Business English Pronunciation: Common Mistakes and How to Fix Them

(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, and welcome to the 3 English Experts. I'm Birgit. I'm Dave. And I'm Rebecca. And welcome to this episode. 3 English Experts is your English podcast to help you speak better English and create a positive and happy mindset for your English learning journey. Hello everybody. Welcome back to our episode today. It's going to be about typical pronunciation mistakes. And pronunciation itself is a word that's not easy to pronounce, I find. And what do we have to say about this? Well, what I tell my learners always is you have to realise that with English, you have a sing-sang in the language. So you go up and down with your voice, which in our own language, we can stay at one level all the time. And you know, the people who talk and go on and you fall asleep. With English, I think that's far more difficult. I say difficult, I have some stress, some emphasis, and we are always looking for a beat in words. Could be the first syllable, it could be the second syllable. You will pick that up in the course of your learning when you learn the language. But that's the first tip. Find the stress, the betonung, the stress in a word, the beat. For example, I have an example one of my learners was struggling with. It was irrelevant. So you write it in exactly the same way like we do, but you have some stress. So you can say irrelevant. It's difficult to understand than in English. You need the stress and the beat goes on the second syllable here. You have a pre-syllable, the irrelevant. And then it sounds okay. Is it correct, Rebecca? It is perfectly correct, Birgit. Well done. I just wanted to say as well, you were saying people don't realise this kind of up and down. And I think when people think about their pronunciation and they say, oh, I need to improve my pronunciation in English, they think about things like dialect and oh, do I sound American or British? But actually, you're right. A lot of it is to do with the rhythm. Sounding more fluent and sounding more advanced, I think, has a lot to do with finding the rhythm of a language and how it flows, how the sentence flows together rather than the pronunciation of every single word. It's like also this flow of things rolling together. And it's the up and down and it's the rhythm as well. It's all very musical anyway. And shortening as well, shortening words as well as we do, which is things that foreigners often, generally speaking, don't do. They don't shorten things. Often you hear the word will instead of I'll, instead of I will, I'll, right? So it's a shortening as well. Every single word. Unless you've lived in the country and then you pick it up. And that's the thing where people find, OK, how do I get better? You have to pick that up at some point. So we're here for you to give you some tips. My first word, typical one I hear a lot is photo, photographer and photography. So I often hear photography and all this kind of stuff. So obviously it's a photo. That's the easy one. Stress on the photo. But then you have photography. Stress on the tog. Photography, like the hobby or the skill and photographer, the person. So the stress is on the tog, not the foe. That's quite a common one that I hear. Dave, do you have one? Yes. I wanted to ask you a question, Rebecca. What do you get at Christmastime or birthdays? Money. What do you get? Money. Yes. But what is money? A cake. A cake. A yes and a cake. I guess a present. Right. Yes. A present. And where do we put the stress on the present as it's a thing? It's at the beginning. Present. Present. Now, what do we do when we, for example, stand in front of a room and show them a presentation? We don't presentate. We present. We present. With the zent, the second syllable, right? So often with some words and verbs, the noun, the emphasis is on the first part. So the pre, if it's a noun and if it's a verb, then it's on the last bit. So present. If it's a two-syllable verb or noun, it's very technical, isn't it? Yes. Does this work with emphasis? I'm just checking now. And to emphasise, is it similar? Emphasis. Emphasise. It's the same, I think. Just a different. Different way of putting it. Emphasis. Oh, no. Emphasis. And you emphasise. At the beginning and then you emphasise at the end. Yeah. So natives, of course, we do it naturally. And this is why it's for learners, it's a little more tricky. I hear very often when people say in the hotel and in Berlin. But should it be hotel and Berlin? I have a strong feeling. Or would it be, yeah, both nodding here. Yeah. Hotel, Berlin. Yeah. Hotel, Berlin. I think after so many years in Germany, I've also started saying hotel. Oh, you have? Yeah. And I think my family go hotel. They laugh at me. And I sometimes say Berlin instead of Berlin. Yeah. Yeah. I've just picked it up after so many years, I think. But it isn't. But you see, we say Berlin. So we also emphasise the second syllable and Berlin. And then we say Berlin. I don't know. Yeah. People say it in English. Yeah. Berlin. It's really confusing. Yeah. That's very confusing. OK. Do you have another word for us? So my next one is a little bit different. It's a word that sounds exactly the same, but has two different spellings and two different meanings. So my word is source. Source can be where you get your information. For example, a newspaper, you're where did I find this information? What is the colour? It can also be like the water is literally where does the water come from? The water source, but source is also what I would pour over my chicken or put on my pasta, pasta sauce. And I often hear sauce because of the A.U. So obviously sauce is S.O.U.R.C.E. And then sauce, tomato sauce would be S.A.U.C.E. Yeah. And I hear this sauce because of the S.A.U. they think of sauce. So I hear this sort of sauce, but it's actually pronounced exactly the same sauce, tomato sauce, not sauce. The next problem is when you have Worcestershire sauce. Oh, goodness. Not that one. Worcestershire. Place names are the next big one. But if you're from Sheffield, you have Henderson's. Anyway, you don't have Worcestershire sauce, we have our own version, so there's your problem solved. Take Hendo's. Yeah, take Hendo's. Yeah, absolutely. David, have you got another one? There's also the ones with the silent letters. I mean, that's something else we could do for a complete session, I guess. There's the word like, for example, I often hear the word mortgage. So if you buy a house and you get a loan from the bank, this special loan is called a mortgage. And in actual fact, when you spell it, it's spelled M-O-R-T and then Gidge or Gauge or Gidge, mortgage, because it's said quite quickly, the second bit. So it's mortgage. But the R is silent in this case. So it's actually sounds like Mort, Gauge, if you look at it's spelt, but it's actually pronounced Gidge. So the R is silent in it. And there's loads of those silent letters, which we can have a look again another time. One that's troubling anyway, people is with the TH. I mean, I need to mention that through, thoroughly and clothe, where the TH is at the end. And even I find it difficult to pronounce the plural of clothes. Clothes. How would you say that? Please, you say that as natives. Clothes. I always say to people, just do it like close the door, because it's not that far away from clothes. You know, clothes got a slight, but it's just like close the door because then you get the S right, because they always get the S wrong. And it's clothes and all sorts of things. When word ends at the tip of your tongue, we are not used to that. So, yeah, you have to put your tongue between your teeth at the end, clothes, and then it goes back in for the S. Clothes. Clothes. Yeah, I see. That's the tip for the TH. The tongue goes a little bit out between your teeth, clothes, and then it goes back in for the S, clothes. We all remember for our German listeners, the teachers in school trying to teach us TH. I don't know how you learn that. I mean, you don't see that stick your tongue between your teeth and then really, yeah, I think that's really an issue. I don't know whether today still, but that's also months. You hear like months. People can't say months or strengths, strengths and weaknesses, strengths. It is tricky. It is tricky. I think with clothes, you just don't wear any. It's a lot easier. Naked. No clothes. Clothes. Or just say trousers, T-shirt, take your trousers, T-shirt off and give the list. Yeah, go into individual items of clothing, clothing. Maybe that's easier. Yeah, clothing. Absolutely. Take your clothing off. Yes, very clever. Very strange subject. Yeah. OK, I have another one I hear often. I mean, it's not a really common word, but people always pronounce it wrong. Catastrophe. Oh, I always say it was a catastrophe. It was a catastrophe. So catastrophe, the tastrophe, the ta is the stress in that word. It was an absolute catastrophe. Yeah. What about result? I often hear that as a result. The way you say it, I don't think I can say that. Result. Result. Somewhere down there. Well, that's maybe the northern thing as well. Then you go, oh, now we're getting the north-south thing. That's also a bit tricky. A bit tricky. Maybe this is a good time to say that, actually, Rebecca, with us both being from the north, we pronounce often if we're speaking normally and not with our English teaching accent on. We have the short vowels, don't we? With not the erb, we say the pub and we maybe say grass instead of grass. Bath. Yeah. Bath instead of bath. Bath. Yes. So that is a short, yes. Yeah, we shorten the vowels often. Yeah, that's true. But that's the next step. I mean, for somebody trying to speak, pronounce English correctly, either way, that would be OK, because it could have picked up a northern accent that's even fancier. But that's the coolest thing when you hear your students saying things in a northern accent. You think, where did that come from? Oh, well done. That's happened to me a few times. They're chatting away and sounding very sort of neutral. And then all of a sudden they say, and then went to the pub. And I think, oh, my goodness, that's from me. Or they say the bucket. Someone said bucket the other day. What's on your buckets list? Yeah, my bucket list. It's kind of nice, but it sort of stands out as you think, oh, goodness. Wonder where that came from. I wonder where that came from. Yeah, but that's great because that's the way they pick up. You pick it up and that's good. But that's also I think with accents generally. I mean, I know so many people where you hear them and you listen and you say American accent, Irish accent. I've often I think sometimes the more extreme the accent is, maybe the easier it is for people to pick it up as well. Even Jürgen Klopp with his time in Liverpool, sometimes he could really speak with a bit of a, we say in English, a Liverpudlian accent or a Scouse English accent. And yeah, it's amazing how people pick it up and then copy it. Yeah, I don't think I picked up Hessisch when I lived in Hessen. Haven't you got? No, I don't think so. Maybe a little bit. Yeah, they should. I eat Uvschnitt for breakfast. They say Uv. I don't know if that is at Hessen. I think they do say Uv. Yeah, we wouldn't say Uv. Like Uvschnitt. And there's a lot of shush. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure you have. Maybe you haven't realised. But then again, that's a complete different subject on the accent because people ask me, so what's correct? Is it British or American? What should I say? And I mean, there's no correct, no right and wrong. Pick up whatever you like. And there's even something like international English now being talked about online because so many people from different places trying to communicate. But yeah, the pronunciation is, as we're coming back to what we said in the beginning, there's definitely, definitely more stress on words in English. And my husband, he was laughing when he heard me talk in English with my people because I emphasise a lot more. Oh, that's incredible. And people do. And they raise their voices a lot more. You just maybe overdo it. And then you sound more British or more American. Try it out. Venture more emphasis. Yeah. Can I say that? Absolutely. And I think, like you say, you have to overemphasise when you're learning, I think, and you're practising that you have to kind of overdo it. See, I'm doing it now. I have to overdo it to make it sound natural. And then you can slightly slow down again. But I think, yeah, that's a good way to do this sort of overemphasis. And it won't sound wrong. You know, it won't sound strange because it is normal to do that. Exactly. As we said, we went to England and then it was really obvious. So people, especially women, then you hear the voices rising. Oh, wonderful. And that's a lot more than you hear here in Germany, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I've got another one. Oh, if you're interested, it's all right, it's all right. You often have the ones with the past tenses, with the regular. I'm getting technical again. The regular verbs. Right. So the ED. And what I often hear is, for example, when you have the double P, like stop, you may hear stoppered or you hear stop, but you don't hear the T sound. Because when you have a double P or often or some of the letters, I'm just trying to think what the other sounds are with an SH, I think, or watched. The actual ED is pronounced with a T. So you knock off the E and then you have a T sound at the end. That is often pronounced incorrectly. And the same thing is with the words like decide, where the last sound is the D and the last with the last sound is the T, then the ED is pronounced ID. So these are things you often hear people saying incorrectly as well. So decided and lasted instead of ED. They're quite common as well. The Golden Nugget. As we were talking about Americans and Brits earlier on, a fantastic place to go and have a look for, are you pronouncing the word correctly, is the Oxford Learners Dictionaries online. And if you go there, you type in whatever word you're looking for. I typed in the word, for example, surprised, because that's often one that I hear from students getting wrong as well with the pronunciation. You look down after the word and you see a little blue speaker and there's a little red speaker. The little blue speaker will say it in British English and the little red speaker will say it in American English. So you can see if they are pronounced any way differently. Sometimes there are, but most of the time it's pretty much the same. And also, if you sign up for our newsletter on the website, you will see Nuggets number 10 from our 50 Golden Nuggets, the PDF that you will get and the accompanying padlet. Notice board, you will see a video which gives you a lot of different silent letters. And also for pronunciation, there's the idea of going to the website, youglish.com, where you can type a word in and you will have videos from YouTube where they show you how to pronounce it in different ways and forms. That's also quite a cool tool to check out pronunciations. Also with the different cultures background, American, British, Irish, Australian. So you have also their different pronunciations as well. Next week, we're going to have a slightly different format. If somebody asked us, what would be your best takeaway point for each of our areas of expertise? So Birgit with her grammar, me with my mindset and Dave with his communication skills. What would be your top takeaway? So we're trying to figure out what we can tell you. We've each got around six minutes. Our episodes are normally about 20 minutes long. So we're each going to give you our top tip, our top takeaway from our area of expertise. So a 20 minute episode, but three top tips that can help you upgrade, improve. And that will be our episode next week. And remember, of course, we are doing a workshop, which will be the same thing. Key takeaways, but in a longer format, of course, about four and a half hours. April the 24th. It's online. So you can participate no matter where you are in the world. And it's a great price. You also get three tickets to Conversation Club. So you can carry on your speaking practise afterwards. You get a roadmap, a personalised learning map to take away with you after the workshop. So if you're interested, head over to the website, 3EnglishExperts.com and you can find all the details there. See you next time. Bye. Bye bye. Thank you so much for pressing play today. If you enjoy our podcast, please share with your friends, your family or your co-workers. Or you can also support us by giving us a thumbs up or a star rating or a review on whatever podcast platform you are using to listen to us. For questions and comments, you can also head over to our website 3EnglishExperts.com Thank you so much for listening. We really appreciate your support. Have a great day and see you next time.