Back To Basics: Common English Words You May Mispronounce 😯

Hey there I'm Emma from mmmEnglish!

In this little video today, I'll be sharing some incredibly

common English words

that you may be mispronouncing.

Now these are definitely words that you already know,

you use them all the time when you speak English,

when you read, when you listen.

They're really familiar words

but you may not be pronouncing them correctly.

So we're gonna practise how they sound together

today.

Let's go!

To be honest, sometimes I feel like the English

language is a little unfair to you.

Some aspects of pronunciation are just really hard,

aren't they? We've got silent letters

and letters that are pronounced in more than one way.

Vowels in particular, I mean there's only five

vowel letters but there are twenty vowel sounds.

I mean I'm just thankful you're still here

watching my lessons.

Just kidding, of course you should be here

and of course, we're gonna be able to improve

your pronunciation together.

That's what we're doing here right now.

Like I said, all the words that I'm sharing today are

extremely common. They're everyday words

that I say multiple times each day

so it's worth spending a little bit of time tweaking

and perfecting your pronunciation to get them right.

So you might feel quite confident talking about

people in English, right? Is that you?

These nouns are some of the first ones

that you learn when you're learning any language, right?

But the pronunciation of the singular and plural

forms in English is a little confusing

and it's quite common for my English students to make

mistakes with them especially if they

never quite learnt the correct pronunciation and so

over time,

they've just continued pronouncing it incorrectly.

So I want to go through a few of them with you.

Child and children.

Now both words start with that sound

but when you look at the phonemic script,

what's different about the sound that's following that

after that sound?

It's the vowel sound. It's different, right?

It's a different vowel sound

so that's why using the phonemic script is so important

for your pronunciation because you can see the sound

and see that it's different.

I mean, hear it right?

and

So when you're using these two words,

it's really important that you hear that difference.

It's not

and it's not

it's child and children.

So here's a couple of sentences to practise with

out loud okay?

My neighbours have seven children.

When I was a child, we lived by the sea.

Great stuff!

Alright, surely you knew this one was coming, right?

Woman.

Women.

Now it's really easy to get the singular 'woman'

mixed up with the plural 'women' because of that O.

You can see in the phonemic script that that first

syllable is the stressed one.

You can see it because that little mark over there

is always there to show you which syllable is stressed.

It comes before the stressed syllable.

The second syllable is unstressed.

So what often happens in unstressed syllables

in English is the vowel sound

reduces to a schwa and that's that

sound, really lazy sound. So it's like great

when the letter is the same, it sounds different.

When the letter is different, sounds the same.

Let's focus on the singular form first 'woman'

So start with the sound,

make sure that your lips are rounded and that your teeth

are not touching your lips.

Then we have the as in 'book' sound.

Now this is the stronger syllable, right? It's stressed,

we need to hear it really clearly.

It's the unstressed syllable that follows in

So that's the schwa sound, it's really soft

and it's low in pitch.

Almost not there.

You don't hear

That second syllable is reduced.

Alright now what about that plural form?

The plural form again is that

sound, then

as in 'hit'

Okay so again that's the strong syllable,

you need to hear it.

Make sure you've got air in your lungs to push it out.

Then the unstressed syllable follows, right?

So we reduce it down.

So let's compare the two of them.

One woman.

Four women.

I asked the woman if she'd seen three women

arrive in a red car.

I asked the woman if she'd seen three women

arrive in a red car.

So these are really subtle differences

but they're important ones if you're trying to improve

your pronunciation and your accent

when you want to sound

more natural and relaxed as you speak.

Let's keep going!

So again we've got some really simple,

really common words here, right?

But they are so often mispronounced by English

learners that we need to focus on them

for a few minutes.

And again, it's that vowel sound

that we really need to pay attention to.

Even though we have the same vowel letter,

the sound that you use to pronounce these words

is different. Listen.

Let's start with 'can'.

Open your mouth up wide for that one.

I can do that.

So when I said that sentence, I'm really stressing

the word 'can' for emphasis

so this is really useful if someone is suggesting that

you can't but you want to try and contradict them.

You want to tell them the opposite.

I can do it. I can.

The interesting thing about this word is that it actually

has two forms.

A stressed form and an unstressed form.

So the unstressed form is

Using that schwa sound again.

I can do that.

Now compare the two together, alright?

I can do that.

I can do that.

So there's quite a difference there

when we're stressing that word for emphasis.

I can do it.

Compared to the unstressed form.

I can do that.

I can do that.

Now there are a lot of grammatical words in English

that have a stressed and an unstressed form.

So these unstressed forms are a really

important part of natural English pronunciation.

It's that schwa sound, it's so important in unstressed

syllables and unstressed words.

So if you want to keep practising with the differences

between those stressed and unstressed forms,

check out that lesson up there,

I go into it in great detail.

Now you know that the negative form of 'can'

is 'cannot' right?

And it's often contracted in spoken English

so instead of saying 'can not',

you'll hear 'can't'

and that's a very different vowel sound

to what we were practising earlier, right?

Can't.

In my accent, it sounds like the word 'car'

but with a on the end, okay?

Now there's some subtle differences between

my accent

and an American accent there because you'll hear it

a little differently in some American accents, more like

But in my accent, it's

So it's that longer vowel sound

and very different to the short

Sorry. You can't use the lift today

but you can use the stairs at the end of the hall.

So let's just try that same sentence again but with the

unstressed form of 'can'.

You can't use the lift today

but you can use the stairs at the end of the hall.

Another super common word that I often

hear my students mispronouncing

is 'Wednesday'.

Wednesday.

Now again you would have learnt this word

way back at the start

of your English learning journey, right?

But I still hear my students saying

So it doesn't have three syllables. It only has two.

Wednesday.

And that first D is completely silent.

Wednesday.

I'm working late on Wednesday night.

They're open for dinner from Wednesday to Sunday.

So the last pair of words that I want to share with you

are often mispronounced

and I'm talking about 'advise' and 'advice'.

So one of these words is a verb, the other is a noun.

Listen.

Advise.

Advice.

Can you hear the difference in the pronunciation?

Advise. Advice

It's that final consonant sound, the

unvoiced sound and the

voiced sound okay.

Now this sentence right here is not grammatically

correct. We're using the noun form of this word

incorrectly as a verb

and you can hear it when I say it as well.

He adviced me.

He advised me.

One of the most common mistakes that I keep hearing

my students making again and again

is using a plural form of 'advice'.

He gave me some advices.

Now that's incorrect, right? You'll never hear a native

speaker using 'advices'

because it's an uncountable noun.

When you use it, you need to use a determiner

or a quantifier to explain how much of it

you gave or you received, right?

He gave me some advice.

She shared three pieces of advice.

My boss advised me that

now was not the time to apply for a new job.

He advised me.

Awesome! Nice work!

Even though these words are really simple,

they're ones that get used all the time

so it's important that you take the time

every now and again to check yourself, right?

It's really easy to slip back into

bad habits with your pronunciation

especially if you haven't practised

speaking English in a little while.

If I was you and any of these words in this lesson

are a little challenging for you and you need to get your

tongue around them, I would go back, write down

all of the examples that we went through

and keep them somewhere where you can

practise them out loud each day.

Well done for sticking with me all the way

through to the end of that lesson.

If you want to keep practising your pronunciation

with me right now,

then here are a couple of other lessons

that you can dive into straight away.

Make sure you subscribe to the channel if you

haven't already just down there.

I make new lessons every week

so I will see you in the next one.

Bye for now!