Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • Hi. I'm Tim and this is my Pronunciation workshop.

  • Here I'm going to show you how English is really spoken. Come on, let's go inside.

  • Where were you born? Where do you come from? Here's what we heard when we asked some people in

  • London their names, and where they come from.

  • Now they all used the word from, didn't they?

  • But they didn't pronounce it /frɒm/. Listen again: how is it pronounced?

  • The word from is a preposition; it's usually

  • not that important in a sentence, so it's often unstressed. Now, at the end of the question,

  • "Where do you come from?" It's unstressed, but the pronunciation is still /frɒm/. However,

  • when it's unstressed, and it comes in the middle of a sentence, the /ɒ/ changes to schwa,

  • so /frɒm/ becomes /frɒm/. This is an example of a weak form, and here are some more examples.

  • Right, now you've heard the examples, and

  • now it's your turn. You know the drill by now: listen and repeat.

  • Well done. And remember, if you want to learn

  • more about pronunciation, then please visit our website, bbclearningenglish.com. And that

  • is about it from the pronunciation workshop for this week. I'll see you soon. Bye bye!

  • Now you know me, I’m a skilled craftsman and artisan, if you will. I like to work with my hands. So I’m looking forward to doing a bit more DIY this afternoon.

  • Actually, on second thoughts, I think I’ve learnt from my mistakes. Best put this down here.

Hi. I'm Tim and this is my Pronunciation workshop.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it