Pronounciation

Alphabet

There are also other sounds in English than those represented by the letters of alphabet, we write them in many ways, but here we will illustrate the main, rather regular use of them; there are always two examples demonstrating use of those sounds:

A note on English pronunciation

Majority of consonants are pronounced similarly as in other European languages, however the pronunciation of vowels makes English a language that may seem to many as if lacking rules of pronounciation in general. Irregularities in English prevail to that extent that many teachers believe the best advice is to learn pronounciation of every word separately. However we will try to give account of few basic rules that students can apply with a certain chance they guess the pronunciation of a new piece of vocabulary.

In the alphabet table above we gave account of more examples to show different pronunciation of one and the same letter to demonstrate the irregularity.

The little regularity in English pronunciation depends largely on the form of syllable. The main problem lies in english pronounciation of vowels. Pronunciation varies between a closed syllable, where the sound is short and often similar to other European languages, and an open syllable, where the sound is usually a dipthong, often very different from the original sound.

Let us see some examples,

• here are closed syllables (each vowel is surrounded by consonants: e.g. step-ping):

• here are open syllables (if we devide the word into syllables, the vowels are not surrounded, e.g. ro-pe):

However there are many cases where the rule fails, so we warn students against general application of this rule, it should be understood more as a support for situation when a student meets a new piece of vocabulary and there is no time to consult dictionary.

Another difference that English brings is the swallowing of sounds, syllables and even whole words in the course of speach as English tends to move stress in sentences and assimilate bordering consonants, and merge words together. In some cases this goes so far, that we can reccomend learning whole phrases as you here them in the diallogues rather then vocabulary.

Here follow two examples: