A. Vowels

The phonetic transcription is provided for some of the words below. Check you understand the symbols, which are used by most good dictionaries (see page 258).

To master English pronunciation it is helpful to learn the 22 phonemic symbols for English vowel sounds. These are important because the vowel letters can be pronounced in many different ways:

B. Silent letters

The letters below in bold are silent in the examples:

C. Changing stress

Some two-syllable words in English have the same form for the noun and the verb. The stress is on the first syllable of the word when it is a noun and the second syllable when it is a verb, e.g. Wool is a major Scottish export. (noun) Scotland exports a lot of wool. (verb) Here are some other words like this.

Multi-syllable words in English tend to put their main stress on the third syllable from the end, e.g. photography, telephone, arithmetic. As a result, as a long word adds suffixes its word stress does not stay on the same syllable, e.g. photographer, telephony, arithmetical. Note that, although this rule is useful, it does have plenty of exceptions.

Common mistakes

These words are often mispronounced.