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Let’s correct some English names that are often mispronounced by ESL speakers.
- Ian. Non-native speakers often say ‘iron’, it should be ‘eee-yuhn’. We link the 2 syllables with a weak ‘y’ sound. In the IPA it’s /’i:.jən/.
- ‘Geoff’ is pronounced exactly the same as ‘Jeff’. In the IPA it’s /dʒef/.
- ‘Stuart’ & ‘Stewart’ have the same pronunciation. We link the 2 syllables with a weak ‘w’ sound. In the IPA it’s /’stju:.wət/.
- ‘Sean’ and ‘Shaun’ are pronounced the same way, like ‘shorn’ or in the IPA /ʃɔːn/.
- In ‘Charlotte’ and ‘Michelle’ the letters ‘ch’ are pronounced as ‘sh’ – so ‘Charlotte’ is ‘SHAR.luht’ or in the IPA it’s /’ʃa:lət/.
- ‘Michelle’ is ‘muh.SHEL’ or in the IPA it’s /mə.’ʃel/.
- ‘George’ is a common male name and is pronounced as ‘jorj’ or in the IPA /dʒɔːdʒ/. Georgia (/’dʒɔː.dʒə/) and Georgina (/dʒɔː.’dʒi:.nə/) are common female names and are often shortened to /’dʒɔː.dʒi:/)- that’s me!
- Many ESL speakers pronounce ‘Jane’ as ‘Jen’ and ‘James’ as ‘Gems’. This is because they have difficulty making the double /eɪ/ vowel – they make it more like the short vowel /e/. ‘Jane’ has the double vowel /eɪ/ like in the word ‘day’ (/dʒeɪn). ‘Jen’ has the short vowel /e/, /dʒen/. Pronouncing this vowel correctly is covered in detail in an online Star Pronunciation course.
What’s next?
Tomorrow’s videos focus on word stress – for most non-native speakers this video is the most important one in this boot camp. So make sure you watch it so you can be more aware of using the correct word stress. It’s just a quick introduction – a full Star Pronunciation course covers word stress and sentence stress and English weak vowels in much more detail with much more practice. Improve your word stress and correct your word stress in some tricky words.