An Introduction to English phonetics

Introduction:

The pronunciation, that is to say, the phonetics of a language has always been considered

a second-class issue when learning English. We have to take into account that learning to pronounce

a word in English does not have immediate results, it requires constant practice before we are able to

eproduce a particular sound. That is the reason why students and teachers usually skip pronunciation

since it requires too much time, a lot of effort and results are hard to measure, especially in short

periods of time. If we really want to speak English, we must make the effort to learn phonetics since

that is where the main difficult lies. The vocalic system of English consists of five vowels which

correspond with twelve different sounds.

English is Not a phonetic language so they do not often say a word the same way is spelled; with

phonetic languages, there is a relationship between the spelling and the sound.

Now you know a little bit of how English phonetics work, it is time to practice!

How to pronounce the letter ‘A’ in English

1.|ə|: about, actually, abroad.

2.|æ|: exact, actually, apple, black.

3.|ɛɪ|: cable, hate, name.

4.|ɛ|: share, care.

5.|ɒ|: yacht, was.

6.|ɪ|: private, vintage.

7.|ɔ:|: football, small, all, call

8.|ɑ:|: father, barn, bath, car, far.

Exercises:

a) Choose whether the letter ‘A’ is pronounced  |ə| or |æ|:

Zebra, dad, apple, abbreviation, bat, cat, agree, hat, candy, have

     b)  Choose whether the letter ‘A’ is pronounced |ɛɪ| or |ɛ|:

Name, many, any, paper, make.

    c) Can you spot the different pronunciation the letter ‘A’ has in the word marmalade?

    d) Find three words which contain the letter ‘A’ pronounced as |ɒ|:

NOTE: solutions to the exercises as well as some links to youtube videos will be uploaded next week.