hi there today let's talk about pronunciation i've been collecting a list of words that people tell
me are hard to pronounce in english and today i'm going to present a few of those and we'll
go through how to pronounce them one by one by the way before we get started i just want to let
you know that i am a speaker of american english if you're new here you might not know that i was
born and raised in the united states and i'm a native speaker of english it's important for you
to know what accent you're listening to so this is american english the first group of words we're
going to look at are words that have the american r and an l sound and we sometimes call this
l a dark l because it is made a little bit farther back in the mouth and it can be quite difficult
to pronounce so let's look at the first one rural is the opposite of urban it means you know in the
countryside rural so if that's hard for you to pronounce just try to take it slowly rural girl
girl and for that one you want to sort of blend the r into the l so the r the tongue is going
to come and curl however the tongue does not touch anything when we make the r in english
it's just hanging out there in the mouth but it's not touching the top of the mouth girl
girl to make the l you're going to put your tongue touching the area that's behind your teeth
girl world that's also a hard one world now think about the r l and d as being separate sounds and
try to go through them one by one after it gets easier you can speed it up world world world world
finally rarely rarely means seldom or not very often and it's a common adverb that we use
rarely rarely again think of the r and the l sound separately rarely rarely
in the next group i have words where a consonant sound is dropped facts we have
but we don't pronounce all three consonants that's too difficult if i pronounce all three
consonants it is facts and it's really hard to say so what we do is we drop the middle one
we drop the t facts facts so it's facts the next one is months two months three months we don't
pronounce the sound because it's too difficult to say months so we just drop it and we say months
months and finally we have clothes clothes sounds just like close the door
close close don't say the th sound close the next group i have for you is words with the voiceless
th sound now if this sound is hard for you check out my th sound video in which i explain in detail
how to make the f sound but these are three common words and it is important for you to try to make
the sound even if it's not perfect it's better to try in the first one we have the word third
third so again even if your th sound is not perfect it's better than nothing if you try
to make it third you want to be sure that you don't say turd because the word turd literally
means a piece of poop so you don't want to confuse those third the next word is math this is a common
word that my students say because my students are college students and they take math classes some
of them even major in math so they need to be able to pronounce the word math again if the th
is hard for you just do your best math and finally we have the number three such a common word theory
think about the th and the r being separate sounds and then try to blend them together three three
the next group is words with sound now a lot of languages don't have a v sound and often people
will substitute a w here but in english are very different sounds we don't say them in the same
way so if the v sound is new for you check out my v sound video i explain in detail how to make it
however you want to notice that you're going to put your teeth on top of your bottom lip
and then there should be some vibration that happens in the first word we have vaccine now
that's a common word right now vaccine so you're going to start with the the sound
and then you're going to have the vowel ah vaccine and then the cc sounds like vaccine
vaccine the next one is the word vegetable and this word is a little bit tricky because
the second syllable is dropped vegetable we don't say vegetable we say vegetable veg table
vegetable again you make sure you say a v sound and not a w and finally we have the word vowel
okay the last group is just a mix of words that are hard and um the first one is the word little
little so notice in american english that those t's are going to sound like a fast d little if you
want to know more about this rule you can check out my video about tea in the middle of words
little in the next word we have pizza this is a really common word in the us
because we love to eat pizza and a lot of times i hear people say pisa but it's
sounds like t s pizza and the next one is schedule
this is a word that has a different pronunciation in british english so if you're in the us you want
to notice that we say schedule the ch sounds like a k and then the d u sounds like jewel schedule
next one is attitude now here i marked the stress with the red line
attitude attitude she has a good attitude let's try to have a positive attitude next one is
biology and these two last words i put here because the bi prefix which by the way
um in this one it means two and here bio means life the bi or bio sounds like buy not be
biology biology biology notice that you're going to link these two vowels by biology
and next we have bilingual bilingual bilingual is an adjective that you can use to describe a
person who speaks two languages like you you are bilingual or maybe you are multilingual if you
speak more than two languages bilingual so those are all the words i have for you today please let
me know in the comments below what other words are hard for you to pronounce and i'll make
another video like this one in which i explain difficult words to pronounce in english please
be sure to give this video a like if you found it helpful and i will see you again soon take care