Good morning, good afternoon and good tidings to all men! Welcome to Smashing English's 12
Days of Christmas! Yes, in the lead-up to Christmas we're going to be giving you 12
videos and live streams to help you learn a bit more about how to talk about Christmas in English!
And today we're talking pronunciation. Now, there are eight words that as English teachers we hear
people mispronouncing quite often. And to be honest, I understand why. English has a lot of
really weird pronunciations and a lot of Christmas words are quite unique and individual. So,
of course there's going to be mispronunciations. So Bez is going to give you some common
mispronunciation of... this word. "It's snowing at Christmas!" "a Christmas present? For me?"
"Merry Christmas!". Okay, this is the big word. I'm sure you're thinking well of course I know
how to pronounce that. But a lot of people do say crist mass or Chris mass. So all you need
to remember is it's Chris muss. Don't say the T, okay? Christmas. And then the m-a-s on the end it
comes from the word mass. But we don't say Mass, we do mus. Easy peasy! The man with the big, white
beard and the red hat. What's his name? "I love you Santa Claus". Now, this originally comes from
Dutch. Now, I believe this word can be pronounced by a lot of different countries more with an
ow sound on the end like Santa Claus or maybe Sinta Claas. Something along that line. However,
when you see this name in an English-speaking context it's got to be Santa Claus. Like claws.
It's a homophone for the things that animals have, claws. Santa Claus. AU. Like that. So
make sure that you're not doing an AW sound make sure it's forward AU. Okay, imagine the scene..
you go to a church on Christmas evening to hear a beautiful_____. "I'm really excited for the next
performance. It's a Christmas Choir". Now, this word looks bizarre. It's a really weird-looking
word. It looks like Choioioir. But all you need to remember is it's KWI - YUH. There's a YUH in there
even though there's no YUH written. Next up, Bez, who is this man? "Don't be such a Scrooge!". Now,
I hear this a lot with my Spanish-speaking students. When there's a hard G sound, like in
this word, they tend to do something like Scrooge with a GE sound. Scrooge with a J sound on it. So,
if your native language is Spanish just revise how you pronounce the G, J and Y actually! Those are
the sounds that tend to be the biggest problem. Yoo-hoo come kiss me under the ______. "Come kiss
me under the mistletoe". Again, we've got weird, silent letters. I don't know why, we have this T
in there but it's not mistal, it's mistle, mistle. Like, there's just two s's in there. Mistletoe,
it's the same with this thistle. Not thistle. So we've got mistletoe. Forget the T, okay? Now,
if Santa comes down the chimney he's covered in what? "Oh look! Santa's covered in soot!". Okay,
now I want you to think about this word in the same way as you think about foot. So, we've got
that double O, but we don't say foot. Same with look, we've got a double O but we don't go look.
So, it's the same here. We don't say soot, we say soot. Okay? That UH sound is really tricky for a
lot of people. The lips have to be forward, the tongue is just resting behind the bottom teeth and
it's lifting up a little bit. Okay, number seven! "A Christmas card? For me? Thank you so much!
'Dear Greg, Merry Xmas from Louis'. Thank you Louis". We write Xmas we don't say Xmas,
okay? Really weird to hear someone saying Xmas. If you see Xmas read Christmas. And number eight, if
you believe in the Christian origin of Christmas you believe that it is the day that who was born?
"We celebrate Jesus". Now this is probably one of the most famous names on the planet so of course
there's going to be lots of different versions of it. However, in the English-speaking world
it's almost always Jesus. So you've got J sound it's G like or a YUH. It's GEE then ZUSS. Then Z.
A voiced S more like a Z. GEE-Z-USS. Us. Like us, together. With an unvoiced S. So the whole thing,
Jesus. Now you know how to pronounce lots of Christmas words so you won't make those
mistakes again! And there we go! I hope that was useful for you! If you enjoyed this video please
subscribe and give it a like and we will see you next time for the next day of Christmas! Ta-ta!