-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.

Pronunciation clinic: dessert vs desert

What's the difference in pronunciation and meaning between dessert and desert? Lots of English students seem to have difficulty with them.

Watch this Sozo Video and find it out. Remember you can also use the online MacMillan Dictionary on this blog to read further examples and listen to other native speakers pronouncing these two words.

50 difficult words to pronounce

English Club has asked their Facebook fans, tweeters and chatters to share the English words they find most difficult to pronounce.

They have compiled two lists. By clicking on this link you will be directed to the first batch of words (words 1-25). Here you will be able to listen to Tara Benwell's Canadian accent. She will give you a definition of each word and tell you how the words are pronounced. Follow Tara's advice: Listen, repeat the word, repeat the example sentence.

1. thistle
2. crisps
3. should
4. would
5. clothes
6. order
7. murder
8. air
9. literature
10. language
11. onomatopoeia
12. deterioration
13. little
14. assailant
15. catastrophic
16. alter
17. exclamation
18. crocodile
19. unfortunate
20. six
21. development
22. decision
23. ambulance
24. law
25. low

Click on this link to go to words 26-50 and follow the same procedure as above.

26. gorgeous
27. thoroughly
28. daughter
29. challenge
30. enhance
31. variety
32. influence
33. effect
34. whistle
35. throughout
36. adjective
37. island
38. appliance
39. shrimp
40. refrigerator
41. scissors
42. cough
43. though
44. through
45. praise
46. free
47. trade
48. vocabulary
49. psychologist
50.genuine

You can also check the entry 100 most mispronounced words for Spanish speakers. No pronunciation is available here though, so you will have to rely on the great online pronunciation dictionary howjsay to get the pronunciation of these words right. Another excellent online pronunciation dictionary is forvo.

H/T to Speak English.

Work vs walk

This is a more than interesting video from Sozoexchange where the differences in pronunciation between work and walk are shown.

Telling the difference in pronunciation between the two words is a bone of contention for a lot of Spanish speakers, even at intermediate and advanced levels.

The video will help us to sort out a few problems, I hope it is for good.

The only downside of the video lesson is phonetics, as the phonetic symbols used do not correspond to the IPA phonetic symbols. This is the phonetic transcription for the words we should learn:

work / wɜːk /
walk / wɔːk /

100 most mispronounced words

Some years ago, in the 1990s, the extinct Practical English Magazine published this activity especially designed for Spanish speakers. A teacher, whose name I've been unable to track down, compiled the list of the 100 most mispronounced English words by Spanish speakers.

Have a go at pronouncing the words below. To check how accurate your pronunciation is, use Howjsay, the online pronunciation dictionary. You can also download a copy of the words in PDF format together with their phonemic transcription from here.

afternoon	although	answer	anybody	architecture	aren’t
Asia	Australia	being	biology	birthday	biscuits
bookcase	Brazil	building	busy	castle	comfortable
communication	component	cupboard	dangerous	daughter	depends
dining room	early	Egyptian	electrician	engineer	equipment
guarantee	guitar	hair	hair	key	killed
language	laugh	literature	manufacture	many	minute
month	mountain	museum	occasionally	once	opposites
oranges	parents	photographer	picture	police	politician
quiet	rarely	Russian	sentences	science	serious
should	since	sixth	skirt	sometimes	south
Thursday	Tuesday	understand	usually	vegetable	village
weren’t	woman	women	would

Wonder vs wander

We very often confuse the pronunciation of the verbs wonder and wander, despite the fact we might well know their meaning.

I wonder if you really know what you want [ask yourself, 'preguntarse'].
I often wander around the city [go from one place to another without a purpose, 'vagar'].

Wonder is pronounced / ʌ /, and has the same vowel sound as fun, sun, run, son.
A lot of English words with the letter o are also pronounced / ʌ /: one, done, money, won, love.

Wander, on the other hand, is pronounced / ɒ / and has the same vowel sound as want, what, dog, job.