The Essential
English Pronunciation
Guide
By
Grow Your English
Hello, and welcome!
Clear, confident English requires clear, confident
pronunciation.
In this guide, I’ll share my essential pronunciation
knowledge and techniques, refined over several years
as a university lecturer of phonology (the science of
pronunciation).
And if you want to transform your pronunciation forever,
join my 6-Week Pronunciation Transformation Course at:
Jamie Francis
Grow Your English
growyourenglish.com London, UK
Here’s to your clear and confident English!
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What’s in
this guide?
0. How To Listen To The Audio
1. Why Is Pronunciation So Difficult?
2. Strange Symbols
3. The Essential Sound
4. Two Confusing Pairs
5. English Is Stressed, Not Stressful
6. Three Surprising Rules
7. How To Transform Forever
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How to listen
to the audio?
Whenever you see blue text in this guide,
you can listen to audio. You can either:
1. Click to hear the audio directly, or
2. Use one of the links below to download
the audio files, then play the relevant file
number (e.g. 1.1, 1.2).
Google Drive link
Dropbox link
Happy listening!
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1.
Why is English
pronunciation
so difficult,
anyway?
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Reason #1
English is made up of 44 sounds —
20 vowel sounds and 24 consonant
sounds.
One reason why English pronunciation
feels so difficult to master, is that
many of these sounds simply don’t
exist in your native language.
Instead of making the sounds of English
accurately, your mouth muscles are
probably making the closest sounds
from your native language instead. In order to transform your
pronunciation, retraining your
mouth muscles is essential!
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Reason #2
The second reason is because English spelling… is, well, chaotic.
Listen to these 5 ‘ie’ words:
achieve /iː/ - friend /e/ Now let’s swap the letters...
sieve /ɪ/ - piercing /ɪə/ - tie /aɪ/
1.1
Listen to these 5 ‘ei’ words:
Did you hear that? 5 different
ways of pronouncing ‘ie’. receive /iː/ - their /eə/
reign /eɪ/ - foreign /ə/ - heist /aɪ/
1.2
So, there are 5 ways to pronounce
‘ei’ as well…
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See what I mean?
It’s absolutely chaotic.
Unfortunately, very often in English,
the spelling of a word doesn’t tell us
how it should be pronounced, so it's
difficult to feel confident that we're
pronouncing words correctly.
That’s why in this guide, and in my
pronunciation course, we think of English
words in terms of their sounds, not their
alphabet letters.
8
2. And
what are
those
strange
symbols,
Jamie?
9
/ʒ/
IPA
/ʌ/
/t/
IPA usually refers to India Pale Ale
/æ/
— a strong beer made with many
hop flowers.
But in the world of pronunciation,
it refers to the
International Phonetic Alphabet —
a group of symbols that represent
/ʃ/
the sounds in languages.
10
Each of the 44 sounds of English has
a unique IPA symbol, written between For example:
2 slashes / /.
/ʃ/ /iː/ /t/
Thankfully, these symbols allow us to
focus on the pronunciation of words 2
rather than their spelling, making it
so much easier to master English These 3 IPA symbols represent
pronunciation. the pronunciation of ‘sheet’.
( (
However, I'm convinced that an IPA
beer improves my pronunciation when
speaking in other languages too!
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3.
The
ESSENTIAL
Sound
that you might
not know about
12
Let’s talk about
the most important Here it is.
sound of English.
3.1
/ə/
Yep, that was it... tiny, right?
This little sound is called the schwa sound.
It’s the ‘relaxed’ vowel sound of English - with a relaxed
lip and tongue position, and just a slightly open mouth.
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And why is this
sound essential? Well, listen to these two sentences, and you'll
quickly understand why this sound is so important.
Listen and repeat after me:
Let’s go to the cinema tonight
3.2
The weather was better yesterday.
3.3
Out of the 18 vowel sounds in these 2 sentences,
10 of them (yes, ten) are the schwa sound -
you can see them all underlined.
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i wanna be a schwa ...
/ə/
It’s not surprising then that the schwa sound is,
by far, the most commonly heard sound in the
English language. However, many non-native
speakers aren’t even aware that it exists!
it’s never stressed.
The schwa sound is never stressed, so it also
plays an important role in the stressed and
unstressed rhythm of English.
Mastering the pronunciation of this sound, and
discovering when to use it, is the fastest way to
sound more fluent, fluid and natural in English.
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4.
Two
Confusing
Pairs of
Sounds
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The best way
to adopt a new
English sound?
• Compare it to a similar sound
• Learn the differences in mouth positions
• Then mimic these in a mirror, to see Listen to the audios,
and feel the differences in your mouth and try these pairs
after me:
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/iː/ /ɪ /
Lips: Stretched Lips: More relaxed
Jaw: Slightly open Jaw: More open
leave live (verb)
/iː/ heat hit /ɪ /
4.1 each itch
I slit the sheet, so I will sit on the slitted sheet.
/ɪ/ /iː/ /ɪ/ /ɪ/ /iː/
4.2
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/ɒ/ /ʌ/
Lips: Rounded Lips: Relaxed
Tongue: Pulled back Tongue: Neutral, in the
in the mouth middle of the mouth
not nut
/ɒ/ collar colour /ʌ/
4.3 wander wonder
The dog dug for a log in the muddy bog.
4.4 /ɒ/ /ʌ/ /ɒ/ /ʌ/ /ɒ/
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I’ve introduced just 5
new sounds here.
Master these 5 sounds, the other 39 sounds,
and everything else you need to transform your pronunciation,
in my 6-Week Pronunciation Transformation Course:
Perfect your pronunciation
here
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5.
English is
stressed...
but it doesn’t have
to be stressful.
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What exactly is
stress, anyway?
English is a stress-timed language. This simply means
that some syllables in words and sentences are more
emphasised in speech.
Stressed syllables help create the rhythm of spoken
English, so putting the stress on the correct syllables is
important for having speech that flows naturally.
And what exactly is a stressed syllable? It’s a syllable that is
generally louder, longer, clearer, and higher in pitch than
an unstressed syllable.
Unstressed syllables, on the other hand, are shorter,
quieter, less clear, and lower in pitch.
22
Listen closely and notice the
stressed syllable of each word,
underlined.
coconut vegetable
5 cucumber banana
broccoli potato
Did you notice how one syllable clearly stands out in
each word? Now listen again and repeat each word after
me, paying attention to that emphasised syllable.
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And which sound do you think is the most important sound
for stress in English?
Yep, it’s the schwa sound /ə/ - that tiny, relaxed sound that
we practiced earlier in this guide. It's a very important sound
because it's in a large number of unstressed syllables.
Look again at those 6 words - you’ll notice that all of
them have either 1 or 2 schwa sounds in their unstressed
syllables, in red. Listen and repeat one more time.
coconut vegetable
5 cucumber banana
broccoli potato
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Mastering stress isn't just important for individual words —
it's essential for the rhythm of sentences, too.
Stress indicates the most important parts of sentences —
and it can even completely change the meaning of them!
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But how do we know
where to put the stress?
Well, thankfully, there are some rules and patterns
that indicate where the stress is put in words and
sentences.
You can find the full guides in Chapters 3 & 10 of
my 6-Week Pronunciation Transformation Course.
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6.
Three
Surprising
Pronunciation
Rules
English pronunciation rules have evolved
for some unusual reasons. Here are just 3 of
them:
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1. ‘O’
/ʌ/
There is a bizarre group of about 6.1
75 words spelled with a letter ‘O’, above - come - cover
but pronounced as a ‘U’, with the
/ʌ/ sound like in ‘nut’ and ‘fun.’ done - front - love
Look, listen and repeat after me: money - monk - month
none - son - stomach
tongue - won
This means that son and sun are
pronounced exactly the same.
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The reason?
It's because of a group of 14th-century
monks that decided English spellings.
They changed the letter U to O before
M, N, and V to make words “easier to read”,
as they thought these letters looked too
similar in their handwriting. However, the
pronunciations stayed the same.
For example, ‘cum’ became spelled as
‘come’, ‘luv’ as ‘love’, and ‘munuc’ as ‘monk’.
Yes - they even changed their own title.
A 14th century English
learner discovering
So... thanks for that one, monks. these new spellings
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2. W+AR
Most words spelled with AR use an
/ɑː/ sound, with a wide open mouth,
like in 'bar' and 'car'. 6.2
bar - car - far -star
However, when the spelling is W+AR,
it makes an /ɔː/ sound, with tight
round lips, as the W keeps the lips
tight and round for the next sound.
Look, listen and repeat after me,
copying the lip shape in a mirror: war - warm - warn - wart
towards - award - reward
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This means the lip shapes for AR in
‘Star’ (wide open mouth) and ‘Wars’
(tight round lips) are very different.
Learn them, you shall.
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3. ‘OUGH’ /ə/ thorough borough
/aʊ/ plough drought
There isn't actually a rule for 'OUGH'... 6.3
it's a bit of a rebel. /uː/ through
/əʊ/ although though dough
However, if you master these 7
thought ought brought
pronunciations of OUGH, you'll be ready /ɔː/
for anything! bought sought fought
/ʌf/ tough enough rough
Look, listen and repeat these words
/ɒf/ cough trough
and the sentence underneath.
Good luck!
I’m thoroughly ploughing through it,
although I thought it would be tougher.
6.4
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Do you want to transform
your pronunciation
forever?
Discover my 6-Week
Pronunciation Transformation Course at
growyourenglish.com/course
AKA Grow Your English
Enjoy your new pronunciation!
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