PRONUNCIATION: How to say “-ious” endings correctly in English

Hello. My name is Emma; and in today's video, I am going to teach you a

pronunciation trick. So, many of you know that, in English, sometimes the way

we spell words is different from the way we say words. So, today, we are going to

talk about how to pronounce: "i-o-u-s". "i-o-u-s" is a suffix — that means it

comes at the end of a word. I often hear many learners making mistakes with the

pronunciation of: "i-o-u-s". So, we're going to talk about: How do we pronounce

this sound, or how do we pronounce this set of letters? So, let's get started.

So, I have here three words. I want you to listen very carefully, and I want you

to tell me: For "i-o-u-s", am I pronouncing it as: "ious", or am I

pronouncing it like: "tious"? Okay? So, listen very carefully to these three

words. The first word is: "anxious". "Anxious". What do you think you hear?

Do you hear: "i-o-u-s", like: "e-us" or do you hear us anxious? If you said

this, the second part or the second answer you are correct. I O U s in this

word is pronounced as a Shas anxious. So this is very different from how we spell

this word. If you looked at the spelling, you might think it was

pronounced as ies, but in fact, we pronounce it as Shas. What about the

next word? cautious? cautious? Do you hear e us? Or do you hear shus?

cautious? The answer is, again, the second we pronounced the IO U 's like

Shas. Alright, let's look at the third word now. Spacious, spacious. So what do

you hear in this one? Do you hear see us? Or do you hear shus? Spacious?

Again, the answer is the second one we pronounce ci o u s as Shutts. So what is

the rule here? When do we pronounce words as Yes. And when do we pronounce

words like shus. We pronounce words that have IO U 's, like Shas when there is a

C, a T or an X before the eye. So in this case, we have an x, okay, so it

meets our rule. So we pronounce this like shus. In this case, we have a T

before our eye. Again, we pronounce this like shirts because there's a T here we

have a C before I owe you s if you have a C, you pronounce it like chess. And we

are going to do a lot of practice on this in a moment. But the main thing I

want you to remember for now is that with these letters C T and X we

pronounce I owe us as shots. So I'm just going to mark that off. What about other

words or other letters? Well, let's let's think about this. So again, I have

a US and I have shots. I want you to listen carefully and decide what am I

pronouncing? The first word is DVS DVS. Do you hear us at the end or do you hear

shuts? devious? Okay. You probably heard this one. And that's correct. What about

curious? Curious? Again, we hear he us. Why are we not saying it like Shas?

Well, it's because the letter before the AI is not a C. It's not a T and it's not

an x. So this is the rule for all other letters. So the ones you really need to

pay attention to are the C the T and the X. If it's a different letter.

We pronounce it as Yes. Okay, so that's a lot. But now we are going to practice

and this is an important lesson because if you realize that I owe us can be

pronounced like Shas. This can help you With your spelling, you'll start to

notice patterns and your pronunciation will become a lot better. So now let's

look at some more examples of this. Okay, so now let's look at some more

examples. So I have here a word conscious. And again, if you don't know

these words, that's okay. The focus of today is pronunciation. So you might not

understand these words, but the main focus is how do we say words with I O

us? So the first word conscious? How do we pronounce the I O us? Well, our first

question is what comes before I owe us. If there's a C, a T, or an x, we

pronounce it like Shas. If it's a different letter, we pronounce it like

s. So what do you think we pronounce it? How do you think we pronounce it? Well,

you see that there's a C. So that means we pronounce it like Shas. So the C I

owe us us has a sound like you're telling someone to be quiet. And then we

have a short use sound SHAs and an S at the end. So let's say this one together.

Con shus. conscious, conscious. Okay, excellent. Now let's go to the next

word. Okay, so we have here the word vicious, vicious. So the first question

is, you look for the I O U s, it has i o us? What is the letter that comes before

I O U S? Is it one of our special letters? Is it a C A T or an X? It's a

C. So what does that mean? That means we need to pronounce C I O U S? Like shus.

vicious, vicious. Sharks are vicious. Okay, so that's an example. Let's go to

the next word. This is a word I hear many learners use. You might have used

this word before. Now we're going to find out Have you been pronouncing this

word correctly? Or maybe you've been making a mistake? Let's find out. So the

first thing we do when we see a word like this is we look for I O U S? Okay,

we got it i o u s? And does it have one of our special letters? Yeah, it does.

It has a C. So what does that mean? Do we say delicious? Or do we say

delicious? Do we have a sh sound in here? We do we say? Delicious? So we're

pronouncing it like this delicious. Let's say this one one more time

together, because this is a very common word. Delicious. Excellent. All right.

The next word we have is this one. We look does it have I owe us? Yes, it

does. And then we look at the letter before I owe us. Okay, it's a v is v one

of our special letters. It's not a C. It's not a T and it's not an x. So what

does that mean? We pronounce it like I O U s, s. So let's say the word previous,

previous. So we're pronouncing it like this pre v s. All right, the next word

various. Again, we look at the ending, it's our IO U 's ending, we look to see

what letter is before I owe us. It's an R. It's not one of our special letters.

So we pronounce it like this. various, various. Alright, the next word is a

long word. So this might be a harder word. Again, we use the same rules. We

look to see if there's IO us there is we look at the letter before I owe us it's

a T is T one of our special letters. It's not a c t it is a special letter.

So this means we need to pronounce t i o u s like Shas. So how do we say this

word? It's a long word. We say superstitious, superstitious. So has

four parts soup Per stiff shifts shifts. So again, we have this Shas at the end.

The next word precious, I might have given it away. What do you think it is?

Well, we look to see what the letter is before I owe us. It's a C. Is that one

of our special letters? It is. So we know we need to pronounce it like this

shus. precious, precious. If you like the movie, Lord of the Rings, you might

know that the ring is called precious by one of the characters. My precious, he

always says the last word is obvious. So we look at the letter. Before I owe us

it's a V. It's not one of our special letters, which means we pronounce it he

us. Obvious, obvious. And there you have it. What I recommend you do is you

practice pronouncing the words that you use the most. So this is the rule. But

if you use words like delicious, superstitious, anxious, more than other

words, those are the words you should focus on. And again, when you find a new

word that ends in i o us, I recommend looking at the letter before the eye,

and that will help you decide how to pronounce I owe us. So thank you so much

for watching this video. You can practice what you learned here by taking

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pronunciation videos, and a lot of other videos about many different English

topics. You can also visit my website at WWW dot teacher emma.com To find more

resources. Thanks for watching.