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Hi. Welcome again to www.engvid.com. I'm Adam. Today's lesson is about pronunciation and
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phonetics. Now, I said there's going to be a secret on how to improve your pronunciation
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in English - here's the secret. Are you ready? There is no secret. It takes hard work, it
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takes practice, it takes perseverance. You have to do things, you have to practice things,
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you have to use your dictionary. You always have to keep working at it, that's the secret.
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But I'll give you a little bit of a tip on how to make this a little bit easier for yourself.
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Okay?
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What we have here is a list of words, each one looks very similar, but it has a different phonetic sound.
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Now, "phonetics" means the sound of the syllables in the word. "Syllables"...
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I'll just write that word here. A "syllable" is the sound part of a word. For example:
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the word "cat" has one syllable. The word "beautiful", "beau-ti-ful" - three syllables. Okay?
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So we're going to learn how to look at syllables, how to find the sound for each
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syllable in a word to know how to pronounce the full word.
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So we're going to start with these words because, again, these are very common words.
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These are words that all sound very similar, plus I had a request on www.engvid.com
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in the comment section on how to pronounce these.
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Let me say all these words first. "Look", "lock", "luck", "lack", "lake", "like", "lick",
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"leek", "Luke", "bloke", and "let". Now, "bloke" and "let" are obviously different words,
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but there's no such word as "loke" and there's no such word as "lek", so I had to improvise.
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But we have a bunch of other ones. Now, for some of you, a lot of these words sounded
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exactly the same I'm guessing. Right? They're not. They're very different.
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So "lock" and "luck" have completely different meanings. They have no relationship to each
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other except that they share one, two, three; one, two, three similar letters.
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"Aw", "ah", very similar vowel sound as well.
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So, what you notice above each of these words is the phonetic symbol.
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Now, there are different phonetic lists. Everybody has their own list. Find one that you like.
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I took these symbols from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, that's the American dictionary.
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If you want to find it online: www.m-w.com. It's a good dictionary
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and that's where I got these symbols from. Once you start studying phonetics, stick to one list. Okay?
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If you want to study British English, use a British dictionary; American English, use an American dictionary.
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Most of the words are going to be the same or similar; some of them will be completely different.
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So choose your dictionary, stick to it, practice.
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Now, if you look at these words in the dictionary on Merriam-Webster, you will find the phonetic spelling.
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The "phonetic spelling" means they spell the word according to its sound. So
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this "u" with a dot-I hope you can see that dot-"look", "uh". "book", "took", "bull".
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It doesn't matter what the letters on either side are,
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the vowel sound is going to be the same with this symbol.
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With "lock", you have "a" with two dots on top of it. "Lock", "rock", "sock", "font".
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If you're not sure what a font is, if you have Microsoft Word or whatever typing tool you use,
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there are different fonts; Times New Roman, Agency, and Calibri,
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or whatever they're called. These are font, but the sound is "aw".
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"Luck", "ah", sort of like an upside down, an inverted "e". "Luck", "truck", "duck",
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"brother".
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"Lack", just a regular "a", "sack", "pack", "apple".
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"Lake", "a" with a line across it makes it a bit longer, it's called a diphthong because
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it's "ae", it's like almost two vowel sounds in one. "Shake", "bake", "trade".
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"Like", "i" with a long symbol on top of it, "i". It's also a diphthong. "Bike", "spike",
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"flight". All the same vowel sound.
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"i", regular "i" with nothing on top. "Lick", "ih", "stick", "pick", "little". Okay?
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"e", "e" with a long line on top. "Peek", "seek", "freedom".
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"Luke", "Luke" is a man's name, it's also from the Bible. "u" with two dots, it looks
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like a bit of a happy face with a little dimple. "Fluke", "hookah". Now, before I continue
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- what is a "hookah"? How many of you have read Alice in Wonderland? You know when Alice
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was walking through the forest and she sees this caterpillar, this big worm smoking a hookah?
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Still not sure? Hold on. What do I have here? A hookah. I'm missing the little
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smoking part of it, but this is a hookah. It's pronounced: "hoo-kah". Okay. If you ever tried them,
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they're actually quite tasty, but we won't get into that.
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"School", "oo". "Bloke", now, I had to find a word that had "ok" in it. "Bloke" is a British slang,
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it means guy, man - whatever. "That bloke over there is a very well-dressed."
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I don't know why I used that example. "Spoke", "joke", "lower". "o", also a diphthong.
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"o",long line.
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And "let", regular "e", "eh", "jet", "bet", "arrest".
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Now, why am I showing you these things? Like why am I comparing different words? (A): because
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once you understand the phonetic symbol of a word, any word that you don't know how to
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pronounce - just open the dictionary, find the symbol. Remember what other word you do
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know that has this symbol. All of you know this word "pack", I assume. All of you know
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the word "jet". You see this word, "arrest", you think: "Okay, not really sure what it
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is. I'm not sure how to pronounce it.", "Ah" like "uck", "luck". "Arrest", "e", "eh", "arrest".
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You have one, two syllables. Find each syllable's phonetic symbol, learn how to pronounce it.
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Another good thing about the Merriam-Webster's site, online site, you can press a button
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and it'll say the word; you can hear it as well.
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Now, what do you do with this? So, let's look at these words. Now, remember English is the
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hardest language to understand in terms of pronunciation because spellings don't mean
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anything. This "ea" and this "ea" don't sound the same. If you look at the dictionary, you
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will find out that this word is pronounced: "feather". This "ea" sounds like this "e",
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"eh", "fea", "feather". This "ea" sounds like "e", "feature" like-where are we?-"leek".
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"Leek", by the way, is like the thick, long, green onion. It's very delicious as well when
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you cook it nicely. "Leek", "e", "fea", "feature", "feature".
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Now, this, you're thinking: "Fasco", "fiasco", no, it's: "fiasco". Again, the "e", "fi-as-co".
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Three syllables, "fi-as-co". What is a "fiasco"? It's a big mess of a situation. The government tried to implement a new policy
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and it was a big fiasco; it was a disaster, nobody bought into it. Okay?
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I'll give you another example. How do you pronounce this word? I'll give you a chance.
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Separate it into the two syllables. This one sounds like this one. This one sounds like
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this one. So, "bull-et", "bullet", bullet. Right? Okay.
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Again, this is just an example.
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Keep yourself a list. Get yourself a notebook, write down these words. Start making a collection
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of sounds. These are just some of the sounds in English; there are others. Make yourself
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a list of sounds. When you learn a new word, put that word into that sound category, and
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that's how you start building your pronunciation skills. Believe me, at the beginning, it will
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be very difficult. The more you do it, the easier it will become, the more like a native
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speaker you will sound. Okay?
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I do have a little bit of a tricky quiz on www.engvid.com. It's about rhyming. Oh, by
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the way, all I'm doing here is rhyming; making words sound similar. A good way to practice
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as well is go to... Just Google "rhyming dictionary" and you can look for words that sound similar.
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Again, but they're usually one or two syllables so not as useful. Go to www.engvid.com, try
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the quiz. And, of course, there's a comment section - ask me any questions.
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And I'll see you again soon.