One time, hanging out with friends, I completely mispronounced a word.
The stress was wrong, the sounds were wrong, it wasn't even close.
And it was a grammar word, and I teach English!
We all make mistakes, especially when it comes to pronouncing words, even native speakers
So this video is for you, my students, non-native speakers of English who are sometimes embarrassed
when they mispronounce a word.
Today, we're going over 9 words that Americans have mispronounced.
You'll learn about pronunciation, you'll learn some new vocabulary words, and if you're a
native speaker and you have a story of mispronouncing a word, or hearing one mispronounced, please
I love collecting your stories.
As always, if you liked this video or if you learned something new, please give it a thumbs
up and subscribe with notifications on.
I'd love to see you back here.
The word I mispronounced was this one.
It's a noun, and it means a verb being used as a noun.
It's used to express something generalized.
But I could say: The best learning happens in the real world.
There, I'm using learning as a noun.
This word is pronounced 'gerund'.
And when I was hanging out with some friends one weekend, I said: gerund.
Wrong consonants, wrong vowels, wrong stress.
So the camera wasn't rolling when I said it but it was rolling when my friend brought
it up again later to make fun of me.
She has pie in her mouth so it's a little hard to hear but she says 'gerund'.
And I say, I was waiting for that to come up.
I was waiting for that to come up.
We're just going to have everyone text each other randomly the word 'gerund'.
I had never heard this word spoken before, I'd only ever seen it written.
I came to the conclusion, my pronunciation, my wrong pronunciation was influenced by my
And since I studied German in a classroom as an adult, it's possible I heard this word
The first two syllables Americanized it the pronunciation I chose.
I was waiting for that to come up. I am not taking the time to explain that. That is getting edited out.
We're just going to have everyone text each other randomly the word 'gerund'.
The phrase to live something down is almost always used in the negative.
And it means live long enough to wipe out memories or effects of something.
My friends will always remember that about me, and probably, they'll always make fun
Let's get into a few mispronunciations that you all suggested in comments to other videos.
SH consonant, EE vowel, K. A word of French origin, Dictionary.com gives just one pronunciation
I've also heard this word mispronounced.
This chic 11,000 square foot house has 5 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms.
Not to be confused with cheek.
Chic.
Do you know anyone who is specially chic?
Here are a few examples of the correct pronunciation.
Men who I think are chic and inspiring.
While women paraded down the boulevard wearing these chic new gowns.
The glasses are basically a chic round frame.
Have you ever noticed with ES words like espresso, especially, escape, these words are sometimes
pronounced as if the S were an X. KS instead of sss-- S. That's not the pronunciation.
You know, I just want to emphasize, again, I like to show clips of people mispronouncing
So for all my students studying English as a foreign language, even we as native speakers,
Let's hear some examples of correct pronunciation of espresso.
Not expecially. Not...
This word means particularly. I love roses especially red ones.
And one more like this, escape.
There is a K sound, but it comes after the S, not before.
To get away, to avoid capture.
Okay, this next one, Big Mac, thank you for your suggestion.
People are all over the place with this one.
Dictionary.com and the Cambridge Dictionary gave one pronunciation, but it's not the same
Dictionary.com says its: eschew.
So different vowels in the first syllable.
This word, by the way, means to intentionally avoid something, to give something up.
I'm eschewing dessert this month to lose weight.
They give us eschew, yet another different vowel in the first syllable, they also say:
eschew is the correct pronunciation.
And Merriam Webster gives us: eschew and eschew.
Two more acceptable pronunciations.
That gives us a total of 6 pronunciations listed in dictionaries and there's a little
overlap from dictionary to dictionary.
I don't think I've ever come across another word where there is such little agreement
among major dictionaries on pronunciation.
With this in mind, I guess, maybe there's no wrong pronunciation.
I think you could reasonably defend any of these 6 options.
I went to one of my favorite research sites, Youglish, and I found this pronunciation breakdown.
Eschew is definitely the most common pronunciation in American English.
Even though some of the major dictionaries don't even list it as a pronunciation.
This is a pretty sophisticated word so I'm guessing it might be new to a lot of my students.
Remember, the definition is to avoid something.
We're going to listen to 10 examples now.
Real life examples so you can see different situations and sentences to build your understanding
You'll hear a couple different pronunciations.
And now, we're going to have to move on with one that has more to do with writing.
Americans sometimes mix them up in writing and it's easy to see why.
One of them is loose, and the other one is lose.
One is spelled with one O and the other, two, but the difference in pronunciation isn't
the vowel, it's the ending consonant.
One is an S, loose, the other is a Z, lose.
The one with one O, the verb, has the Z pronunciation.
When the final sound is voiced, like here, zzz, that's a voiced sound, the Z.
It tends to make the vowel longer.
So think of the OO vowel being longer here that in lose, which is the opposite of what
you might think because it's written with just one letter O and the other, with two.
Lose.
This is a verb and it means to come to be without something.
sample sentences: I might lose my job.
I'm ordering two pair because I know at some point, we'll lose one of his mittens.
Drop the E, add a T, and the vowel changes.
This can be a trick you use to help you in writing.
If it's the verb, if you can make it a past tense with lost, one O in lost, so one O in
lose.
That might keep you from accidentally spelling with two O's.
With two O's, loose, the ending is the S sound.
This is most commonly an adjective, meaning free.
Released, not secure, not tight.
Buying shoes for Stoney, we have to check: are they too tight?
Recently, I found my colleague Tom, who's been teaching American English Pronunciation
with me for over 10 years, mispronouncing a word.
I was listening to some audio he recorded for the Academy.
We have lots of audio training in the Academy, at RachelsEnglishAcademy.com and he recorded
In American English, it's pronounced nauseous with the SH sound.
Djzz-- Djzz-- similar to sh-- but there's voice in it.
Sh-- Djzz-- Sh-- Djzz-- Two different sounds.
I did see in the dictionary that Djzz-- is an acceptable pronunciation in British English.
But of all the clips I found online, I only found one example of that.
In all the others, it was an SH or this very British pronunciation: nauseous.
In American English, it's with the sh-- SH sound: nauseous.
But look at this: the noun, nausea, the Djzz-- sound is now that most common pronunciation
A feeling of sickness in the stomach.
An adjective, feeling that sickness.
Is there a word you've mispronounced terribly?
Put it in the comments below, let's support our brave learners of English by sharing our
It might even inspire a future video here on YouTube.
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