Pronunciation Diary

Hello Hello!

I have to admit that I pulled this off for a long time now, but guess what: I was watching my favourite series when I suddenly realized that the main character pronounced the word controversial in a weird way. Immediately I decided to see whether his pronunciation was wrong or whether I have always pronounced it the wrong way. Here are my findings:
I looked it up on 3 different pages and it turns out that they all pronounce it like this. In the series, however, it was pronounced controverSIAL. He really pronounced every single letter and stressed the a. I guess the actor made a mistake there.
I'm giving you this little story just to make clear what finally gave me my motivation to get this done.

Well, let's start with the pronunciation model. The question of all questions: do I choose British or American pronunciation?
Even though I have to say that I like the British accent far more I think I will stick with the American one. There are two reasons for that: Firstly, I think it's the easier one and secondly, I'm watching many American series and therefore am used to the American accent more than to the British accent.







This already brings me on to something I consider important when you want to learn proper pronunciation: have some input from natives. In my case this is watching series and movies in their original languages, which is most frequently English. This is simply the easiest way to get in touch with English in my everyday life as I  don't know any natives here in Graz - besides our teachers.

Pronunciation is so important because, as it is mentioned on antimoon.com:

"Pronunciation is definitely the biggest thing that people notice when you are speaking English."

This quote applies to us even more because we are no natives and therefore a good pronunciation is something we have to learn. It doesn't just pop in naturally as it does with our mother tongue, we have to put an effort into it. 

I did have some pronunciation-related fun when I was working in Ireland. I was helping some people with their horses who came from another part of town and did not know me at all and did not know that I was not a native. After a while they asked me where I am from because I didn't sound "Greysteel born and bred", as they put it. They reacted rather surprised when I told them that I was not even from Ireland but from Austria. Just like those, many people were surprised when I told them that I was from Austria, they seem to be expecting German speakers to speak terrible, terrible English.

The pronunciation pages are all very useful, even though I am not more than halfway through now I already realized many things. I particularly liked the link to the Warwick University webpage.

One thing I know I have to take real care of is the following: 

When I talk really quickly I often start to swallow some syllables or pronounce sounds wrong even though I actually know how to pronounce them correctly (e.g. different pronunciation of v and w). This usually only happens when I get excited and start to talk really fast and don't think about the right way of saying things any more. I do hear my mistakes, however, and correct myself as soon a make the mistake. Still, I would sound far better if I didn't make those mistakes in the first place.