We continue the series of articles from the series “English pronunciation” and today a wonderful teacher Dave Skonda will teach you how to pronounce sound sh  [∫] right.

Pronunciation of the combination of letters SH. Sound [ʃ]

Before you start watching the video, please note that speakers of those languages \u200b\u200bin which this sound is missing pronounce instead s  [s] or   ch  . In Russian, there is a similar sound - this is the sound "sh". But it is weak, because in Russian the articulation is very sluggish -\u003e. To get the sound right, you need to monitor the position of the lips and pronounce the sound clearly, forcefully blowing air. So, watch the video, repeat after the announcer and follow our tips. I succeeded, then you will succeed!

Video from the native speaker “Sound [ʃ]”

You may think you make the sound correctly but it may not be strong enough.
  This requires mouth movement and air pressure.
  Sh-sh ... ..
  For practice exaggerate the mouth position. Remember. For practice. Exaggerate like this: sh-sh-sh!

You may think that you are making this sound correctly, but it may not be strong enough

Remember! Pause the video any time to practice. Remember to pause the video and exercise.

Ok, we gonna talk about some common mistakes with the "sh-sound"

The first word we gonna look at is "shoe"
  Some people will say: "sues". I like your "sues". Where did you get your "sues"? No, it is shoes.

Or I like your chews. That’s nice chews. Where can I buy somе chews "? No, it is shoes. Say it with me "shoes"

So we will talk   the most common mistakes in pronouncing sh.

First, let's take the word “shoe” for example. Some pronounce it "souffle." I like your souffles. Where did you get these “souffles”? No, right. “SHOES.

I like your chuflu. Beautiful "chufly". Where can I buy "chufly?". No, right SHOES.

The next one is "ship".
  Some people will say “That’s a beautiful sip. I like that sip. I will go on sip. ”Or other people say“ That’s a beautiful chip. I like your chip. ”It’s ship. Say with me "ship"

My comment: I somehow received a comment from a person who does not care about the pronunciation, and he directly states this. However, in this case, you will really look ridiculous in the eyes of a foreigner, as you would be ridiculous if you pronounced “souffle” or “chufuly” instead of SHOES and “ship” instead of SHIP.

Take the following word "ship"
  Some people will say: "the ship." I like this “craft”. I will go on the “ship”.

Or so: This is a wonderful “ship”. I like this “ship”. No, SHIP. Say KO-RA-BL.

Ok, let’s try the “sh-sound” at the beginning of the words:
  I will say it, then you repeat.
share
shake
shy
showgirl

Make sure the lips are out: " showgirl shy. ”That’s good.

Now, let's try to pronounce sound sh  at the beginning of words. It should be funny. Repeat after me:

Make sure your lips are extended: “ showgirl s hy. ". That's so good!

Now let’s try this “sh-sound” in the middle of the words. This should be fun. Repeat after me:
  mi ssion
  o cean
  wa sher
  ti ssue
  Look at my mouth position: ti ssue, ti ssue

Now we will pronounce sound sh  in the middle of the words. Repeat after me:

Watch your mouth: ti ssue, ti ssue

Ok, let’s try this “sh-sound” at the end of the words. It is very important at the end. Repeat after me:

Engli sh
  fi sh
  tra sh
  puni sh
  Exaggerate the "sh-sound". Look at my mouth (push your lips out far): "punish."
  If you don’t practice, I am going to punish you.

Now we will pronounce sound sh  at the end of words. This is a very important sound at the end. Repeat after me:

Let’s try some phrases:

  Shame on you!

Please repeat after me.

The showgirl will punish anyone on the ship ...
  (pause)
  who doesn’t speak clear English.
  That’s outlandish (very unusual, strange)! Tino, get me some tissue ...
  (pause)

Now try to pronounce the phrases:

Do you think the shy show girl will shake her shoes for me?
  With my luck, I doubt she will shake anything for me.
  Shame on you!

Repeat after me:

The showgirl will punish anyone on the ship ... (pause) who doesn’t speak clear English.
  (pause)
  That’s outlandish (very unusual, strange)! Tino, get me some tissue ... (pause)
  and please put the dishtowels in the washer!
  (pause)

I will speak. When I stop you repeat. Ok And really hit this "sh-sound" hard.

Will you share your fish ... (pause) that you caught in the ocean .... (pause) ... on our mission to clean up the trash?
  (pause)

Ok, it’s very good.

I will tell. When I stop, you repeat. Good? And try to strain your mouth.

Will you share your fish ... (pause) that you caught in the ocean ... (pause) on our mission to clean up the trash?
  (pause)
Very well.

Remember to create a strong image or situation in your mind in order to remember and change habits! Remember, you need to create an image of sound in your memory to change the usual articulation!

Remember, if you are having trouble with this after thinking in a new way think like you are in a big movie theater. It is your movie that is being played and a bunch of people are talking and you are going to tell them to be quiet: ”Sh-sh-sh ....”
  Make them quiet, be very strong about it. I will see you next time!

Still, if you do not get this sound, then imagine that you are in the theater. There is a play, your play, and people are talking and now you are going to say to them: "Shhh ...". To keep them silent, say it out loud. See you next time!

My comment: In fact, it is very important to train every day so that the articulation of sound does not disappear from memory. To do this, you can repeat a poem or tongue twister every day. Here are some examples:

List of words for daily practice pronunciation sh [∫]:

At the beginning of the words:  shore (coast), shift (shift), shelf (shelf), show (show)

In the middle of the words:  machine (apparatus), fashion (fashion), pressure (pressure), passion (passion)

At the end of the words:  wish (wish), dish (dish), trash (garbage), foolish (stupid), rubbish (large garbage)

Patter for sh sound:  Wishes don’t make dishes. (translation) If yes, if only mushrooms grew in the mouth.

Poem for training sound sh [∫]

A short direction to avoid dejection,
  By variations in occupations,
  And prolongation of relaxation,
  And combinations od recreations,
  And disputation on the state of nation
  In adaptation to your station,
  By invitations, to friends and relations,
  By evitation of amputation,
  By permutation in conversation,
  And deep reflection you will avoid dejection.

(The poem is taken from a textbook for universities "Workshop on English: English pronunciation." Author B. Lebedinskaya)

Subject - CH digraph pronunciation in english language. People know that CH in English is about H in Russian, and is not steamed. There is a great deal of truth in this - the Russian person will pronounce the following triad:

chilling - shilling - killing is phonemically true, albeit with an accent. In English, CH has a larger attack than Russian Ch, that is, this sound is pronounced as if with a fraction of strong T in the beginning. But it doesn’t matter, even Russian Ch is well understood by everyone. Still - if a person studied phonetics formally, with specialist teachers - then he was told that at the end of SOME words CH can be pronounced as J. Examples

Greenwich - Green (not Greenwich, by the way)

sandwich - sAndwich

Norwich - nOridge (not Norwich)

spinach - spinage

But even in these 4 words no one can insist on J, because the stunning is not canceled, F will still become W (as pronounced NOSH in Russian), and D will also become deaf before W according to the rule of regressive assimilation, so J will go over in TS, and the English TS - this is H. We do not say Dodge in quick speech, we say DOTS.

The second level of difficulty begins when people understand that CH is not always C. Sometimes, in words of French origin, it is C. Examples:

chick (chick, chick type girl) is pronounced CHIK, it is a German word,

but chic (chic, chic) \u200b\u200bis already CHIC, since the word is French.

More examples:

cache - stock, stash. computer cache - pronounced cash - cash

chaperone - the person accompanying the minor / yu, duen

chef is a chef but not a chef at work

mustache - mustache

quiche - quiche (such a pie, used to be in Chocolate), often quiche loren (Lorencian pie)

there are more of them, but these are the main ones. The Spanish machete and the Italian pistachio pistachio Achio (pistachio) were also there.

By the way, those who know pronounce machete correctly - machete, not macheit, although you can do this and that. In other Hispanic borrowings, CH is pronounced as Ch (chipotle, chocolate, cinch, macho, mariachi, etc.)

The third level of difficulty is CH, which is pronounced K in words of Greek origin. Examples known to everyone -

psychology - sayko

and derivatives / cognates of psycho, psychiatrist, psychologist, psychiatric etc.

The rule here is “if in Russian X, then in English K”.

Here are the words

Translate them into Russian, there will be X everywhere, right?

So, in English there will be K, not Ch or Russian-like X:

Chemistry is kemistri, not Chemistri.

mechanics is mekaniks, not mekhaniks

Same thing with names

Christ - Christ is Christ

Charybdis - Charybdis - KarIbdis

Chloe - Chloe - ClOi

But Nicholas - Nikolai ("the winner of the people") (and not "NiKholay") - this is NIKolas anyway. But this is because Nika (or Nike) is the goddess of victory (hence Nike sneakers), here K is clearly visible.

The family is not without a freak, and this freak is the famous "arch" ("main").

Here are some examples -

archangel - he's an archangel in Russian, right? So, in English, is it ArcAngle? Right.

archon - it’s also in Russian “arkhont”, which means in English ArKon. It is truth too.

But archbishop - like "archbishop", then arkbishop? No, he's an archbishop.

Arch-enemy (the main enemy) is the Arch-Enemi

So here you just need to remember.

There are words that are difficult to relate to the Russians, but in which CH is K.

zucchini - pronounced almost like in Russian - zukIni, but it is not compatible with any X. This is generally a word of incomprehensible etymology, maybe not even Greek at all.

schedule (schedule) - we know that this is skEdyul (or, as an option, sheydyul). In Russian, this correlates with the word SCHISM (schism because they wrote on wide chipped chips), but you won’t understand it right away if you don’t know, so it’s better to just memorize it separately.

stomach - “stomach, stomach” - pronounced stAmak, and few remember that the word STOMAH was actually in Russian, but for a long time.

anchor - "anchor" - Anchor. You can’t explain it to Greek, we don’t say “yachor”. You just need to remember. And the explanation is - this is a word of Greek origin, yes, but not from X, but from K - "profile", hook. Here K is preserved. The question is why not write, for example, ancor or ankor, which would be much more logical. The answer is that it was, CH was inserted later, for beauty. Without stupid CH, there is angle (angle), ankle (ankle), and the Russian “angle” of the same etymology. Hence Anchorage (a city in Alaska), but the “anchor” (barrel) is not from here.

chasm - “abyss, failure”, pronounced kEzm and this must be remembered, otherwise you’ll consider it to be chEzm all your life. However, the verification word is “chaos”. The word "chiasm" is similar, but not that.

ache - “pain” or “hurt,” reads “eik.” (I have a headache - everyone knows that.) It is not comparable with Russian, alas. This is an old English word, and before it was ake. CH was added there a long way, now it does not matter which one.

The fourth level of difficulty is the pronunciation of CH as X or K in words of a non-Greek and non-ancient origin. Nobody knows these rules at all, as unnecessary.

The first is loch - Loch, “lake”, Loch Ness - this is “Lake Ness”. CH in words of Scottish origin is pronounced X. It’s another thing that no one uses these words, but if you want, then

clachan (often claKhan) - hamlet

pibroch - a bagpipe melody

lochan - pond

toshach (toshah) - leader

The fifth level is CH in German names. The general rule is that when pronouncing German names, the final CH reads K.

Heinrich - Heinrich - in Heinrich

However, in Bach (Johann Sebastian) X is saved in English pronunciation, he is not “Buck”, he is “Bach”.

Munchausen (Munchausen) is pronounced generally crookedly - mANCHfuzen. Notice, Ch, not K and not X. This is similar to the munch to munch (Munchkins are Chewers from the Wizard of the Emerald City »

"Munchausen’s Syndrome" is the Manchfusen Syndrome, so

And it’s not that the English do not know that CH in German words at the end of a word reads X (more precisely, HSC). It's just that in English the sound X at the end of a syllable or word is gone, it is not officially pronounced. Remember the Sultan Shahriyar from 1001 nights? It is in English Shahriar, but Sharyar is read.

Here are the words:

In Russian X there is here and there — Shah, Allah, Mashiach, but in English there. The same thing in the middle of the word at the end of the syllable:

Mehdi is Mehdi or Mahdi in Russian, but Copper in English.

Therefore, they try to write Russian K in official documents as KH, especially at the end of syllables (before the consonant) and at the end of words - if Khabarovsk, Kherson, Elakhovsky can be written both Habarovsk, and Herson, etc., then it’s Kazakh , "Belykh", "Pakhmutova", "Kyakhta" will never be written by kazah, Bekyh, Pahmutova, Kyahta - only kazakh, Belykh, Pakhmutova, Kyakhta.

And finally, the sixth and final level of complexity is CH, which means phonetic zero, that is, unpronounceable. There are only four common words:

Crichton - Crichton (last name)

currach - korra (kurra, type of boat)

drachm - draam (drachma)

yacht - yaat (yacht)

The reasons for the lack of pronunciation in each word are different.

And here is the word schism (schism, schism). It can be read according to two rules:

1. CH is not readable at all (sMism)

It is interesting that this root came to the Russian language twice - once as “schism”, and the second time as “schizophrenia" - SHIZO - schism, FRENIA - brain, state of mind. That is, "split personality" in general. But in English and schizophrenia it is read by the rules - SKITZOPHRENIA.

Dear website visitors! On this page you will find materials on the following topics: Reading rules. English rules reading. Reading rules in English. Rules for reading English letters in the table. Table of rules for reading English. Rules for reading English words. Rules for reading English letters. Rules for reading English vowels. Rules for reading vowels of the English language. Rules for reading English consonants. Rules for reading letter combinations. Download rules for reading English words. How to read in English. How to read English words. How to learn to read English correctly.

Reading Rules in English

In offered by us tables with rules for reading letters and combinations in English(see below) summarizes the main trends reading rules. We have chosen a form for presenting information on reading rules in English  in the form of small tableswhere all are represented in alphabetical order. Please note that the tables do not always give strict rules, but rather trends reading rules, so you can repeatedly find in the description reading rules  those or other letters and combinations  in these tables, words like “usually”, “usually”, etc.

Like the rules rules for reading English letters and combinations of letters  cannot be considered universal for all cases, because, as is widely known, in English there are much more read rule exceptions  (see, for example, http://alleng.ru/mybook/2read/A.htm) than these rules themselves.

In addition to remembering individual reading rules letters and combinationsvery useful, one might even say absolutely necessary, remember reading rules  each individual english words . This may seem absurd and really impracticable, but this method, in our opinion, is one of the best and effective (all for the same reason a huge amount exceptions to Reading Rules in English).

Way to remember reading rules  whole wordsrather than individual letter combinations  minimizes the possibility of errors in pronouncing the word, and, consequently, the potential likelihood of communicative failures when communicating with native English speakers.

Rules for reading the letters C, D, E, F in English

  C - D - E - F -

C
[s]		[k]			[ʃ]
before e, i, y		in other cases (not before eiy)			in the combinations -cion -cial, -cian, -cient, -cion
cent city bi cycle		cap			special musician efficient
D
[d]
date
E
	[e]		[ə:]
in the open syllable, as well as in letter combinations ee, ea,  except for the words dead, breath, head, etc.	in a closed syllable, in a series of words with a letter combination ea		before r	in letter combinations ei ey		in combination eu
P ete s eem eat	b ed breath		her	vein th ey		neutral