Many words have the silent ‘e’ on the end. How can I tell whether I should pronounce the ‘e’ or not? Is there a rule for this? Answer Most of the time, when you see a word end in this pattern: –VCe where V represents a vowel, C represents a consonant, and e represents an … Read more
What is the right technique for acquiring the “th” sounds? Are there any really proved useful exercises or tongue twisters which can help to get them? I think after some training I’ve managed to pronounce both th sounds (voiced and unvoiced) correctly. But the problem is, I can’t pronounce a clear decent th sound after … Read more
Thinner and Dinner. I have problems pronouncing these two words. To me they sound exactly the same; I do not know if the first should be pronounced like an f (“finner”) or not. Google Translate does not help me, so what are their correct pronunciations? Answer To pronounce thinner, place the tip of your tongue … Read more
In Italian, the group gn is pronounced differently from English. (See for example magnolia, which is pronounced /ma’ɲoːlja/ in Italian.) What is the correct pronunciation of gn, in English, for example in the following words? Campaign Foreign Sign Signed Is there any word containing gn that is pronounced differently from the usual because of its … Read more
Speakers of languages such as Italian and Spanish tend to have difficulty pronouncing the ‘I’ in words such as it and is correctly. For example, they might pronounce “it is” as “eat ease.” Are there any good exercises that can help them pronounce the ‘I’ correctly? Answer For an actual exercise, you would have to … Read more
My English teacher often corrects me on the correct pronunciation of these suffixes. She says these should be pronounced with the stress on the first O. I have heard many educated folks pronounce it with no stress at all. I have also heard that the vowel O should be pronounced as “au” rather than “o”. … Read more
I pronounce ‘ei’ in ‘either’ like in German (so, like ‘I’ in English: /aɪ/). This is natural for me. But I’ve heard people pronouncing it as ‘eee’ (/iː/), so which version is correct? Or maybe both are correct? Answer Both are correct. Ee-ther /ˈiːð.ə(ɹ)/ tends to be more common in the United States, but it … Read more
