In this chapter of the course, we will focus on commonly mispronounced English words that every non-native speaker should know to sound more natural. The chapter is loosely divided into several thematic sections, but it can be read in any order.
height – the pronunciation is as if it were spelled “hight”. The “e” is there just to confuse foreigners.
fruit – a similar situation as in the previous word; simply ignore the “i”.
suit – as in the case of “fruit”, the “i” is silent.
since – some people, misled by the “e” at the end, pronounce this word as “saayns”.
subtle – “btle” simply doesn't sound good. Don't pronounce the “b”.
queue – if you want to pronounce this word correctly, just think of the Q at the beginning; “ueue” is not pronounced at all.
change – the word is pronounced with “ey”, not with [æ] or [ɛ].
iron – this word is mispronounced by almost 100% of beginning English learners, who pronounce it as aay-rən or aay-ron, but none of these pronunciations is correct. The same is true also for ironed and ironing (make sure to listen to the audio examples).
hotel – “ho, ho, ho, tell me why you are not at home” is something Santa Claus could ask you if you stayed in a hotel over Christmas. It is most certainly not the reason why it is called “hotel”, but it will hopefully help you remember that the stress is actually on the second syllable (there is not [tl] at the end).
Speaking of Christmas, even though the word originally comes from "Christ's Mass", not only do they have no vowels in common, but the "t" is silent, too.
Some other extremely common words that almost all English learners pronounce wrong at some point are:
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Another thing you should notice in the last example above is that the “b” in “mb” is silent. There are many more such words, which is the topic of the next lesson.
Jakub Marian