I hope I'm not the only one who completely forgot or just didn't get that we actually have to write two blog entries about pronunciation. :)
Anyway, here's my second one, I hope you'll enjoy it.
First of all, I have to say that I was really surprised and even more pleased when I read my feedback. Apparently my pronunciation already is on a pretty good level.
In my comment section I found exactly three mistakes:
| Spalt | AE is "easier", but BE is "much nicer". | spiral | paediatric nurse, post-natal psychology |
I have to admit that the first one surprised me. I actually was entirely sure that I spelled spiral the correct way, but I checked on it now and realized that it is actually pronounced like this.
The other two mistakes are, in my personal opinion, forgivable, as they belong to rather specialized vocabulary and are not really part of our everyday speech. Of course, I should have checked on these two words, just to make sure they are pronounced the way I pronounced them, but honestly, it did not even occur to me that they might be pronounced in another way then the one I thought. Anyway, here are the links to the correct pronunciation - listen to it, it might surprise you as well:
paediatric nurse
To be perfectly honest, I have reduced my work with the pronunciation pages and links to a minimum, which is mostly due to the fact that I feel completely weird and crazy and out of my mind if I sit in front of my laptop repeating things someone in a video said.
This does not mean that I stopped to work on my pronunciation, however. I have two rather close friends, one from Northern Ireland and one from Australia, who both agreed on skyping with me once a week and help me with my pronunciation. These sessions usually last about half an hour to an hour and really help me a lot. Whenever I am uncertain of the pronunciation of a word I just can ask them, and whenever they notice a mistake I'm making they correct me. This really helps, especially because I don't consider it as studying but as fun talks with my friends who help me to improve my English. Also, I realized that I'm getting surer of my spoken production and don't have to think about the way of saying things that often any more.
Another thing I started doing was not only watching movies and series for fun any more but actually listening to the actors' pronunciation. Now, whenever a word sounds weird to me or I thought it would be pronounced differently I write it down and look it up on howjsay to check the correct pronunciation. If there is anything new to me I repeat the word several times.
To give you an impression on how this works I will demonstrate it here:
here's the link to a video I found from the series Perception - sorry that I didn't just post the actual video here, but apparently blogger does not want me to and claims not being able to find the video I want to use. Anyway, I was watching this part of the series a few weeks ago and here are my notes:
hallUcinate: Even though I know the word I would probably not have stressed the second syllable as much as she does, so to remind me of that I underlined the stress when I wrote it down in my notebook.
figment: If I had read the word I would probably have pronounced it the same way as he does in the video, but as I did not even know the word I decided to write it down nevertheless. Just so you kno, it means Fantasieprodukt/Hirngespinst, or simply something that you/your mind makes up.
neurochemical impulse: I did know the pronunciation of neurochemical, but I was rather surprised that you barely can hear the u in his pronunciation of impulse. Apparently it is correct (even though it might have been aggravated by his way/speed of speaking), so I'll take this pronunciation up from now on.
I do the same thing with words I read in books. As I'm reading part two of the Game of Thrones series right now, this happens pretty often, because the language that is used in there is pretty far from the everyday English that I'm usually using and that we're learning in our classes.
dour: Yes! I would have pronounced it like the second version he's saying. (mürrisch)
crows: I know, I know, a well-known and old word for us, but I ALWAYS catch myself saying crAus instead of croUs.
morose: I would not have stressed the s...a thing to remember! (griesgrämig/mürrisch)
maul: Yes! That's the way I would have said it. (Dreikanter/Schlägel -> must be some hammer-thingy for fighting)
So, as you can see, my list is growing quickly, and about once or twice a week I skim through it to remind myself of the correct pronunciation of complicated words.
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