If you are among those who pronounce the second month of the year as Fe - bu - a - ry, you are not likely to spell it correctly. Instead of writing February , you may write Febuary , thus throwing away the vital r in it, as you did in the pronunciation . The word should be pronounced , Fe- bRua - ri . The r is in capital letter to emphasise that it must be articulated . And I hope you remember what we noted last week – that Wednesday should be pronounced WenZ - day , not wed - nes - day .
The same thing applies to library . If you pronounce it as laibri , when you write it, you may end up having something as terrible as libry. The fact is that , while pronouncing the word , the r in the middle must be articulated , giving the correct sound as laib- Ra- ri .
We also can deduce that it is the wrong pronunciation syndrome that gives birth to the pervasive poor spelling of some words that end with th . If you are not guilty of this , you must have come across cases of people who write lenght instead of length ; breadht instead of breadth and strenght instead of strength . They commit the blunder because they do not pronounce the words correctly in the first place . And , if truth be told , even when they get the spellings right , very many people cannot articulate the words well . Including or excluding you ?
If you say ‘ No , ’ pronounce length . What did you say ? I heard le - n - t, as if you are pronouncing lent , the past tense form of lend . Don ’ t forget that , in pronouncing length , breadth , strength and many other th - words , the consonant sound t is absent . What you have there is th , which should not be dryly pronounced as t – as if you are articulating let, bet or set .
This is where you need a bit of clinical exercise or practice. While pronouncing t , the tip of your tongue touches the upper teeth . But when it comes to th , the tip of the tongue strives to escape from between the upper and lower teeth , struggling as if it wants to come out . It is a technical exercise but , with practice and by watching other experts do it – especially on TV – you will steadily improve on the exercise .
The point I have been trying to make is that the different aspects of English language are interwoven . If you don ’ t get some things right in grammar , the challenge is likely to affect your performance in certain areas of phonology and semantics – that is, meaning . And , as we discussed above, problems in oral English can have negative effects on grammar and the other areas too .
I had to engage in the long introduction because of the interest that last week ’ s lesson , tagged Five words you always pronounce wrongly , generated . Many people contacted me and expressed worry at the quality of their spoken English . The beauty of this , however, is that we are all eager to do better . Let’ s look at a few other words that are largely mispronounced.
stAY - tus , not sta - tus
As commonly used as status is, a lot of people do not pronounce it correctly. They say sta- tus – pronouncing the vowel a the way they do it in stamp , stab, slab etc . The correct pronunciation is stay - tus, with the a sounding as you have in stay , way , blame etc. Another word you should watch in this circumstance is data . It is pronounced dAY- ta , not da - ta .
Nuclear crisis
As the economy continues to bite hard, more people are embracing the nuclear family template . Of course , nuclear energy is also for the good of humanity. But when it migrates to nuclear weapons , there is cause to worry. In language , there is another source of worry , though . This has got to do with the way many of us pronounce nuclear. We call it NOK - lear , as if a pastor is knocking the devil on the head . Others , at best , say nUclear. The correct pronunciation is NEWc - lear . In other words, the nu at the beginning of it sounds like what you have in new (opposite of old ) and nu- de ( synonym of naked ). But there is another major issue with words with u which is so technical that I am a bit scared to discuss here . We will do so in the nearest future .
bom , not bomb
I believe a good number of us know that it is not every time you see letter b in a word that you have to let it sound when pronouncing the word . It is governed by the concept of silent sound. You know , if you want to articulate psychology, you make the p silent . The same rule applies to bomb , climb , comb , lamb etc, which a lot of people pollute in the course of pronunciation . The b that ends them should not be articulated . It is silent . So , instead of saying ‘ The terrorists want to bomB the town ’ , say ‘ The terrorists want to bom the town ’ .
They bombed the town last year. (Wrong )
They bomed the town last year. ( Correct)
My hair is rough . Where is the comb ? ( Wrong )
My hair is rough . Where is the com . ( Correct)
He is looking for the lamB. (Wrong )
He is looking for the lam . ( Correct)
Note that in terms of spelling , the correct forms are bomb, comb and climb . But during pronunciation , you throw away the b.
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