Naturally

hello. my name is emma, and in today's video, iam going to teach you about some pronunciation mistakes that you're probably making. so, ifyou look beside me, i have a bunch of words. these are some of the most commonly mispronouncedwords in english by english... by students who are learning english. sotoday, i'm going to teach you how we actuallypronounce these words. so, the title of this video is "silent syllables".all of these words have a silent syllable in them. now, you may be wondering: "whatis a syllable?" well, a syllable is usually a vowel sound, sometimes it can also be aconsonant-vowel sound. so, if that's a little bit confusing, let'slook at some examples.

here is the word "cat". it has one syllable.if i clap my hand, "cat". okay? now, compare this to the word "student", which has twosyllables. compare this to the word "beautiful", which has three, and we have here the word"incredible" which has four. okay? so each of these has a different number of syllables.you'll also notice that the length of the word is different. "incredible" is longerthan "beautiful", "beautiful" is longer than "student", and "student" islonger than "cat". okay? so, a silent syllable is a syllable that peoplebelieve we're supposed to pronounce, but we don't actually pronounce it. let's start withthis one, because this is the most common mistake i hear in my classrooms. many studentspronounce this word as "com-for-ta-ble", they

believe it has four syllables. this is nottrue. i want you to listen carefully to how i pronounce this word: "comfterble", "comfortable".how many syllables did you hear? "comfortable". if you said three syllables, you are correct.so we do not pronounce "com-for-ta-ble", mm-mm, we say: "comfterble". okay? so if iwrote this how it's almost pronounced, it almost looks like: "comfterble".okay? the next word that i hear a lot of studentsmaking a mistake with... this is one of my favourite types of food, i hear a lot of studentssay: "choc-o-late", where they pronounce this "o". in english, we don't pronounce that. weusually say... so we don't say "choc-o-late", which is three syllables; we actually say:"choclate", "chocolate", "chocolate". how

many syllables does that have?if you said two, you are correct.it's almost like this "o" doesn't exist. so i want you to repeat afterme: "chocolate", "comfortable". okay, good. now, the next sound, or... the next word manystudents mispronounce is this one. first off, they often miss... mispronounce the "v" sound,which is "veg", "vegetable". many students say: "veg-e-ta-ble". okay? so many studentsthink it has four... four syllables, but in fact, it doesn't. tell me: how many soundsdoes this have: "vegetable", "vegetable"? it has three. okay? so i'm actually going to start writing this."comfortable" has two, "chocolate" has two.

"comfortable"... sorry,"comfortable" has three. okay? "vegetable" has three. the next word is another word a lot of studentsmake a mistake with, similar to "chocolate", we have here an "o". we don't pronounce this"o". okay? so many students say "brocc-o-li", but we don't say "broccoli", we say: "broccli".okay? so, in this case, it only has two syllables: "brocc-li". okay? and we will go over these onemore time at the end of the video. okay, very common word here, how manysyllables do you think it has? if you said: "in-trest-ing",

you are correct, it has three syllables. many studentssay: "in-ter-est-ing". "that is very interesting." we don't say it like that. we say:"in-trest-ing". okay? "in-trest-ing", so this one has threesyllables also. okay, another very common word... okay, i'veused the canadian/british spelling. if you're an american or an... a speaker of americanenglish, there will be no "u" here. how many syllables do youthink this word has? okay? let's say it together:"favourite", "favourite". how many did you hear?if you said: "fav-rite", and you heard twosyllables, you are correct.

we do not say: "fav-our-ite",mm-mm, we say: "fav-rite". okay? okay, here's another one a lot of studentsmake mistakes with, many students will say: "temp-er-a-ture", but we don't say it this way.i want you to listen carefully, and choose: how many syllables arethere in this word? "tem-pra-ture", "temperature"."tem-pra-ture". okay, so there are threesyllables in this one. okay? we have this word... again, these areall very common words. a lot of students will say: "ev-er-y-one". they think it has foursyllables. now, i want you to listen to me and tell me: how manysyllables do you hear?

"ev-ry-one", "everyone","ev-ry-one". if you said three, you are correct.okay? and finally, we have two more. a lot of studentswill say this as: "nat-ur-all-y", but we don't pronounce it that way. listencarefully to how i say it. "nat-ral-ly","naturally", "naturally", "nat-ral-ly". it hasthree syllables. and the last one, similar to "chocolate",many students say: "soph-o-more", but it's not. "soph-more", "sophomore". so it's almost like this "o",we don't pronounce. it's a

silent sound. "sophomore".it has two syllables. okay, so let's do this very slowly. i wantyou to repeat each of these words after me. and you can say it slow, and then start makingit a little bit faster. okay? so let's start over here, and we will work our way across."naturally". repeat after me: "naturally", "nat-ral-ly". "sophomore", "sophomore","sophomore". okay, good. okay? okay,this one, i really want you to practice: "comfortable","comfterble", "comfortable", "that chair iscomfortable." okay?

okay? now, again, my favourite food - veryimportant you pronounce this correctly: "chocolate", "choclate","chocolate". okay. okay, here we have another word: "vegtable", "vegtable","vegetable". okay? so, again, three. "broccoli". so, again,repeat after me: "broccli", "broccoli". okay. okay. repeat after me, please:"intresting", "in-trest-ing", "interesting".

"favourite", "favrite","favourite". this one: "temprature","temprature", "temprature". and finally: "evryone","everyone", "everyone". okay. and there you have it, 10 words we often makepronunciation mistakes with when we are learning english. okay? so i invite you to check out our websiteat www.engvid.com. there you can do a quiz where you can actually practicesyllables and practice counting how many each of these have. so, i invite youto come check out that website, and until next time, take care.

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