Pronounce English Accurately

Reading the IPA - Stress on the first syllable

Video Text

Reading the IPA - stress on first syllable

This time I'm going to show you transcriptions of words with more than one syllable, each of them with the first syllable being the stressed syllable.

I'm going to show you the IPA transcription of the stressed syllable only first, then I'll pause the video - then as before you should then say that syllable aloud -

then I will show the whole word and you say the whole word aloud, being very sure you are correct.

Let's start off with ten words, each of them with some trick in the spelling or pronunciation.

/let/ PAUSE /ˈlet.ɪs/ PAUSE and the word is 'lettuce'. The second syllable is /ɪs/, rhyming with 'hiss'.

/sæm/ PAUSE /ˈsæm.ən/ PAUSE 'salmon'; the 'l' is silent.

/kɜːn/ PAUSE /ˈkɜː.nəl/ PAUSE 'colonel' and 'kernel' are homophones.

/mɔː/ PAUSE /ˈmɔː.gɪdʒ/ PAUSE 'mortgage'; the 't' is silent and the '-age' is the sound in 'village'.

/sʌð/ PAUSE /ˈsʌð.ən/ PAUSE 'southern'; the vowel is not the one in 'south'.

/lɪs/ PAUSE /ˈlɪs.ən/ 'listen'; the 't' is silent.

/tiːtʃ/ PAUSE /ˈtiːtʃ.ə/ PAUSE 'teacher'.

/fiːtʃ/ PAUSE /ˈfiːtʃ.ə/ PAUSE 'feature'; despite the spelling, 'feature' and 'teacher' rhyme

/njuːk/ PAUSE /ˈnjuːk.lɪə/ - not /ˈnjuːk.jə.lə/ or /ˈnjuːk.jʊ.lə/, despite what some people say.

/hæŋ/ PAUSE /ˈhæŋ.kə.tʃiːf/ - no-one ever pronounces it /ˈhænd.kə.tʃiːf/.

That's it - short and sweet - and in the next lesson we'll do some practice with longer words.

Next Lesson: Reading the IPA - Longer Words

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