If pronunciation teaching is aimed at achieving native-like proficiency, it’s a futile business. However if reasonable intelligibility is the target in pronunciation instruction, it’s a fruitful, promising quest. The problem now is: how do we gauge reasonable intelligibility? There’s an interesting factor known as the interlocutor’s familiarity and attitudes towards the speaker that has to be considered. Do the […]
pronunciation
Master Silence
Only whenever a letter is silent, or usually so, do we form Spelling/Pronunciation rules. We cannot spell by rules –there are just too many exceptions. I’ll tell you why we’ve got to forgive our English teachers for torturing us of pop spelling quizzes back then. B keeps quiet before t, or after m, on the […]
Why B Silent?
“All my life, without a douBt I’ll give you, All my life..” If not for the B, he must have been the heartthrob of the singing contest. Yes, he’s tall, handsome, and quite young with a deep voice YET with a loud B before his T. T, an unvoiced consonant, forces B to lose its voice. Simply, T silenced B. Say […]