How to Pronounce ANY WORD in English! | Go Natural English

- Hi, I'm Gabby from gonaturalenglish.com

where you can learn English fluency

and confident communication.

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At the end of this video

I'm going to tell you how you can learn more

with me at gonaturalenglish.com

but right now I want to share a lesson with you

on how you can learn how to pronounce

words in English immediately

the first time that you see a new vocabulary word.

The problem is that you probably read

a lot in English.

A lot of people learn English by reading textbooks

or maybe reading what your teacher wrote on the board

or maybe you had handouts.

In any case, a lot of people are more comfortable

with reading in English than speaking

because when you see a word in print,

it's easy to read and you can relate that word in print

to the meaning but if you're not used to listening

to English it's not always clear

how you pronounce the word

because the way words are spelled

and the way that they're pronounced in English

are often very different and misleading.

Have you ever seen a word in English

and you haven't been sure how to say it?

Tell me in the comments.

What do you think are the most difficult words

in English to pronounce?

I would love to hear from you.

So words are often spelled very differently

than they sound in English.

That's a fact, a very well known fact

that you are definitely familiar with.

So the question is, how can we learn

how to pronounce the words

in an easy, effective way?

I'm gonna share steps with you

on how you can do this.

It's important to understand how to pronounce words

because what a lot of people do

is they just avoid using the words

that they don't know how to say

but this doesn't help you build your vocabulary,

it doesn't help you be a better communicator

and it doesn't help you become more fluent in English.

So I know what it's like.

I've done the same thing

because I'm learning Portuguese

and sometimes when I don't know

how to pronounce a word,

even though I know the word,

I know what it means,

I still have avoided using it

because I wasn't confident

on how to pronounce it.

I strongly recommend that as you learn new words

and how to pronounce them

that you use this tool

that I call C-R-U or CRU

which is Connect, Repeat, and Use.

This is a Go Natural English method

to help you with pronunciation and memorizing vocabulary

and your fluency in English.

So again, connect the word with a sound

or a concept or an idea or another word

that you already know to make it easier to remember.

Repeat it and use it.

So how can you repeat it?

Well, we need to take notes

on how the word sounds and its definition

and how we could use it.

So it's important that you have a vocabulary notebook.

It could be a paper notebook.

It could be on your smartphone.

I like to take notes in Google Keep

but I also am old school

and I like to write in a paper notebook as well.

So make sure you have whatever works best for you,

digital or hard copy.

Make sure you have a notebook.

And finally, use!

The most important step here is that you need

to use a word as soon

as you learn the correct pronunciation.

Make sure that you repeat the word out loud.

First, you listen to the word

then you use it.

You have to say the word out loud

and the best way to say it out loud is with feeling,

like you mean it.

So even if it's a simple word,

let's take the word gumption, for example,

which is a fun sounding word.

I really like it.

Say it with feeling.

Not just gumption.

I'm just repeating the word because I'm studying.

But gumption!

Yes, with feeling!

Gumption actually means with resilience

or with effort so it makes sense

to repeat it in this way.

You've got gumption!

Yes, excellent.

So back to how to learn how to pronounce a word in English.

Really, the best resource

that we have nowadays is technology.

It's changed language learning and everything around us

and Google is a great resource.

If you just Google a new vocabulary word

most of the time the first result

will be not only the definition

but the audio of how to say the word.

Just double check that you're hearing

the American accent version if you're looking

in an audio dictionary

because you may hear different audios

if you're using, for example, the Oxford Dictionary Online.

It's totally fine with me

if you're learning British English

but just a reminder, I teach American English

and sometimes it can be confusing

if you're learning different varieties

of English at the same time

so I encourage you to choose one variety

and go with it.

But this lesson is not specifically

about American English or British English.

It's about how to learn how to pronounce a word in English.

So your first step should be to consult Google

or an online dictionary with audio.

You could also ask a fluent or native speaker of English

and they should be able to help you with a lot of words,

however keep in mind that if you're asking

about a very specific, technical,

or academically advanced word,

not all native speakers automatically know how

to pronounce any word.

So for those kind of specific, technical,

academic words you might just want

to go straight to an online dictionary.

So remember, don't avoid saying new words.

Find out how to pronounce them and then use them.

The first step in improving your pronunciation

is to understand that words in English

sound very different than the way that they're written.

The second step is to consult

an online dictionary with audio.

The third step is to use your English learning notebook

to take notes on the word, the definition,

how it sounds to you,

and how you might use it in a sentence.

Online dictionaries will give you examples.

The most important key here for pronunciation

is to write down how the word sounds to you,

the way that you hear it

and the way that it would make sense to spell it

if you could create the spelling of the word.

This will help you to review the pronunciation later.

It's also very important to mark the stressed syllable.

In language classes, I often get frustrated

when a teacher just tells me to just learn it

or just memorize it.

That's why I want to share strategies

and techniques with you to help you to memorize

because it's not always so easy or automatic

to just remember something the first time you hear it.

So that's why I mention the Go Natural English CRU method,

Connect, Repeat, and Use.

Another way that you can connect words in your journal

is to group new words by the sounds that they have in them.

So, for example, the word gumption.

We could group this with other words

that end in T-I-O-N like function or nation.

This could help us remember

that the T-I-O-N sounds like shun.

You could also do this with shorter words

and group them by vowel sound

so if you have trouble pronouncing the word said

which is a difficult word for many English learners.

They often make the mistake

of pronouncing both vowels separately like sayeed.

You could group this word, said,

with other similar vowel sounds like bed,

fed, wed, and said.

To improve your pronunciation,

it's very important to expose yourself to more English

so this means listening to more English.

You could listen to more podcasts,

more YouTube videos, listen to the news in English.

I recommend that you listen

to more Go Natural English videos

and there's also a Go Natural English podcast.

You can slow down videos on YouTube and in podcasts

or speed them up if you're ready for a challenge.

When you listen to more English,

it will definitely help you

to become more familiar with the sounds in English

and you may hear words

and subconsciously remember them later.

So it's always a good idea

to listen more and have more input as we call it.

You can also listen to audiobooks.

This is a great way to learn how words react

when you put them together

because when we learn the pronunciation

of a single word, sometimes it changes

when we use that word in a sentence.

For example, let's look at a sentence with short words.

A short example, is he busy?

When I say this quickly

and naturally it sounds like izzy bizzy.

Izzy bizzy is very different than is he busy.

So these are short words

but sometimes words change

when you put them in a sentence.

Another example is diamond necklace.

It would sound like the D at the end of diamond is gone

when you say these words quickly together.

Diamon necklace.

Diamon necklace.

So as I mentioned, sometimes words sound different

when they're in a sentence.

That's why it's a good idea to not only learn

the pronunciation of one word

but how that word sounds

and how you should say it

in a group of words.

So I hope that I'm not making you feel overwhelmed

by saying this.

The first step is to learn

how the individual word is pronounced

and then you can worry later

about making your phrases

and your fluency more natural.

If you're interested in learning

a lot of languages

or becoming an English teacher,

it could be really useful

for you to learn the International Phonetic Alphabet.

This is what you see in all dictionary entries

when you see visually how the word is pronounced,

not the audio entry but the funny looking letters

next to the word that you're searching.

The International Phonetic Alphabet or IPA

is a set of characters or an alphabet

that shows us exactly how the word is pronounced.

Wouldn't it be nice if English was like this?

This is why it's so great to learn the IPA

because it unlocks pronunciation in English

and any language for you.

The downside is that it can take a while to learn.

The IPA is really, like, almost like learning

a whole 'nother language

but it's very useful if you have the time and interest.

I learned the complete IPA when I was studying linguistics

during my Master's degree in teaching English

as a second language.

Listening to more English will definitely help you

to recognize patterns in pronunciation

like words that end in T-I-O-N sound like shun,

like gumption.

Another way that you can find out about patterns

is by studying etymology

and if you love linguistics and history,

learning about the roots of words,

well, that's etymology and it's super fun.

So if you want to learn more about words

and their prefixes, their suffixes,

where they come from,

this can also really help you

when you're taking tests on vocabulary.

Definitely it's a good idea to find out

about where words come from in English

because we borrow words from so many different languages.

Like, Greek for example.

When we have words like democracy

we see that demo means people in Greek.

Or you might recognize a lot of words from French in English

because there's a huge French influence.

So you'll understand how to pronounce words

like entrepreneur or connoisseur or mountaineer.

So then if you're familiar with French etymology

you'll immediately know how to pronounce words

like entrepreneur, sommelier, and connoisseur.

To summarize, Google is your friend.

Find out how to correctly pronounce new words

that you're not sure about

with Google's online dictionary with audio.

But that is not enough to help you with your fluency.

If you truly want English fluency

and you want to communicate with confidence

and stop avoiding words

then use all the techniques and strategies from this video.

If you'd like to learn more

with the Go Natural English method,

we have a complete course

that helps you with pronunciation and all English skills.

Go to gonaturalenglish.com/course.

The link is in the description right down there.

You can find out when we're opening

another session of our course

and you can pre-register for more information.

Thank you so much for watching.

Make sure that you are subscribed

by clicking right down there.

If you'd like to download my audio e-book,

The English Fluency Formula, you can click right down there

and you can watch another Go Natural English lesson

right here on YouTube by clicking right over there.

Thanks and I'll see you in another lesson soon.

Bye for now.