One of my students and I were discussing how learning English is difficult, especially when it comes to pronouncing it. There are several reasons for this. I will only "scratch the surface" of them. |
- English has rules, but there are so many exceptions to those rules. We have numerous irregular verbs, for example. Instead of being able to apply one rule, students are forced to memorize many endings for all of the irregular verbs.
- The same letter is not always pronounced the same way: Let’s take “o,” for example. The “o” is pronounced differently in “cod, bone, women, through.”
- The same sound can be represented by more than one letter or sequence of letters: Take the sound, “oo,” for example. The “oo” sound can be spelled with:
- A “u” as in cute
- An “oo” as in loop
- An “ou” as in through
- An “oe” as in shoe
- An “ew” as in crew
- A “ui” as in fruit
- Homonyms – words that sound the same, but are spelled differently and have different meanings. Examples include:
- There, their and they’re
- Sent and cent
- Affect and effect
- New and knew
- Dear and deer
- Homographs – words that are spelled the same, but have different meanings. Below are some examples.
- Bow - There is the verb, to bow to someone, but there is also the noun, bow, as in bow and arrow.
- Produce - There is the verb, to produce or make some something, but there is also the noun, produce, as in the fruits and vegetables you buy at the grocery store
- Insert - There is the verb, to insert or to put something into something else, but there is also the noun, insert, as in the advertising inserts (coupons) people receive in a Sunday paper.
- Refuse - There is the verb, to refuse or deny, but there is also the noun, refuse as in trash
I would just like to point out now that insert is the only pair of words that are pronounced the same. The verb, bow and the noun, bow are pronounced differently from each other, as are produce and produce and refuse and refuse. Is your head spinning yet?
- Silent letters: American English also contains a lot of silent letters, whereas in other language may have one or no silent letters. Some examples of English words with silent letters are plumb, descend, sandwich, assign, ache, and knew.
- But beyond these reasons, my student also noted that the American English language reflects its people who come from a variety of places, a point I also like to discuss in my workshops. American English borrows so many words from other language. We use:
- Kindergarten from German
- Aficionado from Spanish
- A la mode from French
- Autograph from Greek
- Sketch (to draw) from Dutch
- Pajamas from Hindi
- Giraffe from Farsi
These are just a few reasons that learning to improve your accent can be very difficult to attempt to do on your own. An instructor can often times teach you rules for learning how to say specific categories of words.