English Pronunciation Clinic LIVE!

how are you hello youtube hello facebook and hello instagram we are doing a huge live stream lesson right here right now for some of you it might have been a while i used to do really regular live streams and at the moment i haven't been doing that because there's just been so much going on but i'm here with you today and lots of you responded to my request yesterday to give me problematic words problematic phrases and difficult sounds so i'm going to be working through some of these with you today now there are lots and lots of you um so if i don't respond to your comments it's nothing personal it's not that i'm ignoring you it's just that there are so many of you chatting to me and i'm not going to see everything okay so um do say hello tell me where in the world you're watching from and um let me know if you have any particular struggles if i happen to see your message and i will respond to you of course so hello in brazil uh where else are we all hello in turkey hello in india lots of you here fantastic i hope you can hear me okay um hello mr amelia one of my core students lovely to see you um hello in germany guten tag hello in brilliant ukraine fantastic lots and lots of people from lots of different countries um wonderful indonesia nepal arabia amazing wiltshire amazing myanmar high spain iran brilliant okay so let me get started so let me see what have people been asking for help with right i will start by saying that the english that the variation of english that i teach that i speak is a modern rp british accent so as you know most of you i'm from the uk so i naturally have a british accent and my version of british english because there are many variations of british accents my variation is a modern rp and occasionally when i'm tired a hint of northern english in there as well but that's the english that i teach it's also the variation of english that you'll find in the dictionaries that's taught as the standard version because there are no um there's no regional um it doesn't belong to a region rp doesn't belong to a region it's just the basic version of english british english and then from there if you wanted to learn a regional accent then you um have a basis to work from to then learn a different accent perhaps you're an actor or you just like different accents and want to uh to learn them all fantastic so um the first one i can see here is the word suggestion suggestion it's a funny looking word isn't it so we have a schwa in the position of the first vowel so we don't say su or su it's just a schwa sound is the most common sound in the english language and it's just relaxed uh if you were doing a longer version of the schwa it would sound like you're confused uh so shorten that sound uh lots of my students struggle with this j sound as well j like a j j like jam or just or juliet if you like shakespeare um suggestion here you've got that you've got that j twice in the word as well haven't you suggestion suggestion suggestion i hope that helps and next we have the word weird weird if someone is a little bit odd not typical not normal a bit odd they behave in a way or look different to how people usually behave or look or dress when i was younger people used to say i would dress in a weird way because i choose clothes that were not typical um i was a bitter what's the word i was a bit of a gypsy i like to wear gypsy style clothing and like a hippie and i'd have these long flowing dresses and or just wear like tie dye which is like a mixture of colors all mixed in yeah so i had a weird dress sense according to my friends i thought it was fine but everyone said i was weird so weird weed weird just think about a long e sound we like we you and i we and then weird weird okay next this is a word that's always asked um about and it's the word schedule schedule um a schedule is like a list of events or appointments that you have to attend so today on my schedule there are three things that i'm booked to do i had a meeting this morning i now have this live stream that was in my schedule and then this evening at six o'clock i am running my conversation club with my students so they can practice their english speaking and so those are the three items on my schedule now there are two ways to pronounce this you can do the american version which is more of a k sound sc schedule schedule and this is where i think the confusion comes in people say is it schedule or is it schedule to be honest it doesn't matter choose whichever because both are used regularly in the uk and even if you said schedule to someone who never says schedule but schedule they know what you mean and that's all that matters you're not going to be misunderstood if you choose to say schedule or schedule if you want to try and remember the purely british english version of the word schedule i recommend ignoring the letter c so just look at s and h together schedule and that will help okay fantastic um okay well actually brings me on to a question that i received about the letter c one student said that they found the letter c really confusing because c is sometimes pronounced as a k sound and sometimes pronounced as a s sound so how do you know when to use which which sound when you see the letter c in a word there is a rule and i will tell you the rule although i must say that almost every rule in our language has exceptions so i'll tell you the rules so you understand but more than anything practice and immersion in a language is what's going to help you to learn all these variations so don't try not to worry yourself with rules when you're actually speaking because it will mess with your fluency um but the rule is c is pronounced as an s if it's followed by the letters e or i or y in fact i should probably write this on the screen so you can see it i won't be able to do it for instagram but i can do it for those of you joining me on facebook or youtube so hang on i'll just how can i do it here so this is the rule if it is followed by letters e i or y uh okay here we go so c is pronounced as s if it's followed by an e by an i or by a y okay here's an example uh the word city city london is our capital city it obviously is spelt with a a c um but we pronounce it as an s city city and um ahmed's just come up with a couple of additional words which are helpful thank you ahmed cycle city center um so here that the c is followed by an e or an i or a y so it's a sound also in the word percent c in the word percent like 100 percent c is followed by an e and therefore it's an s sound percent or in the word since i have been in the uk since 1981 i have been learning english since march since the c is followed by an e so it will be pronounced as an s sound okay um okay so uh we have what about the word ocean ocean yes i mean like i said there are exceptions another exception to the rule is the word muscle muscle muscle in the c in muscle is followed by an l and yet it's pronounced as an s that doesn't make sense but that's our language it's full of exceptions um so when i see generally not in all cases but when a c is followed by any other letter generally it's pronounced as a k for example create call cough frantic okay so that's the rule like i said don't get caught up in the rules because they don't cover every case um there you go i hope that was helpful let me take this off the screen now oh not that one keep that one on take that one off okay right uh what else have you been asking me um [Music] anatomy was another word anatomy the human anatomy it's your body basically all the ins and outs of your body the workings of your body anatomy anatomy and then we have a word that i pronounced wrong for years and it's the second month of our year it's the word february february oh it's a tricky one february february if you just said february and didn't pronounce that r after the b it doesn't matter february february or february it's such a subtle difference and like i said the most important thing is being understood there are some um mispronunciations that will cause problems perhaps embarrassment uh and yeah could cause chaos just small differences that you have to get right in order to be understood but no one's going to misunderstand you saying february which is not the correct pronunciation february is the correct pronunciation but if you said february no one's going to think you're meaning another month entirely so don't worry too much about that one what else do i have here particularly is another word particularly particularly five syllables big word particularly particularly per not par party particularly but no i think it's going to always be a schwa particularly particularly go with a schwa particularly particularly lovely get that time going particularly particularly i am particularly fond of a coffee in the morning would you like to go to the park this afternoon it is cold and it's raining but would you like to go not particularly no no thank you uh okay um on instagram someone's asking for the pronunciation of the word conqueror conqueror someone who conquers things to conquer something is to to defeat it it could be if you're in a war situation um you might conquer in the past people would conquer a country i guess still now it happens unfortunately people take over a country um or you might conquer a hill so it's something that you battle against and if you win you conquer it so um you are the conqueror conqueror conqueror someone's asked for the pronunciation of the word status status in american english i think this is more status status but in british english we say status status okay what else do i have the word cashew cashew a cashew nut cashew how do you pronounce cashew cashew it sounds like you're sneezing a cashew nut and i think you've also asked for another type of nut which is pistachio pistachio i do like a pistachio pistachio nut okay um someone has asked actually a few people have asked about the differences generally between british english and american english i've done lots of videos on differences and there are many other videos by other brilliant teachers on youtube about the many differences but don't be don't be um don't be under the assumption that if you learn american english you can't communicate with british english or australian english people or you know canadian english or african english or any version of english if you learn american english everyone will understand you if you learn british english pretty much everyone will understand you every variation of english i mean will understand you english is an international language and there are variations there are differences between american and british there are some spelling differences they are minor there are some pronunciation differences like status and status schedule schedule there are a few grammatical differences but again this is negligible it's subtle differences there are some phrases and idioms and slang that are particular to america and there are some that are particular to the uk in the uk there are idioms and phrases that are particular to even small regions of the uk so i would always say if you're generally learning english it doesn't matter what version you're learning or who you're learning from it might be a non-native teacher it might be a native american teacher a native british teacher it doesn't matter it's all english what matters is you find a teacher that you connect with that you enjoy learning from someone who will motivate you to continue learning that is the only important thing no teacher is perfect there are lots of native teachers including myself who are not perfect there are lots of non-native teachers who are wonderful but not perfect no one is perfect so you have to find a teacher that motivates you to learn then if in the future at some point you need to use english in a work setting you're moving to an area which is predominantly english speaking then it might be worth you learning some vocabulary grammar spelling that's particular to that area so that you can communicate easily in that area but otherwise it really it doesn't matter english is english okay what matters is you feel motivated um okay so let me have a look friend friend is one of the pronunciation requests friend if you take away the r it becomes fiend fiend a friend friend friend um i've also been asked about a pharmacist pharmacist a lot of words in fact all words that begin with ph is pronounced with an f pharmacy pharmacist um pharmaceutical i'm trying to think of any ph words help me help me can anyone think of a ph word um maybe right okay i'm gonna wait for a minute and you guys are gonna give me some ph words that's your task and i'll we'll find out if they're all pronounced with an f maybe they're not um no yes well photo photo phone thank you ray um fun um phonetic yep photo pharmacy photography physics yeah all lefts well left something okay fantastic physician okay uh physical let's get physical physical all right could you pronounce the word garage i say garage i think in america they say garage garage they pull out that second vowel garage garage garage garage garage i'm not sure i've ever met anyone in the uk that says garage but i wouldn't be surprised if i did because some people if they have a a really posh accent do make that change to the vowel the short vowels sometimes they make them longer like i say pasta pasta but some people say pasta if they're very posh oh bing bong someone's at the door someone is at the front door i'm not getting that i'll stay with you guys okay so yes it's garage garage but you can say garage if you really want to okay um [Music] victor has asked for the word algorithm algorithm yes if you work on social media or if you're a youtuber then you'll be very familiar with news or talk of the algorithm algorithm algorithm forever changing forever changing um okay goldie has asked for literally literally literally literally literally literally better better always making sure that you do pronounce that middle t better in some regional accents and in some american variations as well they might drop that t and say better better it goes more like a d or better better in some regional uk accents but if you're just going from rp version better better the same with water and matter what's the matter it really matters to me the other thing to note with those particular words better water and matter is the ending any word that ends with an er or an or like mirror doctor we have that schwa sound i said earlier in the lesson that the schwa sound is the most common sound in the english language and it's because that sound replaces most of our weak our vowels that sit in weak positions within a word so if a vowel is in a weak position then we replace it with a schwa to make it easier to say so that we have more flow in our sentences okay so rather than saying better water matter we ignore that r and we do a schwa better water matter better water matter okay next the word enthusiasm enthusiasm that wonderful th you have to get the tongue between the teeth now we have an n e n n is normally pronounced with the tip of the tongue on the alveolar ridge which is just behind your top teeth for your l's your d your t your tongue tip will touch that space it's the same for the end so you would say n n fusiasm however tongue gymnastics that's a big move to go from enthusiasm so i recommend to make it easy more natural just go towards the th straight away and and and fusion notice the s's pronounced like a zed enthusiasm enthusiasm hope that helps okay what else do we have here hierarchy hierarchy the hierarchy is like the status of people within a society or a social circle um in our house the hierarchy um our hierarchy works with me at the top i am the boss no i'm not really my partner and i are at the top and then our children are below us in the hierarchy hierarchy hierarchy hierarchy okay um uh romania that's a good question occur don't use an e so the word occur spelt o double c you are um if something occurs then it happens or it appears um occur occur occur in in in a sentence it would definitely begin with a schwa uh occur occur some people would you ever begin a sentence with occur occur it occurs to me it occurs to me that you've been drinking all my tea some people who are very posh might use a different vowel they might do more of an oh oh curse but i would highly recommend you start this with a schwa occur occur okay um someone on instagram uh is asking for the word raw like a lion we're trying to teach my son who has just turned one how to roar like a lion um it was one of the cutest moments with my first son who wasn't yet talking but we'd say to him jacob what noise does a lion make and you go yeah like that it was so cute so that noise that a lion makes is a raw a raw it looks like it might be raw because it's got r o a r in the spelling of it but we pronounce it with a long vowel or raw it's exactly the same as the word raw like meat that hasn't been cooked or vegetables that haven't been cooked there are a w raw i raw when i see raw meat raw okay fantastic okay someone's asking if we have a class for speaking so while i'm here we've been on for nearly half an hour i will let you know what's going on and why i haven't been on here that often over the past two years we've been building an incredible website i wanted to make courses that were fun and that really drove students motivated students to reach their goals of fluency and confident communication we've been building multiple courses so we have six courses available we have an english program which comprises of a b1 course a b2 course a c1 and a c2 course we have a pronunciation course and we have a business english course besides that we've also got a few services like a pronunciation assessment and we have a community which um is just it's the love of my life at the moment we're building this lovely community of motivated learners and every week i do an exclusive live stream which is one of the reasons i haven't been live with you guys very often is because i'm so busy with my students and we do conversation club sessions so those of you who are asking about speaking classes these conversation clubs they run about 45 minutes each at the moment we run them two to three times a week it's held on zoom and facilitated by myself and in the future perhaps another member of the team but always facilitated by a teacher and we set pre-reading so there's a topic and some um things to consider maybe something to watch or read beforehand and then you come to the session we introduce it we talk about it and then i put you into smaller groups so you have a chance to really practice your conversation skills talk about the topic really get used to using some new vocabulary and um and then we come back together and discuss it further and it's it's a lot of fun i'm really enjoying these sessions at the moment and you can join that that community and that club um for just 9.99 a month so in a month if you can attend all sessions then you could potentially be doing six eight eight to twelve eight to thirteen give or take classes a month as well as uh four live streams and there's also a drop in zoom call with me that lasts for about an hour and a half where you can ask me anything and it's a zoom call so we converse face to face uh so yeah you can join it's incredibly cheap it won't stay that cheap for long in the new year the prices will go up moment it's the introductory offer but if you'd like to join our community if you are motivated and you really love english then you have a place in our community so do check that out the place to go for this is the english like a native website which is on the screen for youtube and facebook um but instagram it's english like a native dot co dot uk and if you're interested in one of our courses there is a huge 40 off at the moment because it's black friday week this offer is going to last until monday and then after that um yeah it's basically the biggest sale of the year we won't do such a big discount again probably until next year so if you're interested you really want to improve you want to join our community then come and get on board now is the time so i hope that answered your question yes we have speaking classes all right um let me see some of my previous requests okay so we have some contractions here from one of my ladies on instagram they've asked about the words um aunt where weren't and there there oh there they are there okay so aunt aren't ignore the letter r big open mouth aunt aunt aunt okay aunt we aren't going we aren't talking anymore we fell out we aren't friends anymore and always as well it's a good tip for if you want to really speak with a british accent um i'd always suggest really opening up the word art like we are yes we are always opening that right up ah we are visiting scotland today we are planning to attend a show this evening we are hoping to see you later so if you really open that up and ignore the letter r then you you'll really sound british that's a really british sound ah are you are you enjoying yourself are you finding this useful okay um can you talk a little quicker no i can't um some people think that i slow right down when i teach but i don't um i enunciate a little more when i'm speaking but the rate at which i speak is my natural rate of speaking one of my biggest lessons that i try to instill on my students is not to speak fast when i was teaching one-on-one in my students i'd always tell them slow down and these are natives as well as non-natives you don't need to speak fast naturally british sorry naturally english as a language is slower than some other common um world languages like spanish for example is a very fast language we speak naturally slower anyway but on top of that if you want to be a confident communicator if you want people to really hear your message and you know feel confident in you and what you're saying you need to slow down look at barack obama i think he's a wonderful speaker he does take really big pauses so maybe don't pause as long as he does but watch how he how he talks there's something about the way he speaks that makes you just trust him believe him and think he knows what he's talking about and it's the rate at which he speaks he speaks nice and slowly clearly makes sure that you've understood every point okay so slow down don't speak fast there's no need be confident in what you're saying take your time to get your message across okay all right uh so we have the word aunt contraction aunt we aren't doing it and then there's the word we we're we're like we are we're we're now there are two ways to say this it's got the diphthong ear in it like your ear ear and if you're going to use the diphthong ear and you have to make the movement e ear we're pulling our ears okay but a lot of natives will just say ear my ear ear where we're going out we're good friends mark is here hello mark we're good friends aren't we mark so as an as a a native speaker or someone who's trying to achieve a nice flow if you struggle with diphthong sounds ear oh ow air if you struggle with them then ignore them and just go for where where but don't pronounce the letter r don't try and do where or anything like that just where where we're going out and that will keep your speech moving nice and smoothly um the next contraction here is weren't won't are you noticing a pattern here the word want does contains the letter r but we don't pronounce it were we were we weren't we weren't okay weren't weren't and then the last contraction here is there as in they are the contraction of they are there you can be really posh with this new there there there they're going out but just a nice solid there there over there by the chair brushing their hair okay so i always say that diphthongs are like a flourish diphthongs are like the frill on the bottom of your dress or the cufflinks the fancy cufflinks in your shirt or the what do you call the little handkerchief that you have in a in a fancy jacket you have a little fancy thing that comes out you you chaps don't you um that's a flourish it's not necessary it's not the core it's a flourish and i always think diphthongs they are important but they're more of a flourish always focus on getting the short vowels and the long vowels perfect and that will that will stand you in good stead okay um okay and the next request was the word grew the past of grow grew last summer i grew some tomatoes in my garden my son grew uh five centimeters last year i don't know if that's a lot or not i'm making it up okay um okay what else do i have here here here here here um all right so here i've got a request for the pronunciation of the word ado ado much ado about nothing that's a famous shakespeare play much ado about nothing um or you might know the tongue twister what to do to die today it's a minute or two to two how does the rest of it go what did you do today today at a minute or two to do something something something something and even harder to do anyway a to-do or a do what you do what you do about nothing it's how do you explain this um what you do um like a fuss if you have much ado about nothing is a big fuss about nothing it's a big fuss about nothing and the other word you asked it's not a common word by the way don't worry about learning that word and the other word you asked for was content and depends if you're meaning to be content i am feeling happy and content content content or if you're talking about what's inside something like the content of my lesson what's inside my lesson the content is pronunciation this is the content um at the weekend hopefully i'll be releasing a lesson on um housing vocabulary and i've created a pdf that everyone can download and the content of that pdf is the actual vocabulary with the meanings and example sentences that's the content notice how i pronounce that con content i feel content with my content the stress is different so it slightly changes the vowel my content my work my content the stresses at the beginning my content i am content the stress is on the end content content i hope that makes sense okay um hello bensie is that how pronounced your name bency you're a new student i've just done your pronunciation assessment and you gave me a glowing five-star review for the courses and the assessment so thank you so much that's very very kind and i'm glad that you're enjoying the courses and everything so far you've asked for the difference between the word van and when okay so there's two differences and it brings up one challenge that many students struggle with particularly um students who um maybe come from a germanic language so the difference between a v and a w can be tricky for some people um it takes quite a bit of practice and you have to be very conscious of when you're using these sounds so the first is the letter v the position is very different you have your bottom lip against your top teeth and you're creating a vibration it's a fricative [Music] okay when we pronounce a w we round our lips there's no teeth involved so you shouldn't see teeth your teeth should not be touching your lips big round sound round lips round shape why when where what okay so w should it should feel that vibration [Music] but it's not the same as the vibrating on the lip when the tooth is involved or the teeth are involved [Music] so really practice and be conscious of that positional difference [Music] okay the next difference between the word van and when is the vowel so you've got the ah in van and the e when earlier i said learning diphthongs is not vital but learning the subtle differences between short vowels and the differences between short and long vowels because they're often confused those are really important um yeah i'm just trying to think of an example here for example the words batter and better if you've been following me for a while you might be familiar with the tongue twister betty botter bought some butter but she said this butter's bitter if i put it in my batter it will make my batter bitter so she bought some better butter better than the bitter butter when she put that in her batter it made her batter better so it was good that she bought some better butter for her batter something like that i'm sure i've got that wrong um but the point is these subtle differences in short vowel completely change the word so if you say bata bata is a mixture of what is it it's flour water um egg is that egg in batter and you you batter can make like bread and pastry and stuff like that so batter is with an a batter and then you have better to improve it is better there's a comparative it's better than that one so if i say um i can't think of a good sentence with both of them that's different to the tongue twister but you can see the point um or bitter even which has got an eye in it bitter bitter means it's not sweet it's the opposite of sweet in some cases people like something that's bitter but often it's a negative thing oh it's a bit bitter coffee can be bitter so you might put sugar in to sweeten it so if you say is that good say oh that's bitter but you meant that's better then someone might go oh i'll quickly bring the sugar no no i meant that's better it's better than it was before thank you no more sugar no more sugar okay right so um uh okay amir has brought up the question about the words there there and then we'd also include in this the contraction they are there these all sound the same so don't worry about changing the pronunciation it you have to get which version from the context so it's over there the position there where on youtube there where in the kitchen or there as in the possessive it's their coat it's their turn um my children love their nanny okay so they're possessive and then um the contraction they are there there there there there there okay hope that helps um someone's asking for the difference but i think maybe you mean in meaning but the difference between hearing and listening in pronunciation hearing listening listening in meaning to hear something you can hear something that you don't intend to hear if someone um knocks on the window i just heard something what did you hear i heard someone knock on the window or something knock on the window so it's something that goes in your ear that you acknowledge that's unintentional to listen is with intense you mean to hear it so at night time i put my children to bed and then i listen or you can use the phrasal verb i listen out for i listen out for my children waking up so i listen out for a cry or a murmur or a little peep out of them and i know they're awake and they need my assistance so i listen for them i'm intentionally trying to hear something but if i just sometimes i go downstairs and i um i'm washing up and i'm not listening for them because i've just put them down they should be okay for at least an hour but sometimes i just hear a noise and i go oh hang on let me listen oh yes it's the children i must go to them okay so that's the difference it's about intention um [Music] okay syed says hi anna i've been trying to do a better job on my accent for years and now i feel like i'm exaggerating a lot what do you think i should do i think first of all try to work out if you are exaggerating in a way that's unnatural um i exaggerate when i speak if you listen to how i speak compared to i don't know my partner uh who doesn't do a lot of public speaking um if if you listen to to me now i'm exaggerating i exag exaggerate my my fricative sounds my voiced fricatives i um often really exaggerate my vowels i enjoy and lengthen my long vowels i might make my plosive sounds which is um ones that explode like more plosive i exaggerate but most of you tell me that you like the way i sound that you don't say oh you sound weird you sound unnatural you're exaggerating the way you speak no i'm just speaking clearly i'm enjoying communicating and exaggeration of sounds is part of that so first of all ascertain work out if you are actually exaggerating many people struggle to make a big change to their pronunciation because they feel self-conscious and this is a huge battle you have to break down that feeling of everyone's laughing at me people will think i'm strange first of all who cares what other people think this is about you and your progression so don't worry about what other people think and yeah i mean you just have to get rid of that block of worrying you have to build a new habit and that habit only comes with real exaggerated practice um [Music] what i would suggest if you genuinely are feeling uncomfortable with your level of exaggeration if that's the case is to exaggerate in your actual practice i don't know why i'm doing this your actual practice sessions exaggerate if you're doing if you're a student on my courses you'll do regular articulation exercises regular tongue twisters working those particular sounds and those combinations of sounds it's important if you're a student or if you're studying pronunciation that you really over exaggerate in your practice because only by doing very specific movements of the mouth practicing your v and sounds with real purpose that way you're going to train the habits of your mouth the shapes the feelings then when you do that really exaggerated practice once you move back into normal talking more relaxed free-flowing speech you should start to move towards the right place you know like if i if i don't walk properly or if i run in a way that hurts my knees and my back because my posture is wrong i have to step back and slow down and really work out how my foot lands on the floor and what my gait is like so the the stretch of my legs like the width of my pace my steps um and what i'm doing with my arms how i'm holding my shoulders am i doing this when i'm running so you have to really exaggerate so you might go through it as a walk or as a light jog really thinking about it and i might look strange doing it but i'm practicing so i don't care it's about me and my progression so i get that into my body because i've exaggerated it enough i started to get the feeling so then when i pick up to a run i go oh yeah i i get it after a while i might get back into old habits and go oh no something's wrong here slow down again exaggerate again yeah okay that's it that's it and you get back into a run okay i got it i got it and it will keep slipping back so you keep have you keep you have to keep exaggerating in your practice to get to a good place in your in your use does that help okay fantastic um okay pino says i'm struggling to pronounce needn't have worried needn't have worried um so needn't is a contraction of need not and so this is what you'd say um to someone who's worried in the past um you needn't have worried so someone might say to you where were you last night you were out all night and i didn't know where you were i was so worried and you'd say well you needn't have worried you shouldn't have worried because i was just at my friend's house i'd sent you a text message and told you you needn't have worried about me i'm fine i'm 40 years old it's fine i can look after myself i needn't have worried the pronunciation needn't needn't needn't now oh this brings up a really um a really tricky little aspect of pronunciation uh it's called lateral plosive a lateral plosive is where so a plosive is a these explosive sounds sometimes these are swallowed into a lateral plosive so what we're doing with these posters is releasing pressure so with the letter d we put the tip of our tongue on the roof of our mouth we create pressure and then we release the pressure okay with the word needn't needn't we're not releasing it in the same way as we normally would we're holding the tongue need needn't needn't and we're almost allowing the explosion to happen backwards or sidewards i wouldn't worry about getting this skill uh too much it's helpful it's present in words like puddle middle um uh cuddle bottle uh [Music] i think if i can think of any others there are plenty of others um but needn't is similar it's kind of pushed up the explosion it kind of pushed up needn't needn't you could also separate it out and say you need not have worried that's quite posh i would say you sh you shouldn't that's another contraction um yeah stick with needn't it's nice needn't needn't needn't just have to let it explode into the nose it's a tricky one though you'd needn't have worried i was fine okay right we've been here for 55 minutes goodness me um time flies when you're having fun right let me see what else came up on the instagram chat ah okay so uh the word clothes clothes someone's asked if this is pronounced with the th or with a zed uh it's one of those things it's a tricky word and even i have to kind of slow down when i say this word because clothes it's tricky because you have the th which is a fricative at the front of the mouth with the tongue poked out and then you've got another fricative which needs the tongue to be in z clothes clothes clothes it's a mouthful and it doesn't feel it never feels natural to me what's important is that you don't say the word clothes as in i've closed the shop the shop is closed we close on christmas day um i need to close the window so you have to find a happy medium between the two clothes clothes i tend to touch my tongue forward but i don't go too far through clothes clothes it's a tricky one just do what you can hopefully context will always help with that particular word okay um okay david's asked how about the difference between watch make sure there's a t in that word david watch and see um and last but not least the between the word voice and sound um okay so watch and see it's the same as hear and listen if you see something it's unintentional perhaps um it's just something that comes into view that you acknowledge oh i see you or i just saw a squirrel i wasn't looking for a squirrel but i saw a squirrel um watch is intentionally looking at something for a period of time i'm going to watch the x factor tonight i'm going to watch my son in the school play so it's intentionally looking okay the words voice and sound sound is more general sound covers everything that creates sound waves everything that you can hear is a sound voice is a particular sound made with the vocal folds vibrating and making sound okay good um okay miss rosie you said please help me um how to pronounce the word laugh and similar to the word love yes very common slightly tricky words the word laugh okay there's two versions if you're going for british rp or any southern variation of british accent then we do a long vowel ah laugh and it's an f ending laugh laugh there are um there are other versions or there is another version it's a northern version which is also the same as a american version and it's with a short vowel instead of a long r it's with an ah laugh laugh i laugh i laugh they do americans do slightly pull it out but not like laughs laugh laugh so it really depends which version of english you're going for but laugh or laugh and the other word you asked for was the word love love um the vowel in this one is a little bit tricky um it doesn't exist in in northern english and it was one that i had to learn because i'm originally from the north and this was a sound i didn't have growing up i have to learn this one it's the uh sound like in the word up above glove love slightly higher and make sure you've got the nice v vibration on the lip love love i love it i love to laugh i love to laugh okay i hope that answers your question right i'm going to take a few more from um the question i asked earlier on instagram because there were so many messages that came through um [Music] liaise someone's asked for the word liaise how to pronounce and the meaning liaise spelled l-i-a-i-s-e liaise lee like um like the name lee lee a's liaise liaise liaise a little bit of a mouthful liaise to liaise with someone is to meet with someone to discuss something there was actually a famous film called dangerous liaisons and that was about um there's a love story people coming together meeting so it just means a meeting basically but you liaise with people at work so if we're discussing something and you need a decision on it perhaps you're trying to sell me a service and i say that's very interesting i'm not the decision maker i will have to liaise with my my team and then liaise with my boss who is the decision maker uh then we can make a decision on this okay so to liaise with is to meet with someone for a purpose okay um could you please clarify the word posh posh posh spelt h posh to be posh it's slang and um sometimes used in a slightly derogatory way sometimes um to be posh usually means that you are well educated so someone who's perhaps been fortunate enough to go to a private school so their parents have paid for them to have um you know a top-class education and and lots of additional education besides school so their parents have really been able to afford that perhaps they live in a is it's about status in society so they they usually come from a lot of money they have a lot of wealth they probably live in a nice house maybe they have very nice clothes and a nice car and they earn good money and they had a good education and often people will classify you as posh because of the way you speak now people will suggest that an rp accent what i speak with is posh certainly if i go back to my hometown where i was born um everyone speaks with a regional accent there and they'll hear me and go oh you're posh because they think because i have this accent i come from london or the london area or the south where there is more money and people you it's more expensive to live here so you have to have the um the ability to afford to live here um and because i speak like this they assume i come from a wealthy background and then i make lots of money and that i live in a mansion and all this nonsense um it's not the case i don't come from money i don't earn lots of money i don't live in a mansion um i just chose to speak like this and that's you know just the way things are but yes some people might say i'm posh or that if you have a an accent like this you're posh or if you if you go to a restaurant that's very expensive and they have chandeliers and napkins nicely folded and you know it's a a bit fancy it's a posh restaurant if they design their food on the plate and make it look like a piece of art then you'd say it's posh food yeah so that's posh i hope that's helped to explain the use of posh someone has asked for the difference between the word so s s-e-w which you do to stitch clothing together you sew it um and the word so s-o-w which is putting seeds into the ground and covering them with soil you sow the seeds you can metaphorically sow the seeds you can put a thought into somebody's head and let that fork grow you sow the seed okay they are pronounced the same as the word s o so moving on so so hole in the ground so and so all the same so diphthong oh so fantastic okay uh i'm gonna have to wrap up i think an hour is enough um thank you so much to everyone who's joined me here i do apologize if i haven't had the opportunity to respond to your comments like i said i'm running a stream across four different platforms here so there's lots of comments coming in into my eyes into my face and i'm running this on my own so i probably haven't seen your comment um so don't get upset with me if you do have any additional requests then when the stream is finished on youtube facebook you can put it in the comments and i'll try and include it in a future pronunciation clinic if you're looking for more speaking practice then we are doing a conversation club session tonight if you come and join one of our courses or our conversation or our community then you can join our session this evening um don't forget we have 40 off all of our courses for the next few days the offer will end on monday so if you do want to get involved don't miss out all you have to do is go to english like a native dot co dot uk and use the code elan 40 that's e-l-a-n-40 but that's also apparent on the website you can't miss it when you go to the website the prices that you see on the website don't show the sale price so the prices that you see will be discounted at checkout we'll take 40 off when you use the code otherwise i hope you're all happy and well and i hope you're continuing to feel motivated to learn english and to improve your confidence and communication skills all right i'm going to say goodbye thanks guys don't forget to give this a like and share with anyone who might find it useful take care

Channel: English Like A Native

Views: 6,417

Keywords: english pronunciation, english lesson, learn english, english like a native, British accent, English accent, british rp accent, pronunciation practice, pronunciation, Speak English, live english class, Anna English, learn english pronunciation, how to speak RP, how to speak with a british accent

Id: 13ill3xFeFk

Length: 67min 1sec (4021 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 25 2021