This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2610, Walk or Work?
Three Pronunciation Mistakes to Avoid with Dave Nichols.
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What about clothes and clothes?
Today, English expert Dave Nichols joins us to share tips that will help you avoid three of the most common English pronunciation mistakes.
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Hello, listeners.
I am so excited to introduce you to our guest today, David Nichols.
Welcome to the podcast, Dave.
Hi, Aubrey.
Thank you for having me.
Yes, awesome.
This is a fun.
Let me quickly introduce you.
Dave is an English teacher with 20 years of experience.
He spent the first eight years of his life working and teaching English in Moscow Russia, but then moved back to the UK, where you're from right.
And since then... has been making English courses and providing conversation classes online.
And Dave is here to share the three most common pronunciation errors he hears and tips for how to avoid them.
So I'm so excited for this.
All of our listeners are working to improve their pronunciation, just with the goal of being clear, being understood right.
So welcome, excited for you to share these tips today.
Okay, yeah, thanks for having me, Aubrey.
I've got some different words that I often hear mispronounced here.
And I'd be interested to hear how you pronounce them as well, because I'm well aware that in America you have a slightly different accent than we have in the UK.
And so I'd like to know how you pronounce these words, too.
Okay, yeah, this is going to be interesting, right?
The American accent is so different from the British accent.
But as we know, there are regional dialects in both countries.
So even the way I pronounce things is different from Lindsay or a lot of other American English speakers.
And as you said, Dave, very different from many British English speakers.
Yes, all over the country here people have very different accents, and it's actually much harder for me to understand someone from Scotland or from Ireland than someone from the United States.
Interesting.
Yeah.
So this is going to be fascinating.
Let's start with this first sound that you want to talk to and we'll hear how they sound in my accent and in your accent, differentiating the sound of walk.
And I mean when you're walking or running that kind of activity, walking and working.
And I mean when you go to work and get paid.
When you go to the office or go to the factory and you go and get paid, you work, But when you go somewhere on foot, you walk.
And so there is a difference in British English.
We say walk when you're walking or work when you're working.
How do you say those sounds?
Yeah, this is fascinating because I can hear the difference when you are saying them.
But it's more subtle than American English, right?
So for the verb, it's walk.
We walk around.
I walk to the store.
But then the verb, we have that harder R in American English.
So work.
I go to work every day.
And they are more distinct in American English.
OK, yes, it's in British English that they're closer.
And perhaps this is why my students have problems differentiating the sound.
And there is a third word which is very, very similar but different in British English.
We have walk for when you're walking.
We have work for when you go to work or go to the office.
But we also have walk. walk, which is a very short sound.
It's shorter than walk.
Or work.
And what is that wok?
That's a noun, right?
What does it mean?
So wok is a noun in British English.
It's a noun and it means something that you cook with.
It's a frying pan that's very often used in Chinese cooking.
Yes, like a deep, a really deep pan, right?
Exactly.
And it's fascinating because in American English that noun, a walk, sounds exactly the same as the verb walk.
We pronounce them exactly the same.
And they're similar in British English, but I can hear the difference when you say the verb and this frying pan.
Let me hear them again.
Give them in a sentence.
Somewhere that you would walk to and then cooking with a wok.
OK, so yesterday he went walking in the park.
Yeah, he went for a walk in the park for the walking.
But yesterday he worked from nine to five.
And give me one with cooking with a wok.
OK.
And so yesterday my wife cooked some stir fry in a wok, in a wok.
Nice.
And it is so subtle that this, I feel like, is pretty negligible whether you pronounce them like an American English speaker wok and wok.
Or like a British English speaker.
I don't know if I could even recreate how subtle that difference is.
Say them for us.
Walk and walk.
Walk, work.
And the noun?
Walk, work.
And the noun?
Walk.
The noun is shorter in my opinion.
It's a shorter sound.
Walk, work, walk.
Yeah, this is so interesting.
So whether you are sort of learning from a British English teacher or American English teacher, what's really important here is that it's clear.
And usually it will be from context, right?
I walk to the store, I go to work at noon.
Often you can tell in context, but you do want to make sure that you are pronouncing these sounds clearly so that the message is always clear, right?
Whether you say it more like an American speaker or like a British speaker and that you can hear the difference right.
So walk and then work.
For me with that hard R.
It's a more tight sound, right my um mouth to make that r.
I am um creating tension inside my mouth to make that r work, which is a sound you never make, right dave in british english.
Yeah, it's different, it's certainly it's different.
We say work, work.
I think it's less taut it is.
There's a less, not such a tight sound.
Exactly your mouth is more relaxed inside to make that sound.
Exactly.
Okay.
So this is really interesting.
And as you hear from us here a lot on All Ears English, it's not about making those sounds perfectly.
And there is no right or wrong as far as which accent you're choosing, which dialect you might be sounding more like, but what's important is that you understand what others are saying and that what you say is clear, so that your message is clear.
Absolutely.
I couldn't agree more.
It's the most important thing is that the other person understands.
Exactly.
Okay.
Let's talk about this second sound.
This one's really interesting.
The second Most common error that you hear.
Yeah, I find this word very difficult to pronounce as well.
And so you have my sympathy, everybody.
Clothes.
Clothes.
Yeah.
And we mean shirts, trousers, shorts, jumpers, coats, clothes.
And I want all students to notice that it's only one syllable.
It's only one sound clothes.
Because the mistake that i usually hear is students make two sounds, they make two syllables.
They say cloth us.
Don't say that yeah, never say cloth us or cloth ass, or it's one syllable, it is clothes.
Yes, and i'm sure that happens because we're trying to make that The that voiced dental fricative, the theta which?
How do you pronounce that in UK English theta?
The, the, the.
You would say theta though, right?
Theta.
Theta.
And in American English, we say theta.
But that's this where it's voiced.
Our tongue sticks out between the teeth, which is why it's called a dental fricative.
And we're vibrating sound.
And in order to make that sound, a lot of students are splitting it into two syllables to make it easier, because it is very difficult to say clothes and immediately go from that theta to the z sound that clothes ends with.
That's, Absolutely.
Gymnastics for the mouth, right?
Yeah.
It's not easy for a tongue to do it, to go into the Z sound.
It's a very hard sound.
Yeah, and I highly recommend everyone out there listening.
You might be just listening to audio of the podcast.
Now come back to YouTube and watch this episode on YouTube, because often with pronunciation, it's easier to see a video of what our mouths are doing.
And with this, especially because the tongue sticks out between the teeth.
And you want to record video of yourself making these sounds, saying these words, to make sure that you are correctly pronouncing that theta.
Absolutely.
It's very good advice to do so, to record your voice and then listen to it so that you can hear if your pronunciation is correct or not correct.
And especially where we also have the verb clothes, which sounds so similar to clothes, clothing.
But the difference is there is no theta.
And so your teeth will not stick out.
Your tongue will not stick out between the teeth for that sound.
But it's very subtle.
Clothes, clothes.
Good.
Clothes, clothes.
And then we also have the voiceless dental fricative, for example, with like months where that is sigh, there's no vibration of the vocal cords.
Good.
Yeah, absolutely.
Months.
Months.
So it's silent there.
You don't need to have any in the background.
Thank you so much for having me.
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And you had shared with me an excellent tip about biting your tongue to make sure you're doing this correctly, because you didn't always pronounce these sounds correctly, or at least a lot of British English speakers don't do this theta right.
Absolutely.
I think a lot of British English speakers when they're growing up they use a f for a voiceless th and a v for a voiced th.
So that's the f and the v, if you couldn't hear the difference, right?
Yeah, the F and the V. Exactly.
They say cloves, and that's how I grew up.
That's how I said it when I was growing up, certainly.
And I hear that sometimes on podcasts, TV shows.
We'll hear that native English speakers that are creating that sound that way.
No right or wrong, but if you are wanting to clearly make sure the sounds are Correct.
You will want that dental fricative where it sticks out between your teeth, your tongue.
So what is this advice about biting your tongue?
So definitely anytime you need to do a voiced or a voiceless TH, you need to bite your tongue.
It needs to be done each and every time.
It can't be avoided.
A lot of natives will avoid it by using a F. They will say, thank you.
Yeah, thank you.
I think lots of British speakers say, thanks, thanks.
And they do it like an F, like F, F. But it should be, thanks.
If your tongue isn't between your teeth when you say thanks, then perhaps you're saying it like a British native speaker.
Because a lot of Brits say it wrong.
Right, because I often will recommend to students, you know, record video to make sure you see your tongue sticking between your teeth.
But this is great advice. to bite down on your tongue to feel it.
Not hard, just you're gently biting down to make sure your tongue is sticking out between your teeth whenever you make this dental fricative that theta sound the T-H.
And get used to gently biting down on your tongue so that you can feel whether your tongue is sticking out or not.
Excellent.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
It's great advice.
Okay, let's move on to this third sound that you hear pronounced incorrectly a lot.
So the third sound is the silent letter.
And I think that we have a lot of silent letters in English spelling, sadly.
And it makes it very difficult to pronounce words.
But there are some tips that you can learn to make it easier.
For example, we often have a silent B. In a lot of words, we have a silent B.
For example comb tomb, womb.
All of these words have a B when we spell them, but none of them have a B when we say them.
So what mistake are you hearing?
If someone is reading and they see the B at the end, for example of bomb, how would it be pronounced incorrectly?
They often say bomb, bomb.
They put a B at the end and at the start.
And they say comb, tomb.
And it's understandable because you see that B there, right?
Yeah, it always a very... I totally understand why the student is making the mistake.
And this is why...
English spelling can sometimes be counterproductive.
It can help us mispronounce words, English spelling, and silent letters are a good example.
Absolutely.
Unfortunately.
And B is not just silent at the end of words, also in the middle of words often, right?
Yeah, it can be indeed.
The two situations when B is usually silent is firstly, when it's after the M Yeah, so like in bomb or comb or tomb or numb or limb or climb, climb a wall.
For example, he was climbing the wall, not climb.
He was climbing the wall.
Lots of students say climbing, but don't say that, say climbing, climbing.
So firstly, avoid pronouncing B if you see M B. Usually it is silent.
There are some exceptions, but usually it is silent.
And the second situation is when you have B, T And there are only a few words here.
I want you to remember.
I want you to remember debt.
There's a B when you spell debt, but there's not a B when you say debt.
So debt has a silent B.
Doubt as well is a very common word with a silent B, And the third word is subtle.
Yes, subtle.
So there's a subtle difference between clothes and close.
It's a subtle difference.
It's a very subtle difference when you're listening.
And so I want you to remember those three words, memorize debt, doubt and subtle.
And also those words that have MB in there like bomb, tomb, numb, limb, climb.
There were a few of them.
Plumber.
And these are pronounced the same in American English.
We also have that silent B. bomb climb tomb debt doubt subtle right they and this is a very common error if you see it written and you assume we should hear that b but you shouldn't there are exceptions like you said bombastic we hear the b subterfuge subterranean but i think you're right the ones that you shared should be memorized because they are used so often in English and they should always have a silent B. Absolutely.
And the best way to memorize these exceptions is to say them again and again and again.
So to drill these sentences, you need to say them again and again, and Repetition is very important for learning anything.
But also, I think, something that a lot of students perhaps don't do, but I know some do.
I think it's very useful to listen to podcasts and to study and to songs and to audiobooks, but read the lyrics or the words at the same time, because that will help you to pull together what the word looks like and what the word sounds like.
You need to pull those two things together so that you get it right.
And another thing you can do is read aloud and record yourself, of course to see if you're getting the words correct each and every time.
Yes, this is all such great advice.
I love the idea of listening to an audiobook, but then whenever possible.
Often you're listening to an audiobook and you're cooking, you're driving, you're doing chores, but when you can have the words as well, whether that's on a Kindle or you have the actual physical book, follow along with the audiobook and take note of this.
When there are silent letters, when there's something that you would have pronounced aloud differently or read it out loud and then listen to the audio book while following along.
Note the difference.
Record yourself.
There's so much you can do to be prepared to avoid these very common pronunciation errors.
Absolutely.
I couldn't agree more.
Awesome.
Dave, thank you for sharing these common pronunciation difficulties.
I know many listeners out there maybe haven't even realized they're making these pronunciation mistakes and might now be aware of it, be able to work on it.
So I'm very excited for this.
Dave, can you share where our listeners can find more about you?
Sure.
I have a website.
It's Skype hyphen lessons dot com.
Or you can come and find me on YouTube.
I have the Mr. Skype lessons channel.
I'm sure you'll find me if you put Mr Skype lessons as one word into YouTube and you can find my channel there.
Perfect.
That will work well because I definitely recommend everyone come and watch this episode on YouTube.
Many of the examples Dave gave.
You can see if he's making the F sound or the TH sound and you might not be able to hear the difference on the podcast.
So come watch this episode on YouTube and then go check out Mr. Skype Lessons right here on YouTube.
Thanks again for joining us, Dave, and for these amazing tips.
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
I've really enjoyed it.
I appreciate being invited on the podcast.
Thanks so much.
Awesome.
We'll see you next time.
Thanks.
Have a good day.
Okay.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
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