English Pronunciation Mistake: Get rid of that ‘E’! (especially for Spanish speakers)

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My name is Emma, and today I am going to talk to you about a common pronunciation mistake

I hear a lot, especially from my Spanish-speaking students.

So if you speak Spanish, this video is definitely for you.

So what is the mistake I'm talking about?

Well, many people who - their first language is Spanish - they make this kind of mistake.

They say "estudi" instead of "study".

So what's happening here?

You might have noticed I added an extra "e".

So this is what many Spanish speakers do, because in - I guess in Spanish, there's often

an "e" in front of "s's", so for example, a lot of Spanish speakers might pronounce

"special" like "a special", or they might pronounce "school" like "a school".

So is this a mistake you make in your pronunciation?

Do you add an "e" before the "s" in English?

Again, this is a really, really common pronunciation mistake, and I'm going to teach you how to

get better at your pronunciation.

Before we get there, though, I just had two recommendations.

I've noticed many people don't even know they're making this mistake.

The number of times I'll talk to somebody who's a Spanish speaker who's speaking English,

and I'll say "Oh, you added an 'e' here", and they keep saying "No, I'm not", "a school,

a school", and they don't actually hear the difference sometimes.

They don't realize they're doing it.

So if you don't know if you're making this mistake, one of the things you can do is you

can actually record yourself.

Record yourself saying "special".

Try to listen to yourself say "school" or "study", and compare, and ask yourself "Am

I adding an 'e' to this word?"

If you have a teacher who teaches English, or if you know a native speaker of English,

maybe you have a friend who speaks English, you can ask them "Do I make this mistake?

Do I add an 'e' in front of the's' on these words?"

Because again, many, many people do not know they make this mistake.

So, now let's talk about how to fix this mistake.

And yes, there is a solution.

Okay, so this might take you a little bit of time and practice, but getting rid of this

extra 'e' is really worth the effort.

So, what do I recommend doing?

Well, what I would recommend is think about what words you use a lot that have, you know,

"sp" or "sc", for example, maybe you say "study" a lot, maybe you say "Spanish", or "Spain",

or "school", or "speech", or "spelling".

Anything that has an "sp" in it that you use a lot, or an "sc", I would recommend starting

to make a list.

Think about which words do I have a lot of trouble with, and then take time to practice

those words, rewrite them to help you with the pronunciation.

So together we are going to do this.

I'm going to show you how I would rewrite some of these words, and how I would get better

How I would get better at their pronunciation.

So, I have here a common mistake I hear many of my students make.

They say "I astudy", "I astudy".

So, what I would do is I would rewrite this as "ice", "tuddy", "ice", "tuddy".

You'll notice that the vowel is also a bit different.

Many speakers have trouble with their vowel sounds, so it's not "stoo", it's not an "oo"

sound, it's a "stuh", "uh".

And just to remind myself, I'm just going to put a little "a" here.

So I would start by saying this really slow, "ice studdy", "ice studdy", and then I'd start

to say it a little faster.

And as I say it faster, I'd start to move my finger, because sometimes even though we're

using our voices, moving the finger can actually help the way we say things.

So I would start to say "ice studdy", "ice studdy", and slowly bring it together.

So let's do this one more time.

This time I want you to do the same thing.

If you need to pause the video, that's okay.

Write down this, get your finger ready, and together let's do this.

So when you're ready, we can say "ice studdy", "ice studdy", okay?

And again, it might take you some time, that's okay.

Eventually, after some practice, the goal is to say "ice studdy", "ice studdy".

Let's say it in a full sentence.

"Ice studdy English", "ice studdy English", okay?

Now let's try another example of this.

We have here "in a Spanish", "in a Spanish".

How do we get rid of this "e"?

Okay, so this is the "e" that's the problem.

Well, let's write it like this.

"In", then I have "ce", so "ince", "ince", "panish", "panish".

So let's do each word separately first.

"Ince panish", "ince panish".

Now I'm going to start saying it a little faster, "ince panish", "ince panish".

What I want you to do is write down this word as I've written it down, get that finger ready.

You can pause the video now to do this.

And when you're ready, let's do it together, but let's use our finger to slow down.

"Ince panish", "ince panish", "ince panish", okay.

What can I say about "ince panish"?

Okay, here's a sentence, "Ince panish", we add an "e", "ince panish", we add an "e".

All right, let's look at another word you might say.

Maybe you're talking about the country Spain, and maybe instead of saying "Spain", you're

saying "espain".

So how can we get rid of this "e"?

Well, I've written it as "ce pain", "ce pain".

So I want you to say those two words, "ce pain".

And now let's bring it together and say it a little faster, "ce spain", "ce pain", sorry,

sometimes it's hard for me to even do this, "ce pain", "spain", "spain", that one was

better, "spain", okay.

And again, that finger can really help you with the pronunciation.

Okay, here's another thing you might talk about.

Maybe you're talking about your children and they go to school.

Maybe you want to say "they're a school".

So how can we get rid of this "e" and say "they're school"?

Well, here I've written it as "they'res cool", "they'res cool".

And as we say it together, we bring it together, we can say "they're school", "they're school".

Let's do it one last time together, "they're school".

And now let's say it faster, "they're school", okay.

Now I have this, "excellent a speech", again, I don't want this "e", so I'm going to rewrite

it into "excellence" with a "ce" and "peach".

So let's say this first in two words, "excellence peach", "excellence peach", okay, so repeat

after me, "excellence peach".

Now let's bring it together, "excellence peach", "excellence peach".

One more time, let's do it a little bit faster this time, "excellence peach", "excellence

Okay, so we're going to do a couple more words like this, but I think you're starting to

Rewrite the word, a lot of the times you'll notice that the "s" looks like "ce" in the

first part, so instead of saying "Spain", I've written the "s" like "ce" and "pain".

So this is something that can be really helpful to break it down, to slow down your speech,

and then you speed it up.

So now let's look at a couple more examples.

Okay, so the next word, or the next phrase we're going to talk about is "my specialty".

Is that correct?

No, I've added an "e" sound, that isn't actually there.

If you haven't noticed already, all of these words or expressions are spelt incorrectly.

I've added an extra "e", but in the actual spelling it looks like this, "my specialty".

So how do we get rid of this "e" in our pronunciation if we're having trouble with this?

Well, again, we can just write it out differently and practice, practice, practice.

So instead of saying "my especialty", I've changed it to "mice specialty", "mice specialty".

Now as we say it a little faster, I'm going to put the linking here, "mice specialty",

"mice specialty", and now let's slow it, or sorry, let's speed it up a bit.

"Mice specialty", "mice specialty", "mice specialty".

Alright, now I have the word, this is spelling.

I've added the "e" that people pronounce incorrectly, "herspelling".

So what can we say instead of "herspelling"?

Well, what we want to say is we want to say "herspelling".

So how can we say this?

Well, I've rewritten it here, I've written "herspelling".

So let's do this together.

"Herspelling", let's do our little linking here, "herspelling", "herspelling", "herspelling".

Now one more time, this time a little faster, "herspelling".

And again, this might take you time, it's not easy to change your pronunciation, and

you might have to record yourself doing this.

One of the things that learners sometimes do is they think they're doing something right,

and then they practice, practice, practice, but they're still making some sort of mistake

in their pronunciation.

So it's really important when you do this to record yourself and listen to how you're

pronouncing things.

Or ask a friend if they're a native speaker of English, or if they have really great pronunciation

in English, or if they're a teacher, ask them to listen to you do this to make sure that

you're doing it correctly.

All right, let's do one more.

This is the last one for luck.

So the word I want to say is "specialty".

A lot of Spanish speakers will add this "e" and say "especialty".

Again, this is how it's spelled, "especialty".

So instead of saying "especialty", what can we say?

Well, again, I have the "ce", and so this is "se", "specialty", "se", "specialty", and

now let's link it, "specialty", "specialty", "specialty", and now one more time fast, "specialty".

All right, well that was a really good workout.

I feel like we just did a lot of exercise, actually.

So if you want to do more practice with this, I recommend coming and visiting our website

at www.engvid.com.

There you can actually do a quiz to practice what you learned in today's video.

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So thank you so much for watching, and until next time, take care.