Pronunciation Diary (Part II)

Hello everyone!

Although I knew that when it comes to my pronunciation there’s still a lot to work on, I was surprised at Frank’s feedback on the pronunciation test we did in class. According to his notes, I had problems pronouncing words I was actually quite confident about but on the other hand I pronounced words correctly of which I had thought I would never pronounce them the right way!

Here’s the list of the words I have mispronounced: 

·        model

·        knobs

·        aluminium pen tray

·        dinosaurs

·        $ 27.69

·        life vs lives
·        they’re  

Nevertheless, I have taken the feedback to heart and looked up the words I mispronounced on howjsay. I’ve practised the pronunciation several times, then I recorded it and listened to myself. A few of the words were already quite okay but some still sounded weird… I’ve also recorded myself with a mobile phone app called ‘Dragon Dictation’, which can be downloaded for free. This app records your voice and writes down everything you say – or at least everything the app understands. It can happen that you pronounce a word wrongly and that the app hears something completely different. You’ll find out easily when you look at the text the app produces!

I tried it again and again until I was (kind of) pleased with it and recorded myself again.

And now let’s move on to the fun part of this blog post!

Have you ever searched for the ten most difficult English words to pronounce? What do you think they are? Months? Legislation? Cucumber? Well on lexiphiles.com I’ve found a list (I’m sure there are several different ones on the Internet..) with ten words  that should be difficult to pronounce. 

#1 Rollerblading
#2 Miscellaneous
#3 Caucasian
#4 Deterioration
#5 Refrigerator
#6 Otolaryngology
#7 Tremendous
#8 Third
#9 Remuneration
#10 Entrepreneurship

After reading through the list I thought ‘Seriously? Rollerblading is the most difficult word?’. In order to prove how easy it is I tried to say it aloud and literally tripped over the second ‘r’. Although it is just a normal word for an everyday activity the word itself is not that easy to pronounce.

Apart from ‘rollerblading also a few other words were really difficult for me. For example the word ‘third’, although being the shortest word in the list, has its twists. Not only the ‘th’-sound but also the ‘r’ always seems to sound weird out of my mouth. Other words, however, like ‘deterioration’ or ‘tremendous’ were easier for me. A reason for this might be that pronunciation is something that depends very much on the person itself.  I’m sure every student has a different word in his mind when he or she is asked to name the most difficult word to pronounce. Therefore, it is also important that everyone develops his own methods and strategies to tackle pronunciation and to keep working on it individually!