I found this interesting article the other day and wanted to share it with you.
It teaches how to pronounce English words with misleading beginnings. As is the case in about 20% of English words, what you see isn’t how you say it!
The article is easy to follow, and I wanted to add some extra information for some of the English words with misleading beginnings to make it clear why the beginning is pronounced the way it is.
* The section where it says ‘Many words that sound as if they begin with the letter j-, are spelled with g- at the beginning”, has a rule!
If a /g/ is followed by an ‘e’ ‘i’ or ‘y’ (almost all the time) the /g/ is said as a ‘j’ sound.
Examples are gentle, ginger, gym
* It is the same rule for words that begin with a ‘c’ followed by an ‘e’ ‘i’ or ‘y’. In this case the ‘c’ always says a /s/ sound.
For example: cent, cycle, city.
* There are a couple of sections where the article mentions words beginning with ‘ch’. In English, ‘ch’ can say 3 things.
It can say ‘ch’ as in chip; it can say /k/ as in school ; and it can say ‘sh’ as in chef. It’s most common usage is ‘ch’ as in chip, then second most common is /k/, and third most used is ‘sh’. The words where ‘ch’ says ‘sh’ are usually words that have come in to English from French.
It can definitely be confusing at times knowing how to pronounce English words with misleading beginnings, so click on the link HERE to find out how.
Best wishes,
Esther
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