The Sounds of English

http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/features/pronunciation

Tricky words

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Read, listen and dramatize

FAMILY STRIFE

HOMAGE TO CERVANTES, A SPANISH UNIVERSAL GENIUS ON HIS 400th ANNIVERSARY

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

DON QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA

At a certain village in La Mancha, of which I cannot remember the name, there lived not long ago one of those old-fashioned gentlemen who are never without a lance upon a rack, an old target, a lean horse, and a greyhound.

This gentleman, Don Quixote, by sleeping little and reading much lost his reason. He thought it convenient  and necessary, to turn knight- errant and roam through the whole world armed cap-a-pee, and mounted on his steed in quest of adventures.

 He needed a squire,  earnestly solicited one of his neighbors, Sancho Pança,  poor in purse and poor in brains to accompany him. He convinced him with many fair promises, at last the poor silly clown decided to go with him.

As for Sancho Pança , he rode on his ass like a patriarch, with his canvas knapsack, or wallet, and his leathern bottle, with the desire to see himself governor of the promised island.

Excerpts from DON QUIXOTE

SHAKESPEARE’S ANNIVERSARY HOMAGE

SONNET

Shall I compare thee (you) to a Summer’s day?

You are more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May

And summer’s lease has all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometimes declines,

By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed;

But your eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair you owest (ow);

Nor shall Death brag you wandere’st (wander) in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest (grow);

So long as men can breethe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

William Shakespeare

Song

Diphthong [ ei ]

Can be represented by the following graphemes:

a         plate

ea       break

ei        eight

ey       they   

ai        train

ay       tray

ao       gaol

au       gauge

e         beret   

DISCRIMINATE: CORRECTION

New joke!

I break up the school (school breaks up) in July.

Select the words that have the same pattern of vowel sounds

I remind you that [z] is the sound of a bumblebee.

OFTEN MISPRONOUNCED - CORRECTION

PHONETICS ¿WHY?

Because it is more permanent than sound. People living in English speaking countries mispronounce common words because they are fossilized errors. Phonetics allows them time and space required to make them aware.

OFTEN MISPRONOUNCED:

WRITE IN PHONETICS

buy [        ], aunt [          ], couple [          ], husband [            ]

business [          ], blood [         ], glove [         ], flood [         ]

before      [        ], onion [           ], double [           ], heart [         ]

donkey [          ], once [           ], company [               ], other [         ]

DISCRIMINATE

OFTEN MISPRONOUNCED

WRITE IN PHONETICS

buy [        ], aunt [          ], couple [          ], husband [            ]

business [          ], blood [         ], glove [         ], flood [         ]

before      [        ], onion [           ], double [           ], heart [         ]

donkey [          ], once [           ], company [               ], other [         ]

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This blog is original as it is centered in:

sound, meaning and communication

rather than on spelling, as it is conventionally done, in order

to remark the relevance of accurate pronunciation to meaning.

Jokes contribute graphically to that aim.

Diphtong au

Represented in spelling by:

1)    ou   house, mouse, mouth, out, aloud, bough, mountain, shout.

2)    ow   cow, brown, down, now, gown, cow, town, bow, town. row.

The problem is that the graphemes ou and ow have other pronunciations.

As there is not a ready and fast rule we have written tiny stories, which plot relates words with the same sound but different spellings:

Jolly Stories for Learning, 

Audio recorded by English actors, of which we provide some sample stories in this blog. 

They can be bought at a low price on amazon.com: Jolly Stories (paperback), Jolly Stories (kindle) & Audio CD.

Listen & Read

NIGEL'S  KITE

 Nigel

has a kite

of a new kind,

it flies

very high

in the sky

and lights up

at night.

The mice

like

this kite

and come out at nine

to watch the kite

fly.

Last night,

the kite

flew to the right

It was soon out of sight.

-It isn't a good site

 to fly

 a kite.

 

Said the mice.

The tiny

lice

moved to another site

to watch the kite

fly.

-We want a kite

 of our own size

Decided the lice

Now the lice

are on strike;

they claim a kite

of their own size.

Joke

- My wife is (-an) eel (ill) in bed.

Solution!

From phonetics to spelling

Dare you? SOLUTION

A beautiful  but dreadful language indeed!!!!.

Dare you?

Write the pronunciation in phonetics of the following words

CORK  [         ]  rimes with WALK  [          ] and BROAD [           ],

But WORK  [             ] rimes with WORM  [          ] and  WORLD [          ].

COME [          ] rimes with TONGUE [       ] , RUNG [     ] and THUMB [          ].

THROUGH [             ] rimes with DO [        ] but ROUGH [         ] with LAUGH [          ].

A beautiful  but dreadful language indeed!!!!.