Hey, it's Michael, and in this English Pronunciation tutorial, we're going to use the British Accent Method
to enable you to overcome one of the most challenging consonant clusters in English.
When these particular consonants fall over two syllables, the consonant cluster is the
'-ingly' word ending as in words like 'lovingly' or 'surprisingly'
and the reason why this is so challenging is because one: you've got the '-ng' sound in English the 'ng' consonant, which
most learners of English struggle with at some stage because it may not appear in your language.
But then second of all, because of the 'L' sound that comes afterward, it normally means that you end up
mispronouncing this consonant cluster in one of two different ways.
So in this tutorial, I'm going to show you first of all how to pronounce the consonants clearly and together.
I'm going to show you the simple three-step process that you need to pronounce the English consonants together.
Then, I'm going to put them into two words for you to practice and follow along to.
That's going to give you bronze level English pronunciation in the British Accent Method, you're pronouncing the sounds and the words clearly.
Then we're going to give you silver and gold level English pronunciation
by taking these words and then putting them into an actionable phrase that you
can use to practice right now, so you can actually take these words and implement them into your speaking just like a native.
So let's dive in!
So, the English word ending in words like 'lovingly' and 'surprisingly.'
First of all, let's look at these two syllables we've got the '-ing' syllable, which is very
simply the short /ɪ/ syllable followed by the 'NG' sound in English.
The 'NG' sound when it comes at the end of words is the back of the tongue touches the back of the mouth
and airflow comes out your nose
In the tutorials that you're about to watch after, this I'm going to show you
step by step how to make this sound and how to integrate it into your speaking.
Because this is a sound that causes a lot of people a lot of difficulties, okay.
So the video you're about to watch next will help you with that, but this is syllable one:
And then very simply the next syllable is
the 'L' sound followed by the /i/ ending it's the weak /i/ vowel sound so the second syllable is:
It will always be unstressed in the words that you actually pronounce
this syllable in okay when it comes at the end like this.
So these are the two syllables nice and simple.
Where it gets challenging is where you want to join them up together.
And before I give you the three-step process to confidently and clearly do this yourself.
Let me tell you about the two mistakes I normally hear people making.
Instead of doing it correctly, the first mistake is you say English where you pronounce that 'G' letter
as a 'G' sound in English. You pronounce /g/ so you get
That sound does not appear in this word, okay, especially if you're using dictionary pronunciation.
There are certain regional accents that will pronounce that /g/ sound, but in standard dictionary BBC English
pronunciation, if you want to call it that, you don't pronounce the 'G' sound, okay.
the other mispronunciation of this that I hear is when people pronounce an n sound instead of an /ŋ/ sound
in that '-ING' word ending, so instead of '-ingly,' which is correct, what I hear is
'Lovinly'
And the reason why that happens is because the 'L' sound afterwards, the starting position
the tip of the tongue touches the alveolar ridge right behind your teeth here
that is the same tongue position as the 'N' sound. So it's often easier for people to say '-inly' instead of '-ingly,' all right.
It's a very subtle difference, but it does actually make quite a big difference to your pronunciation
and native speakers might often recognize that something's not quite right there if they hear you pronouncing it like that, okay.
and that's why I'm teaching it to you.
So those are the two mistakes. Now let's dive into the three-step process that you can use to confidently and
clearly do this, and then we're going to put it into two words and then a phrase, okay.
So here is the three-step process to make the '-ingly' word ending
step one is you go into the /ŋ/ sound, so:
Very simply, and I am oversimplifying it here and that's why you want to watch the tutorials after this.
The back of the tongue touches the back of the mouth and airflow comes out your nose.
Alright.
Step two is whilst you're making that sound and the back of your tongue is touching
the back of your mouth, the front of your tongue the tip comes up to make the 'L' position. So:
Can you see that my tongue is coming up whilst I'm making that sound, and the sound doesn't change?
The sound doesn't need to change because the sound is made from the back of the mouth here
and the airflow coming out your nose, so bringing your tongue up to the 'L' position whilst you're
making this doesn't affect the sound. That's what we want to achieve so /ŋ/
and then step three, and it's quite simple for me to explain but it will require some practice on your part, is
you transition to the airflow coming out of your mouth at the same time that you release the back
of your tongue and the front of your tongue for the 'L' sound.
So the way to do that is this:
You want to get that transition where all three things happen at the same time as close as possible
and what you want to avoid is them happening at different times, so for example:
That middle sound that you heard there that is the back of my tongue dropping down an airflow
coming out my mouth, whilst the tip of my tongue stays in the l position before we release it.
We want to minimize that sound and ideally, do the release of all three points
at exactly the same time, okay. So if I do that process again nice and slowly, you get:
If you can hear a transition there it happens as close as possible and then very
simply you just want to make the '-ly' ending. So if I now do all of this together:
So that's how you make this transition and these two challenging syllables together.
Now let's pop them into two words so you have some real-world application.
Then we're going to put them into a phrase, okay. So the word-- word one is:
Nice and slowly:
Can you hear you're not hearing that transition there as in 'surprisingly'
There's not that sound, it's just 'surprisingly,' okay.
Now, the second word is 'lovingly,' okay same thing.
Now once you can pronounce these two words clearly and
confidently you've already done half of the hard work, okay, and you should pat yourself
on the back because it's not easy what you have just accomplished. However, what you have
just accomplished will be useless if you can't actually take these words and now integrate them
into your English speaking with the good quality pronunciation that you've just developed.
That's why we use the Silver Level in the British Accent Method, to take what you've just done
and now implement it into your English speaking. So, let's dive in. I'm going to give you a phrase
that you can take to practice integrating these words and this point into your English speaking, okay.
And it's a challenging phrase, the phrase is:
I'll do it one time slowly, then I'm going to show you how you can apply Gold-Level English Pronunciation to this phrase.
So there is a phrase that you can take to actually integrate these words into your English speaking
and practice using them in real context, and I recommend that you follow along to that as many times as you need to
to become confident with it. But I want to give you Gold-Level English Pronunciation now
and Gold-Level English Pronunciation is when you're taking these words and pronouncing them clearly
that's Bronze-Level. Silver-Level is you're then integrating them into your English speaking in a natural
way with connected speech and rhythm. And then Gold-Level English Pronunciation is when you're
taking them and applying tonality and intonation to the phrases that you're saying which enables
you to communicate more effectively because you're using sub-verbal communication to deliver your message, okay.
So I was using two tonalities in that phrase I gave you there, let me show you exactly
what they were so you can be aware of them and apply this to yourself for you to develop
Gold-Level English Pronunciation.
The first tonality that I applied there was a rising tonality
and a rising tonality in English indicates that there's more to come. Okay, so what I said there was
'surprisingly' and I used an upwards intonation on the word 'surprisingly.'
And the reason why I did that was because there was more to come in the phrase.
In writing what you might do there is put a comma after surprisingly.
'Surprisingly she lovingly presided over them,' okay.
So, the rising intonation is a bit like putting a comma there it indicates that there's more to come, alright.
'Surprisingly'
And then for the rest of the phrase, and the second intonation, I'm going to use a downwards intonation
which indicates finality in what I'm saying. So:
'Surprisingly, she lovingly presided over them'
Can you hear how the tonality drops there at the end?
And that indicates to your listener, one; finality, but two; certainty and confidence in what you're saying
If I wasn't confident in what I'm saying, I'd use a different intonation pattern
which I talk about in another video.
But these are the two main tonalities that you want to apply to your English and you want to make sure that you're
applying them in the right way, so that you don't come across as rude or offensive in English.
And again I explain why that might be the case in this video up here or in the description.
So that is how you take this challenging consonant cluster in English, pronounce it correctly
put it into words correctly so you get Bronze-Level pronunciation. Put those words into a phrase and
get Silver pronunciation, and then apply Gold-Level pronunciation to them with intonation and tonality.
However, all of this will be completely irrelevant if you can't already pronounce
the /ŋ/ sound with clear pronunciation. If you're piling on Silver and Gold-Level pronunciation
when you can't already pronounce the /ŋ/ sound clearly, it's still going to stop you from
achieving clear British pronunciation where you're feeling confident when you're speaking, okay.
So, in the playlist that you're about to watch after this, I've created a few short tutorials that
will show you step by step how to master the /ŋ/ sound, why it's different to the 'N' sound in English
and everything you need to know to confidently pronounce this sound in your English speaking.
Whenever I work with clients one-to-one in my pronunciation program, this is a sound that I
nearly always give some personal feedback to my clients on, because it's so important if you
want to speak English like a native or just speak English more naturally and more confidently, okay.
So this is the playlist to watch next where you're going to see step by step how to master this sound.
And this is going to give you an instant boost in confidence to your English speaking
and it's going to help you to speak English more confidently and more like a native, okay.
So check this video out now, and I'll see you here in just a second!