Phonetics and Pronunciation

Phonetics and Pronunciation. Many words in English do not conform to the spelling and pronunciation. For example ‘cat’ is pronounced as ‘kat’ whereas ‘cell’ is pronounced as ‘sell’. To some extend we can frame general rules for such pronunciations. C is pronounced as ‘k’ when followed by the vowels ‘a, o and u’.Egs:- call, cot, cut, come, care, cop etc. C has ‘s’ sound when followed by ‘e and i’. Egs:-cigar, cinema, cent, cement, central, circle, circuit, citizen etc. but exceptions like Celt pronounced as ‘k’. Phonetics is a branch of linguistics dealing with speech sounds. For every pronunciation, we have a separate speech sound in phonetics. For the 26 letters we have 44 sounds. ‘a’, for example, is not pronounced alike every time. The way we pronounce ‘a’ in ‘apple’ is different from ‘a’ in ‘father’ or in ‘far’ or in ‘pair’ or in ‘pear’ or in ‘feather’ or in ‘feature’. Each has a distinct pronunciation. So this is one of the difficulties that learners as second language face. Another difficulty in pronunciation is silent letters in words like: 1.island 2.isle 3.knight 4.height 5.knit 6.right 7.straight 8.whistle 9.bristle 10.knock 11.wrangle 12. drought 13.wrap 14.psychology 15.psalm 16.pseudo 17.pneumonia 18.awry 19.plumber 20.wrong Some other difficult words in pronunciation. 1.chagrin 2.chaos 3.chasm 4.chivalry 5.chef 6.chauffeur 7.chime 8. charade 9.chauvinism 10.choir. 11. chore 12.chord 13.collage 14.awe 15.ewe 16.charisma 17.chlorine 18.chocolate 19.epitome 20.chin 21.scheme 22.sure 23.measure. The final ‘r’ is not pronounced prominently in isolated words like Father, mother, rumor, author, choir, pleasure, plumber etc. But pronounced in sentences when they are followed by other words.