When you’re learning a new word, it’s not enough simply to memorize its definition and spelling. While these will help you get by in strictly written formats, you’ll soon be confused when you’re listening to English being spoken, especially if English is not your first language. An essential part of English vocabulary study is pronunciation: the way the word is said out loud, including the vowel and consonant sounds, and the emphasis on one or more syllables. Learning a word’s pronunciation will help you distinguish between the words height (with a long “i” sound as in time) and weight (with a long “a” sound as in day). These two words look as if their vowel clusters should be pronounced the same, but they’re obviously different. Just think about what happens when you mix up the vowel sounds:

height pronounced with a long “a” sounds like hate
weight pronounced with a long “i” sounds like white

It would confuse your listeners if they heard you say “fifty grams is the average white of an egg” or “her enthusiasm for the project reached new hates.” Remember, you might be spelling words correctly in your written correspondence, but if your pronunciation is incorrect, you’ll be failing in your verbal communication.

Another area of difficulty with the pronunciation of some English words is that the stressed syllable (the syllable that gets the most emphasis) can be the only difference between two heteronyms, words that are spelled the same way but have different pronunciations. Take a look at these word pairs:

content
When pronounced CONtent, this is a noun meaning “that which is contained or included.” When pronounced conTENT, it’s an adjective that means “happy and satisfied.”

perfect
If you pronounce this word perFECT then you’re using it as a verb that means “to remove all flaws from.” As an adjective, it’s pronounced PERfect.

Learn how to pronounce new words by using the audio features of your online dictionary or vocabulary improvement software, or by looking up the IPA for the word. Once you’ve integrated this aspect of vocabulary into your study routine, you’ll be perfectly content with your rapid progress.

For more pronunciation tips, click here.