Words English Speakers Say WRONG MY Pronunciation Fail
well hey there i’m emma from
english i don’t know if you’ve started
to notice yet or not but
native english speakers sometimes
disagree about the correct pronunciation
of
some english words and sometimes people
can be
really harsh about it unnecessarily
i always get called out if i say h
instead of
h heaven forbid
that said there are some common
pronunciation
errors that native speakers make and
i’ve got 11 of them that i want to share
with you in today’s lesson
and spoiler alert there is one that i
have been mispronouncing
all of my life
[Music]
have you subscribed yet if you love my
lessons at
english then let’s make it official okay
hit that subscribe button down there
and if you want to share this lesson
with your friends or your colleagues
please do it always helps this is going
to be an interesting lesson
for english learners of all levels but
especially advanced level students
we’re going to focus on vocabulary and
pronunciation skills today
and this particular lesson is also going
to be
quite relevant to native english
speakers
who may have been pronouncing these
words
wrong for most of their lives
myself included now the reality is that
there
are differences in pronunciation between
english accents and different dialects
and me personally i don’t really believe
that there is just
one single correct way of pronouncing
a word in english you know the most
important thing
is that you are understood even if your
pronunciation
is not dictionary perfect all right so
keep that in mind
the first one ironically
is pronunciation so it’s
pronunciation not pronunciation
now i think it’s easy enough to see how
this mistake happens right we have the
verb
pronounce pronounce and that has the
ow vowel sound in there pronounce
pronounce but the noun
pronunciation pronunciation
has that uh vowel sound in there
none pronunciation i mean
you can see the different sounds right
and you can actually see that they are
written differently as well right the
spelling’s different so that’s a clue
this is the one that drives me crazy as
an english teacher i’m using it
all of the time but i have to restrain
myself when i hear
other people pronouncing it incorrectly
and this is my friends my family members
okay it’s not pronunciation it’s
pronunciation pronunciation
if you’re a native speaker and you’re
hearing this for the first time
try and catch yourself the next time you
use this word casually in a conversation
listen to how you pronounce it or how
other people around you
pronounce it and i guarantee you
50 of the people will mess it up it’s
that common
so how about this one do you say
regime or regime
the second one is the correct
pronunciation
regime regime the first syllable
sounds like rey
so it’s not that short unstressed sound
regime regime it’s raging
now for all of my english students out
there this consonant sound
[Music]
can be a little tricky right it’s the
voiced
consonant sound that pairs with shh
so this is unvoiced
uses our voice box but the exact same
mouth position to make that sound
so we say re
regime regime
status this one could be a little
contentious
but it should be pronounced as status
not with the short a vowel sound like
status but status
status though you will hear native
speakers
say both and to be honest look i think
it’s so
often mispronounced that it’s just
become pretty normal right
if it’s not already an accepted
pronunciation it
probably soon will be status
is correct status is very common
picture picture
picture so i’m just going to draw your
attention to that little
k sound right there okay
it’s really important that you make that
sound otherwise
you are saying the word picture
picture so when this word is pronounced
correctly
you will hear that sound picture
picture picture not
picture very subtle but this one
is often mispronounced by native
speakers
this one quasi quasi
my mind has been blown i thought this
was
quasi quasi but then i looked it up in
the dictionary and
i’m quite wrong i’ve been pronouncing it
wrong my entire life
i feel like this is so often pronounced
as quasi i’m sure that there are many
native english speakers who are out
there right now
realizing the error of their ways just
like me is your mind blown too
quasi not quasi
quasi now if you’re wondering
what the heck is quasi anyway
well let me explain it for you quasi is
a prefix which means it is part of a
word
and it’s added to the front of a word
prefix at the front
suffix at the back but you can’t use
quasi on its own right it always has to
be together with another word and it
forms
a noun or an adjective and by adding
quasi you’re
describing something as like that thing
but not actually being it okay so if i
said
a family was quasi-religious
it means that they appear to be
religious
but they’re not really okay so it’s a
very cool advanced english word or
prefix that now we know how to pronounce
correctly
don’t we so this is spherical
not spherical okay
so a sphere is an object that is shaped
like a ball a sphere this
is a sphere three-dimensional
and so it’s really easy to see how this
word
is mispronounced right it’s an easy
mistake to make
sphere equal spherical
right well no actually the adjective
spherical is pronounced with a different
vowel sound okay so it’s not
spherical but spherical
spherical and lots of native speakers
mess that one up
ask it’s a pretty simple verb right
but you’d be surprised how many native
english speakers
mispronounce it i was listening to a
podcast just
a few days ago and someone was saying
it’s important to
ask your customers for feedback
so have it that they’ve probably had
since they were a child and
they’re probably not even aware of it
you know
it’s ah
ask and to be fair that consonant
cluster is tricky
even for native english speakers you
will often hear
little kids mispronouncing it as well
but it is ask
not ax and actually that’s not the only
example of this
pronunciation mistake either it happens
quite a bit with the
s sound being pronounced as x instead
so espresso sometimes
some native speakers will say expresso
expresso which is incorrect
unless i guess you are having a
really fast coffee right super fast to
go
an expresso but if it’s just regular
coffee
espresso espresso is the way to go
and especially especially not
especially this one happens a lot this
mistake
a lot of native speakers will make this
same mistake
so if you especially like espresso
coffee
you want to make sure you spend a little
bit of time practicing the correct
pronunciation of espresso and
especially athlete
athlete now this is two syllables only
not three okay you may hear some
native speakers making a little mistake
there and adding a third syllable in
athlete athlete
now unfortunately this pronunciation
actually results in
some spelling errors as well so it’s
best to focus on the correct
pronunciation right
so that you don’t make spelling errors
as well but this
combination of consonants here is pretty
tricky
so you might find that you’re actually
adding that extra little schwa sound in
there
slipping it in to make it easier to work
those two sounds in together
[Music]
this is actually incorrect you want to
do is try and push those consonant
sounds
together even closer and to practice it
this is great pronunciation practice
for any consonant clusters instead of
adding a sound between the consonant
cluster
just pause okay so we have
f
leaked okay so don’t open your mouth
before you finish the sound
f
and then start bringing those sounds
closer together
athlete athlete
athlete athlete so
keep your tongue touching your teeth at
all times all right
first touching the bottom of your teeth
then slipping behind
supposed and supposedly are both
really interesting when we start to
focus on the correct pronunciation
supposed is usually used with the two
infinitive following so suppose
to supposed to do supposed to be
all right this is a really common phrase
to learn
together as a chunk and focusing on
the pronunciation the natural
pronunciation
with those reduced sounds supposed
supposed to do supposed to be
supposed to buy now native speakers
actually
take quite a bit of liberty with this
pronunciation and often
reduce it down to sposter
sposter so it’s really tricky to even
recognize
what the individual words are right
sposter
supposed what am i supposed to do about
it
what am i supposed to do but when we
move along to the
adverb form supposedly
well that’s when native speakers can
really start making a few errors
right that d is often mispronounced as a
b sound supposably
supposedly and we use supposedly when
maybe you don’t agree with something but
it’s what
some people are saying or believing in
anyway
that house is supposedly haunted
kind of suggesting that you don’t really
believe if it’s true you’re not sure
so there you have it that was 11 english
words that
many native english speakers pronounce
incorrectly
i wonder if any of them surprised you
quasi was definitely a shock for me
i think i’m still recovering from it i’m
not sure how long it’s going to take me
to adjust
look all in all pronunciation errors are
not a huge
deal so long as you’re understood right
but my point today
is that if you think that native
speakers have one
perfect way of saying a word in english
it’s often not true
amongst native english speakers we will
bicker about the correct way to
pronounce something we do it
all the time but the good thing is we
usually
just get by right we still manage to
communicate with each other
despite our differences and our
disagreements
now if you haven’t subscribed to english
yet please do
it definitely helps me to share my
lessons with as many english learners as
i can
so hit that red button right down there
and turn
on notifications so that i can let you
know when i’ve got a new lesson ready
for you
and if you’re ready for a new lesson
right now we’ll check out these ones
right here i’ll see you in there