Pronuncia - Lettura - Trascrizione
Hello everybody! Welcome to the EnglishBlog. In this podcast, you’ll be learning some interesting English on why the language is so difficult to pronounce.
Before starting, let me first explain that the lesson is divided into two parts:
PART ONE: you’ll be listening to some useful English expressions; you’ll then hear a short explanation of these words, followed by an example of how they are used.
PART TWO: you’ll be listening to information on some of the reasons why Wnglish is so difficult to pronounce.
So let’s start!
Woman: Now let’s listen to some useful words that will help you understand the article.
Listen and learn:
Woman: Spelling
Man: Spelling is a noun. It is the way that letters are organised to make a word. To spell is the verb form
Listen to this short conversation:
Man: I’m terrible at spelling.
Woman: What’s the problem?
Man: How do you spell opinion? Does it have 1 or 2 “p”s?
Woman: One “p”, you spell it O-P-I-N-I-O-N.
Man: Thank you.
Woman: A vowel
Man: A vowel is any of the sounds represented in English by the letters, “a” “e” “I” “o” “u”
For example
Woman: Why do “does” “goes and “shoes” have different sounds, if they use exactly the same vowels, “o” and “e”?
Man: I have absolutely no idea. English can be a strange language, there is often a mismatch between pronunciation and spelling.
Woman: A consonant
Man: A consonant is any of the letters in the English alphabet that are not vowels.
For example:
Woman: Excuse me why is the past of “play” “played” and the past of “study” “studied”?
Man: Because there is the consonant “d” before the “y”, so all verbs that end with a consonant and a “y” follow this rule, such as hurry, marry etc.
Woman: Mmmmm, thanks.
Woman: An address book.
Man: This is a small book, that has sections that follow the alphabet, where you normally write down your friends, colleagues etc addresses and telephone numbers in the appropriate section. i.e. for Charles Jones, you would insert his name, address and phone number under “J”.
For example:
Woman: Have you seen my address book? I want to write a letter to Frank Smith.
Man: It’s in its usual place by the telephone.
Woman: Now let’s listen to some information on some of the reasons why English pronunciation is so difficult. This article is adapted from www.askoxford.com
All languages exist as speech long before any written form appears. People like the written word or rather spelling to match the way we pronounce words. Unfortunately the English language has a mismatch between the spelling of words and their pronunciation. This is partly because English uses the Roman alphabet, that was originally devised for Latin, an older language with patterns of sounds and grammatical structures that differ from English.
There are over 40 sounds in English but only 26 letters to represent them. Some letters represent one sound, for example, f, l, m, and z. But most letters can represent more than 1 sound. For example the consonant c is pronounced differently in the 3 words cake, city, and church. The vowel e is different in the words den, pretty and patient, and sometimes it is not pronounced at all, especially at the end of words, for example come and dance.
Hence it is important if you are studying English, to write down new words in an address book, along side the spelling of a word, and from a dictionary to write down its phonetic symbols. This way you learn the phonetic alphabet, and improve your English pronunciation.
Woman: If you wish you can hear this lesson again. In the meantime we hope we have helped you to be more confident with your English. Watch out for the next topic. Thank you for using the EnglishBlog.
povera… tutto sto lavoro e non ti caca nessuno
:(
ciao. forse, come dici tu "nessuno ti caca" :)) pero' di sicuro ci sono molti che utilizzano questo fantastico blog. Anzi, approfitto per ringraziare gli autori che stanno facendo davvero un lavoro spettacolare!!!!
Mi aggrego ad Angelo nei ringraziamenti. Lo staff di Englishblog sta facendo un ottimo lavoro. L'altro giorno sono andato in treno da napoli a roma e durante gran parte del tragitto ho ascoltato i loro podcast.
E poi non avevo mai visto un servizio completamente gratuito fatto così bene. Altri siti offrono le prime lezioni o solo parte di esse e poi ti richiedono la registrazione ed un pagamento per accedere al servizio completo.
Grande EnglishBlog continuate così…
magari con lo spagnolo…
Confermo anche io.
Ho scoperto da poco questo blog ed è davvero molto utile.
Complimenti
Sul sito http://www.howjsay.com/ è possibile scrivere una parola e sentirne la pronuncia (americana) presenti 65744 vocaboli,
Thanks!
Ho 71 anni sto imparando l'inglese da un pò di tempo. L'anno scorso sono andata in Florida e mi è stato utile, bravissimi sono contenta di avervi scoperti, grazie alla radio ho colto il Vs. sito.manuela continua così. ciao