10 DIFFICULT ADJECTIVES | English Pronunciation Lesson

Well hello! I'm Emma from mmmEnglish!

Now I have to admit that I'm a huge fan of adjectives.

I mean, I probably overuse adjectives

if I'm being completely honest with you,

but they are such a beautiful part of any language.

They allow you to go into detail, to add colour, flavour

and personality to all of your thoughts and your ideas.

One of the most noticeable differences between

intermediate level English speakers and advanced ones

is their use of adjectives.

Because yes, you can add meaning to your sentences

by using simple adjectives

like 'happy' or 'sad' or 'nice' or 'bored'

but life can be so much more

spectacular than that, can't it?

Your English can be much more colourful than that,

right?

Using a wider range of adjectives will help you to

be more expressive, to show emotions and feelings

and to sound more interesting when you use English.

So if you need to refresh your memory about

how to use adjectives in English sentences,

then check out that lesson up there.

But right now, I've got ten adjectives for you

and I've specifically chosen them

because they're adjectives that English learners

often mispronounce.

They're all a little tricky.

There's a few silent letters, some strange vowel sounds,

different pronunciation of the same letter

in the same word.

But don't worry!

By the end of this lesson, you're going to have

all of these adjectives completely down!

You're going to be saying them much more confidently

and more often.

Let's start with...

Now if you haven't heard this word pronounced before,

it looks a little tricky.

There's two C's and two S's.

Of course, you know that in English, a C can sometimes

be pronounced in the same way as an S.

Many of my students,

they look at this word and take a guess and say

"sussessful"

which is a nice try, I can see why

you would pronounce it that way but actually,

each C in this word is pronounced differently

and that's made clear

when you look at the phonemic script.

The first C is pronounced as a /k/ sound

at the end of the first syllable

and the second C is pronounced as a

/s/ sound at the start of the second syllable.

Now the second syllable is the stressed

syllable in this word and that's why you hear it

pronounced more strongly

while the first syllable is short and lower in pitch.

The final syllable is also unstressed.

Successful.

The pronunciation is the same

throughout the word family. Success, successful,

successfully.

And as frustrating as it is, that the same letter

is pronounced differently in the same word,

just accept it, practise it, remember it.

Successful.

So 'successful' is used when someone achieves

the result that they want.

They're really happy and they're satisfied with the result.

He's a successful businessman.

We've had quite a successful year so far.

Anxious. Are you anxious looking at this one?

It's a little tricky!

There are three consonant sounds here together

which makes it quite challenging.

In the first syllable, the stressed syllable,

the strong vowel sound A

is followed by the /ŋ/ consonant.

And that consonant sound is usually made by the letters

-ng like in 'song'.

So my mouth is open slightly when I make this sound

and the back of my tongue is right up at the soft palate

in the back of my mouth.

For the second syllable, you'll hear the /k/

and the /ʃ/ consonant sounds.

So you're pushing that air through your mouth

to make the sound /kʃ/

Make sure you exaggerate this sound

while you're practising.

Pretend you're like a superhero fighting a monster.

And the following vowel sound will be unstressed,

the weak schwa sound /ə/

Anxious.

So this adjective is usually used to describe a person

and it's to do with their emotions or their feelings.

An anxious person is worried or nervous because

they think that something bad might happen.

I'm feeling really anxious about my interview tomorrow.

My friend doesn't like flying so he's always

quite anxious when we go travelling.

Valuable.

Over the years as an English teacher,

I've heard this word pronounced in several

different ways and all of the problems coming from

those two vowel letters in the middle.

The first common mistake is assuming that there are

four syllables but there's not, there's only three.

And the first syllable 'val' is the stressed syllable

the strongest one.

But the second syllable is quite tricky.

There's an extra consonant sound added,

one that you can't see in the written word.

Valuable.

So this adjective is really handy to know

because it can be used in a few different ways.

Now you often hear this adjective used for things like

jewellery or houses or cars

to tell that something is expensive

or worth a lot of money.

My grandmother gave me her sapphire brooch.

I think it's quite valuable, though I'd never sell it.

It's quite valuable.

But this is also an excellent adjective to describe

a person's qualities

and often used in a professional context.

So 'valuable' can not necessarily be about money

but about how important or useful someone is.

James is a really valuable member of our team.

That's a valuable piece of advice. Thanks.

Exponential.

Now most of the pronunciation problems with this

adjective relate to syllable stress.

There are four syllables.

The third is the strongest,

though the first one is also stressed.

The remaining two syllables are unstressed

so they reduce down, they become the schwa sound

which is always short and low in pitch.

Can you hear how the two weaker syllables

fade into the background?

Exponential.

This adjective is used when something is increasing

or growing really quickly.

The company has experienced exponential growth

over the last two years.

The renewable energy market is growing

at an exponential rate.

Complex. Now in standard British English,

there's just one way to pronounce this word

with the stress on the first syllable.

Complex.

In American English, there is a difference between

the adjective 'complex'

and the noun 'complex'.

But the real pronunciation challenge here

is the cluster of consonants that are pronounced

at the end.

The letter X usually produces a sound that has

two consonant sounds pushed together,

/k/ and /s/

which is what makes this sound difficult.

Two consonants together is tough.

The sound is produced right at the back of the throat

while the sound is made with the tongue and the teeth

at the front of the mouth.

So really, creating this sound successfully is about

switching between these two these sounds smoothly.

So this adjective is used to describe something

that consists of many different and connected parts

that makes it quite difficult to understand or manage.

It's a complex issue but we need to find a solution.

The relationship between the general manager

and the marketing team is quite complex .

They've never really seen eye-to-eye.

Rural.

The /r/ and the /l/

sounds in this word make it a real challenge

but there's actually a little variation

between English accents for this word

which is really common.

Officially, the correct pronunciation is 'rural' with a /ʊə/

vowel sound as the stressed syllable.

But I want to share a little tip with you because

in Australia, our pronunciation of this word is

much more relaxed.

So if you're having trouble pronouncing this word,

put on an Australian accent and say 'rural'.

You can use this adjective to describe characteristics

of the countryside rather than the city.

So usually it's

farming land or a small village in the country.

So the opposite of rural is 'urban'

which is characteristic of cities and towns.

The government will help rural communities

affected by the floods.

People are moving to rural areas

to live healthier lifestyles.

It's a bit of a tongue twister, isn't it?

Rural areas.

Specific.

The stress is on the middle syllable here and there are

two things to pay attention to with this word.

One is the consonant cluster at the start of the word.

The consonant sounds

/s/ and /p/ together.

So if you're having some trouble with this,

we're going to go to the gym for a minute

and do a little workout.

Practising pronunciation is just like training at the gym.

We just need to train your muscles in your mouth to be

more comfortable doing something a little different.

/s/ and /p/ are both unvoiced consonant sounds

and the sound is made by pushing air

through your mouth.

So I want you to slowly bring these sounds together.

Now are you ready for your workout?

Take a deep breath and move back and forth

between these sounds really quickly, ready?

If these consonant sounds are too difficult

for you to pronounce, you need to do this workout daily.

Now the second challenge with this word is

the final consonant sound - the consonant at the end.

Make sure that you finish this word

on the consonant sound.

Don't get lazy and forget it. It's not 'specifi'

It's 'specific'.

And you can use it to explain that something is really

exact or detailed.

There are some general issues

that I need to discuss with you

but there's one specific issue that's quite urgent.

If you have any specific questions about

the accommodation, then please ask Sarah.

Mischievous.

There are a lot of vowel letters in this word

which makes it a little confusing to work out

how to pronounce each syllable

and which one is stressed.

The first syllable is the strongest, the others relax.

For some reason this word is one

that native English speakers

sometimes get wrong as well. You might hear people

say 'mischievous' with four syllables

but that's incorrect. There are only three syllables here

and the stress is on the first syllable /ˈmɪs/

which means the second syllable reduces a little,

the vowel sound is short and fast.

There's also two difficult consonant sounds here ‘ch’ and /v/

So with both of these consonant sounds,

your lip position is really important

so I want you to exaggerate the position of your mouth

while you're practising with me just to make sure

that you're pronouncing and your producing

the correct sound.

So for 'ch', see how my lips are really flared, exaggerated,

and this sound is controlled by my tongue

in a similar way to the /t/ sound.

The tip of my tongue.

But also my tongue is tense all the way

along the sides here.

And they're pushed up against the inside of my top teeth

so we move through tʃɪ/

through the unstressed vowel sound to /v/

making sure that your top teeth

are touching your lower lip.

Mischievous.

Now if you have cheeky children in your life, this

could be the perfect adjective to describe them.

So usually it's an adjective to describe children but it's

okay to describe adults with it sometimes or even pets.

It describes someone who has fun by being silly

and creating a disruption but not in a negative way,

not in a way that's

really annoying or that really harms anyone.

It's kind of a cute or funny attribute.

I was quite a mischievous child.

There are a few mischievous children in the classroom.

Detrimental.

Now, this is a wonderful, descriptive adjective

that means harmful or damaging in some way.

So looking at this word,

it's the third syllable that is the strongest

and just like 'exponential'

the first syllable also has a secondary stress

so we can hear that one clearly as well

which means that the other two reduce.

Detrimental.

But the second syllable is the most difficult here

because of the consonant cluster /trɪ/

with an unstressed vowel sound.

So it's like the noun 'tree', but with a shorter,

weaker vowel sound.

So as I said, the adjective 'detrimental' suggests that

something is creating a negative effect.

It's harmful or it's damaging in some way.

It had a detrimental effect on the company's growth.

The infection was detrimental to her recovery.

It was detrimental.

Comfortable.

I've talked about this adjective before

in another pronunciation lesson

but it's so common and it's so often mispronounced

that it had to be included in this lesson as well.

The correct pronunciation of this word uses only

three syllables which means that this vowel

is completely silent.

So notice that the first syllable is the stressed one

and the following syllables reduce down

to the schwa sound.

Now you may hear native speakers using a tiny, tiny, tiny

extra syllable and say 'comfortable' which is fine too,

it's just a difference in accent or dialect.

And you may think that it's easier to pronounce

this word with four syllables, particularly if it's difficult

for you to pronounce the /f/ and /t/

consonant sounds together.

Of course people are going to understand you

whatever you say but please, please, please

make sure that that syllable is super, super tiny.

So hear how short and quick those schwa sounds are?

Like I said, 'comfortable' is the more

common pronunciation

so I recommend that you practise using that one.

I'm not comfortable doing that.

Are you comfortable with the decision?

Well that's it, ten tricky English adjectives

that English learners often mispronounce.

So I hope that this was a useful lesson for you.

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Bye for now!