Stressed And Un-Stressed Vowel Pronunciation

I Don’t Mean THAT Kind Of Stress.  “Word Stress” Won’t Actually Cause You Nerve Stress…  At Least Not After Reading This Post & Watching The Video  😉

type of “Stress” that I am referring to in this post is “Word Stress”.  We use the term “Stress” to refers to the amount of emphasis that is put on the different vowels of a word, when we pronounce them audibly.

nd — although there is not much difference in the placement of “Word Stress” between “British-English” and “American-English”.  It should be noted that — in GiveMeSomeEnglish!!! we use The Common Tongue.  And the Pronunciation of words & phrases in The Common Tongue is almost Always the same as that of “American-English”.

he video below is one that I have recommend to every single one of my students, since the time that I first watched it.  And it is linked in almost every single entry on The GiveMeSomeEnglish!!! Pronunciation Portal.

he reason for this is that the speaker in the video explains how the spelling of English words, often, does not seem to match with the way that the word is pronounced.  And to make matters worse — phonetic alphabets and diacritical marks are also not perfect tools either.  (at least, in the way that they are traditionally used.)

owever — by using both a “Phonetic Spelling” & The Phonetic Alphabet in-combination (as it is done on The GiveMeSomeEnglish!!! – Pronunciation Portal) — and then, by listening to the word while reading it the way it is spelled — It becomes very easy to perfect your Common Tongue English Pronunciation.  You can see what I mean on The Pronunciation Portal.

here are just a few things that I disagree with, that I need to mention here, because it is vitally important to you learning English Pronunciation without the difficulties that so many others have experienced.

elling a student that something is “difficult” is complete Bə(ʌ)Lʃə(ɪ)[T]!!!…  And almost every teacher does it.  There is nothing “Difficult” about learning English.  It is the same as learning anything else.  It may be “complex” — yes.  But there is nothing “difficult” about what she is saying.

f you can make the sounds (and I know you can) — then you can do anything that a native speaker can do.  And once you learn the proper pronunciation — you will probably be able to speak even better than most “Native Speakers”!  This is because they all learn very bad habits from TV, Movies, the other people who are not nearly as educated as you will be (or already are).

here is nothing about what she is saying that is any different from any other language.  For many years, I have lived in a country where the Cyrillic alphabet is used.  And in this alphabet, each letter is SUPPOSED to represent only one sound.  But when the “Natives” are speaking, they change the sounds, just like we do in English (even though they say that they do not).  It’s same in Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, German, etc..  In fact, this is probably true of EVERY language.

ust remember.  You Can Do This!  You can learn Proper Pronunciation, Grammar, Stressed and Un-Stressed Vowel Pronunciation…  Whatever!  You learned how to walk & talk and everything else before you read this post, right?  😉 

f you can make the sounds (and I know you can) — then you can do anything that a native speaker can do.  And once you learn the proper pronunciation — you will probably be able to speak even better than most “Native Speakers”!  This is because they all learn very bad habits from TV, Movies, the other people who are not nearly as educated as you will be (or already are).

here is nothing about what she is saying that is any different from any other language.  For many years, I have lived in a country where the Cyrillic alphabet is used.  And in this alphabet, each letter is SUPPOSED to represent only one sound.  But when the “Natives” are speaking, they change the sounds, just like we do in English (even though they say that they do not).  It’s same in Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, German, etc..  In fact, this is probably true of EVERY language.

lso — don’t let what I said about telling students that something is “difficult” stop you from taking benefit from this video.  What the speaker is saying throughout the rest of the video is excellent information.  She just probably does not know about how the sub-conscious mind works.  If she did — she would probably stop saying it too.  😉