch   
Job Hunting       
Movie Rental       
Online Classes   
Online shopping       
Restaurants       
Study Abroad
Train tickets

Playphrase.me

Playphrase.me is an innovative platform that allows you to practise pronunciation through short excerpts of movie and TV series.

You just have to write in the search box the word or phrase the pronunciation of which you want to practise and Playphrase.me will produce a number of short video clips that feature the item.

Playphrase.me allows you to pause the sequence of video clips so that you can repeat the phrase you hear.

It is also suitable for English learners of all levels because you can type whatever word or phrase you can think of, as in the example below, hotel, suitable for beginners.

H/T to MCargobe's Blog-Room

Macmillan pronunciation videos with Adrian Underhill

It's been a while since we last published a pronunciation-related post, so I guess a lot of blog readers will be glad to know about the new series of videos Macmillan has produced under the supervision of Adrian Underhill as part of their Life Skills series.

While the videos are primarily aimed at English teachers, I think learners of all levels can benefit from Adrian's pedagogical explanations about the phonemic chart and about how to distinguish and pronounce all the English sounds.

Five videos have been published in the series so far, and I think a few more are to come. They are regularly posted in the Macmillan Life Skills site here. or in their YouTube account here.

First video: Introduction



Second video: The chart, part 1



Third video: The chart, part 2



Do not forget that all English teachers and learners have at their disposal Adrian Underhill's interactive phonemic chart, where we just have to click on a phonetic symbol to hear it spoken.

Madrid Teacher: Accent attack

In this week's Madrid Teacher series, two teachers discuss the variety of English accents. Their conversation gives us an opportunity to go over some of the features of spoken English.

First of all, watch the video through to get the general ideal of the conversation.

Now watch the video again, and pay attention to these characteristics of spoken English:

Use of so as a connector.
Showing agreement with the speaker: Definitely; Absolutely; Of course
Showing the speaker that you are paying attention: Ok; Y’all, yeah.
Use of actually to introduce a piece of surprising information
Fillers to gain thinking time: erm
Using vague language: kind of, sort of
False starts: Do you... can you...
Use of say with the meaning of 'for example'.
Use of really for emphasis.
Use of like as a linking word.



So, recently I’ve been watching this series called Friday Night Lights...
I’ve never seen it...
No? It’s about a high school football team, but it’s not about football, it’s about everyday life around football. But it’s based in Texas. And before watching the series, I didn’t use to think that I liked the Texas, Texan accent, but now I like it. It’s catchy, you can see that if you lived there you’d be able to catch that accent.
Definitely.
Actually, when I was younger, 100 years ago, erm, we lived, when I was a child, we lived along the Texas border…
OK.
…and before that, for example, I always used to think it was horrible hearing people say “y’all”...
Y’all, yeah.
But I realised that I picked up on that Texan, sort of, southern “y’all”.
Twang.
Absolutely. And so it was actually really hard to get rid of it.
Yeah.
And it just kind of, it just sort of, grabs you and then you have that accent. And then later it can sort of go away.
They say “y’all” in other parts of the United States, don’t they?
Yeah, they do. Also, for example, in Louisiana…
Yeah, in the south.
Yeah, it’s more the southern accent.
Yeah, the southern. So, what else do you think about accents? Do you, can you, for example, identify the difference, say, in different places in England, the north, south, Wales, Scotland…
Yeah, I’d say so.
Can you?
Er, yeah. Because I know people from all over the world, and so when I hear an accent I think about those people, so I associate the sound. So that’s how it works, how I do it, how I can tell the difference between the north of England and the south, or London.
Because I think a lot of times there are different accents. But if, for example, someone really doesn’t know someone from the United States, they have an idea that all American accents are the same…
Of course, of course, no, they’re very different.
… and that all British accents are the same, even though…
Well, even as an American, when you hear a South African accent or an Australian accent, Irish, Scottish, all those different… It’s English, but it’s a different accent. Can you place that? Can you place the location?
That’s interesting. Some, yes. But others… So, for example, what about someone... Because I think we all know someone who has lived in several places. And maybe they have, like, a little bit of an American accent, and a Scottish accent.
A mix. Keep it interesting.

Rachel's English

Let me tell you about Rachel's English, one of the sites for learning English I have bumped into recently which really stands out.

Rachel's English is mainly about pronunciation, American English pronunciation, although we will also manage to develop our listening skills and vocabulary if we watch Rachel's videos regularly.

This is what Rachel says about herself and her site:

"Rachel has been working on Rachel's English for over 5 years.  Having taught ESL off and on since 1999, she became interested in developing a pronunciation-focused resource while living in Germany under the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship program in 2008.

Rachel's initial idea in developing Rachel's English was to make the kind of resource for self-study that she wished she could find for her own foreign language study.  As a classical singer, Rachel has spent much time immersed in singing in German, French, Italian, and Spanish.  She studied with highly acclaimed vocal teachers and coaches and brings a body of detailed knowledge connected to the voice, placement, and the musical nature of speech to her work as a pronunciation coach.

Rachel lives in New York City.  She was born and raised in Florida, went to college in Indiana where she studied Applied Math, Computer Science, and Music, and graduate school for Opera Performance in Boston. She loves being connected to people throughout the world through Rachel's English."

Pronounce it right

I recently discovered Pronounce it right, a different online pronunciation dictionary. This is how Patrizia Serra and Laura Mazzoni, the people behind Pronounce it right, describe it:

"Can you correctly pronounce celebrity names such as Aishwarya Rai, Keira Knightley or Agnès Jaoui, or Roberto Benigni? Now try with the French President Nicolas Sarkozy or the Iranian Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Pronounce it right, establishes order in the huge phonetic mess of global communications. Common people as well as media professionals often take a guess in pronouncing foreign names or overseas words used in everyday life.

As a result, all these mispronounced names become "official" thanks to "reputable" radio and television announcers. Now, you can hear the correct articulation of any foreign name with a simple click. Why live with a bruschetta awfully pronounced or a misspelled Zbigniew Brzeziński when it’s so easy to stop making a fool of yourself?"

Patrizia and Laura have organised the names by categories and nationalities. In addition, they include categories like 'the newest 100 pronunciations' and even a pronunciation test.

Drop by Pronounce it right and explore it.

An ode to can

We dealt with the problems in distinguishing between the pronunciation of can and can't in a post two years ago, can versus can't. I would recommend you to read all the information we published there before going on with this entry.

Some time ago I came across this motivational video by Tony Colette through David Mearns blog. The emphasis of the video is obviously the great effect a letter may have on our outlook on life. It's not accidental that the type of poem chosen to express this idea is an ode, as odes are lyric poems of some length, usually of a serious or meditative nature and having an elevated style.

For us, English learners, the added value of the poem is getting to grips with discriminating between can and can't, which is no mean feat.

Remember to read the entry can versus can't I told you about before, and pay attention to the stress Colette places on can't, as opposed to can, which is unstressed.



There's a four lettered word
As offensive as any
It holds back the few
Puts a stop to the many.
You can't climb that mountain
You can't cross the sea
You can't become anything you want to be.
He can't hit a century
They can't find a cure.
She can't think about leaving
or searching for more.
Because can't is a word with a habit of stopping
The ebb and flow of ideas
It keeps dropping itself where we know
in our hearts it's not needed
And saying "don't go"
when we could have succeeded.

But those four little letters
That end with a T
They can change in an instant
When shortened to three.
We can take off the T
We can do it today
We can move forward not back
We can find our own way.
We can build we can run
We can follow the sun
We can push we can pull
We can say I'm someone
Who refuses to believe
That life can't be better
With the removal of one
Insignificant letter.

Back to solitude

Back to solitude is a short film by Joschka Laukeninks. It is the story of a relationship backwards.

The idea seems really original to me, the voice-over is appealing and I think the acting and the photography are also excellent, though I'm no expert.

I have tried to find the film without subtitles but I have been unable to, so if you wish to practise your listening skills you will have to scroll down the screen a little bit until the subtitles are covered.

I think Básico 2 students can give the film a try.

Self-study activity:
We can make the most of having the subtitles on the screen to practise our English pronunciation by shadow reading.

After listening to the story and being familiar with it, play the film again and read the subtitles at the same pace as the narrator. Try to imitate the rhythm, the intonation and, of course, the pronunciation of the individual worlds.


'Back to Solitude' (2011) from Joschka Laukeninks on Vimeo.

Adding -es to the end of verbs and plurals

A couple of months ago Joanne Rudling published a blogpost on her Spellingblog to remind us of the rule to add -es to nouns to make plurals and to form the third person singular of the present simple tense.

This spelling rule entails a pronunciation rule, as the words/verbs that take -es add an extra syllable when being pronounced.

Drop by Joanne's blog to read everything she says about this point and to do a practical activity which involves listening and writing.

Remember you can find some other entries on the same pronunciation problem by clicking on the tag Plurals on this blog.

Sephonics, the perfect tool to learn phonetics

Improving pronunciation is a priority among English language students. One of the tools teachers use to make students improve their pronunciation is phonetics.

In general, English students do not like phonetics, as they view it as something theoretical, difficult to grasp, and with little relevance over their grasp of oral performance.

The advent of online dictionaries, many of which offer the actual pronunciation of the word, has made the study of phonetics less relevant these days. Check this entry on this blog to get to know the best two online pronunciation dictionaries, Howjsay and Forvo.

However, the study of phonetics should still occupy a head of the table position in the English class because it is an invaluable tool to make students independent learners, not to mention the extra benefits of speaking practice and vocabulary learning they gain when studying phonetics.

Sephonics is freeware developed by Swedish Marianne Wartoft. This software will allow us to get familiar with the English alphabet, do tons of practice in matching sound with phonetic symbol, do spelling activities, listen to a word and identify its phonetic transcription, get familiar with reading the phonetic script and transcribe words into their phonetic script.

All in all Sephonics is software that can be of interest for students with a priority in improving their pronunciation or for teachers who want to work with their students in the computer laboratory in a systematic way. You can download Sephonics from here.

English vowels and diphthongs

This is a beautiful video DDeubel has published in EFL Classroom. It gives us a great opportunity to revise the English vowels and diphthongs.

Suggested activity:
1) Watch the video and enjoy it. It has got a great visual power.
2) Try to identify the biggest number of words the voiceover says.
3) Watch the video again and read the words below, paying attention to their pronunciation and the vowel sounds.


Find more videos like this on EFL CLASSROOM 2.0


Vowels
/ i: / me – tree – three – people – v
/ i / ship – ticket – this – king – shilling
/ e / bed – pen – yes – well
/ æ / Paris – can – Spanish
/ ɑ: /past – dark – palm – car – hard
/ ɒ / knot – wash – song – from – rock – coffee
/ ɔ: / all – small – ball – morning
/ ʊ / full – look – good – foot – book
/ u: / who – move – noon – blue – two
/ ʌ / up – cup – sun – sum
/ ɜ: / her – Thursday – burn – work
/ ə / under – farther – a dress – servant – Saturday

Dipthongs
/ ei / say – baby – train – plate – table – waiter
/ əʊ / no – smoke – motor – motel
/ aɪ /  ice – eye – side
/ aʊ / flower – cloud – hour – now
/ ɔɪ / boy – noise – boil – voice
/ iə / dear – clear – beer – ear
/ eə / chair – hair – care
(?) four – door - floor

Speak and spell

Lower level students (Básico 1 and Básico 2) can greatly benefit from The British Council's new  Speak and Spell slot, where you can learn how to speak and spell English words, or improve your English pronunciation through songs, stories and games and discover spelling rules and practise your English spelling.

There are several sections in Speak and Spell.

In Sounds, listen, watch, sing and dance with Sam and Pam. Discover English phonemes with fun and interactive action songs. All of the songs are based on the UK phonics programme Letters and Sounds. Have fun while you learn to read and speak in English.

In Speak, learn how to speak English. Listen and watch adventure stories and try to hear all the English phonemes.

In Spell, learn how to spell English words. Listen and watch the adventure stories and learn how to spell. Each story has a new spelling rule so try and learn all the rules to become a good speller.

In Tricky Words, play games to practise spelling English words and print weekly spelling tests too. See how many you get right then try again! There is a special comments corner too. You can write comments and tell someone if you spot a spelling mistake in their comment!

Some of the interactive activities in Speak and Spell may require that you register with the British Council, but it is a quick process that is worth all the while.

How do you pronounce 2012?

"How do you say 2012? It was still quite common to hear 'two thousand and eleven' during the past year, but it is my guess that you won't hear 'two thousand and twelve' very much this year. Instead, most people will say 'twenty twelve' - in the UK, anyway."

This is the beginning of the 1st January post by The Virtual Linguist. Click on the link or on the picture below to read his prediction about the way 2012 will be pronounced by most native English speakers.

And since we are dealing with numbers, you can read Jane Straus's Rules for Writing Numbers and do the accompanying quiz.

-tion, -ssion, -cian

Joanne Rudling is adamant that we improve our grasp of English pronunciation and spelling. In a November post in her The Spelling Blog she drew our attention to the way words ending in -tion, -ssion, -cian are pronounced.

She does a short 'test before you teach' activity with these words:

action, accommodation, admission, permission, electrician, politician, station

to conclude that the last syllable in all the words sounds the same, / ʃən /.

Then she moves on to gives a few examples of the most common words in English with these suffixes, to end up with a short test. All her explanations come together with an audio recording.

I hope you enjoy it.