Today, we'll talk about 25 difficult words
for English learners to pronounce.
If you haven't done it already, please make sure to
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practice and improve your English.
So a while back, we did a pronunciation video
talking about common words
that English learners often mispronounce.
And then we asked you which words
you had difficulty pronouncing,
and we got some of your feedback.
So today we're going to talk to you about
25 words that you guys told us
were difficult to pronounce.
As we go over these words, we are going to give
you the phonetic spelling
Which means that we are going to show you the words
exactly how they sound.
Some of you may be familiar with the
International Phonetic Alphabet.
Others of you may not be, but I think everyone
can understand and follow phonetic spelling.
We will also show you how many syllables
each word has, and remember a syllable
is just one unit of sound.
In addition, we will show you which syllable is stressed.
So hopefully this information will help
give you a better idea as to how to pronounce
each of these individual words.
If you want even more practice you can repeat
the word after we say them.
Practice makes perfect.
It's true.
Also keep in mind that in this video
we are doing the American pronunciation of these words.
Which is important to mention because
some of the words may differ in their
American pronunciation versus the British pronunciation.
So yeah, keep that in mind.
We'll be doing the American pronunciation.
Because we're American.
So the first word, fittingly, is the word pronunciation
Now, there are two things about this word
that could be a little tricky.
First, that C actually sounds like
you're saying the letter C
Pronunciation.
And the word ends with the -tion,
which sounds like /shuhn/.
Anytime that you see these four letters
together at the of a word,
it's pronounced as /shuhn/.
Also, a pronunciation rule is that when a word
ends with the -tion, the stress
is going to fall on the syllable before.
So in this case...
Pronunciation.
Wow, that pronunciation is flawless.
The next one is characterization.
And this one is difficult to pronounce,
firstly, because it's so long.
So let's break it apart.
The first two letters, the CH, many times in English
they make a /ch/ sound, so you would expect
in this case that they would make the /ch/ sound
like in channel.
But not here. The way that it's pronounced is with
the /k/ sound like the K sound.
The other thing is that those last four letters, the -tion,
are just like in any other instance in English
read as /shuhn/.
And remember to stress that syllable before...
the /shuhn/.
Say with me. Say it fast.
I think I'm comfortable with that characterization as well.
Number three is museum.
Now this word can be tricky for two reasons.
The first is that first syllable...that /myoo/
has like an M sound combined with
like saying the word YOU.
That S is also going to sound like a Z.
Let's go to the museum.
Let's go.
It's easy.
We haven't been to any museums lately.
It's not like that, okay?
And I'm not going to any museum.
Well I'm not going back in this storage.
The next word is disadvantage.
And this one might be a little bit difficult because
if we look at the last four letters, the -tage,
I think they're easy to mispronounce.
It's...it's kind of the /tij/ sound that is very quick.
So it's not /tage/. It's /tij/.
So we say...
You're at a real disadvantage.
Next...unfortunate.
So this word can be troublesome because
that TU actually sounds like a /choo/
That's it.
Unfortunate.
It was an unfortunate error. We're fixing it.
The next word is occupation.
This one might be a little difficult
because of the C sound.
Maybe if you look at it you think, "Oh, it's a C."
Pronounced like a C, but it's actually pronounced like a Q sound.
So it's...
And remember to stress the syllable before the /shuhn/.
Like that...with that kind of emphasis?
Occupation would be the correct way to say it.
That's better.
Please state your name and occupation.
The next word is cucumber.
So this word can definitely be confusing
because of the letter C.
That first C sounds like a Q sound...Q, Q.
Alright. And the next C just has a /k/ sound like a K.
There are some other words that begin
with the letters CU, where that C also sounds like
a Q sound like cube or cute.
And then there are some other words that begin
with CU that don't follow that at all
and sound like a /k/ sound like cup or...
cupboard or...
Anything else with cup.
Curve.
So, cucumber can really be a little tricky.
What do you got a cucumber?
I'm chill, I'm chill as a cucumber man.
The next word is suitable.
And this one may be a little tricky because of
the vowels, the U and I together.
They're making an /oo/ sound so it's...
The other thing to keep in mind is that second syllable
has the schwa sound, so you have suit-/uh/...
So it's not suitable, but it's suitable.
And you kind of go to a fast.
That's a very suitable explanation.
Quite suitable.
Suitable for what?
The next word is tongue.
Now, the pronunciation of this word is all sorts of crazy.
First off, it only has one syllable.
And that O sounds like a U.
And it would rhyme with words like sung or rung or...
Tongue.
Lung.
Tongue...lung, yea. That's another one.
Tongue...there you have it.
Not porno tongue, church tongue.
The next word is assume.
And this one has a couple little tricks to it.
The first one is that the first syllable is a schwa,
so it makes it an /uh/ sound.
So we can say...
And the second one is that the U in there does not make a U sound
but an /oo/ sound. We say...
Okay, I will assume reputation
Next is diary.
So this word can be a little confusing
because it is three syllables.
It's not two.
And the first syllable has that long I sound.
That /dahy/...
followed by the schwa.../dahy-uh/
and then the Y at the end has a long E sound.
Do you keep a diary?
Do you?
I don't.
Dear diary. Love makes you do crazy things.
The next word is category.
And here, what's tricky is the T sound
because it's not an actual T sound.
It's like a flap T or the American T.
But it's kind of a D sound.
So it's...
Muted D even.
You can barely hear it.
What's the first category here?
The first category is the hound group.
The next word is schedule.
So this word has two syllable.
And it can be confusing because of that CH.
It doesn't have a CH sound.
It has a /k/ sound like a K sound.
And the -dule sounds like /jool/.
Especially when you say it fast...
Precisely on schedule.
The next word is physics.
This one is also a little tricky even though it's short.
There are a couple things to mention.
The PH sound in English sounds like a /f/.
Like a /f/...like an f sound.
So it's...
The other one is that the Y sound is not
a /y/ sound but it's like a shortened I sound.
And the third thing is that
the S is pronounced like a Z.
So put it all together and you have...
In physics...well, we talk about physics.
Properties of physics.
The next word is curtail.
So this word has two syllables and
the second syllable has that long A sound... tail.
Like you're talking about an animal's tail.
Not curdle.
Can we curtail this performance piece?
The next word is chemistry.
And chemistry is derived from kimia
which comes from alchimia
which is an Arabic term derived from Greek.
It has a long story.
But what that means is that the pronunciation is a little bit different.
So it's not a /ch/ sound but instead a /k/.../k/ sound.
So it's...
Are you studying?
Yeah, chemistry.
I hate chemistry.
Me too.
Next is poignant.
So this word...that GN has that nasal sound.
That poignant.
Which is different from some other words
that also have a GN like pregnant.
Alright. So this GN is that nasal sound.
Is that nasal sound poignant poignant?
And then there's the most poignant irony of all.
Next we have hippopotamus.
I like this word. There used to be a song called
"I want a hippopotamus for Christmas."
I want a hippopotamus for Christmas.
Only a hippopotamus will do.
I want a hippopotamus for Christmas.
I...they're kind of cute.
Hippopotamus is confusing because it's so freaking long.
It's like a million syllables.
Really?
What you have to do is just break it down and say...
And quickly...
Yeah, practice one syllable at a time.
Yeah, you kind of have to.
Hmm...say hippopotamus.
The next word, sticking with our animal theme, is rhinoceros.
And this word can be confusing because the
H is silent and the C sounds like an S.
I want to rhinoceros for Christmas.
Because the rhinoceros speaks English.
The next word is science.
I don't know why I did that.
Science.
How do we pronounce it?
We pronounce it like science.
Okay, the next word is science.
And what's important in this word's pronunciation
is that the C is not pronounced.
So we don't say...I don't even know how
you would mispronounce that.
That's difficult, right?
But to just make it easy
we just omit the C.
So we say science. The C is silent
like in scissors. You also don't say the C there.
Science? What sort of science?
The next word is silhouette.
This word is borrowed from French, so I'm not really
going to try to explain why it's pronounced the way it is.
It's just silhouette.
And it sounds...I think the same in French.
Like pirouette.
What are you doing this weekend because your silhouette is kicking?
Number 22 is arouse.
And arouse has a couple things you need to remember.
The first one is that the O and U
combination creates a diphthong. The /ou/ sound.
And the next thing is that the S makes a Z sound.
So you have...
If he can arouse that kind of passion.
The next word is unique.
And the pronunciation of this word is unique
because the letter U sounds like you
are just saying the actual name of the letter U.
The -que at the end has a /k/ sound.
Like a K sound.
And then there is a tongue twister that
is difficult to pronounce if you want to say it really, really fast.
Unique New York. Unique New York. Unique New York.
Accident...ooo this one...I like this one.
I like it because I have so many students who
always, always, always mispronounce this one
because you have the two Cs and they each have a separate sound.
So the first C is like a K sound and the second C
is like an S sound.
So we say...
We don't say...
We say...
Yeah it's accident.
These accidents aren't accidents.
An accident? An accident?
Yeah, but it was an accident man.
An accident. Really?
And the last word, number 25, is dumb.
And the only thing you need to know about this word
is that the B is silent.
Wes can be dumb sometimes.
You're dumb.
Dumb luck.
Dumbass.
Yeah, pretty dumb.
So what we'd like you to do is in the comments below
please write any other words that
you may have trouble pronouncing.
If you have a hard time saying it, please write it down.
Who knows, maybe we'll make another video.
Or maybe we won't.
Who's to say.
We might.
Thanks for watching and we will see you next time.
Bye.