#422 - 40 English Words You’re Probably Pronouncing Wrong (and How to Fix Them)
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By now, you should already know that words in English, they often don't sound the way they look. That's why we call English a non- phonetic language. For example, the word Wednesday. If you read it the way it's spelled, it sounds like Wed-ness Day. But in reality, it's just two syllables. The way you pronounce it is simply Wends-day.

Wednesday. Same thing with the word business. It's not busyness. It's not business either. I've heard that too. It's business. Two syllables. Biz-ness. Sometimes it even gets shortened to simply biz as an expression showbiz that refers to the industry of pop music and movies and television. Now anyway, I know these two words are easy, but...

What if I told you that there are many, many other ones that come up in conversations in English that you are likely mispronouncing? Well, this is exactly what Xena and I covered in today's lesson. More than 40 everyday words that you're probably pronouncing wrong, and we're going to teach you how to fix them easily. Let's get into it.

All right, Xenia, so let's get started with the first word that I have here, which is actually a word that has four syllables. But because it reads long, like it has many letters, I think learners just get confused with that and overly pronounce it, you know, like put too many sounds in it. The word is chocolate. Chocolate.

ever heard people mispronounce that yeah i think it also comes from people's native languages because it's pronounced like all four syllables in their native language for example in ukrainian it would be chocolate right uh so maybe it's because of that but in english i know it's chocolate very short right yeah chocolate oh in portuguese as well we say it like that like a chocolate

My mom always said

life was like a box of chocolates. Nice. What a nice example. When you said a movie, somehow I thought you would bring Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Oh yeah, there's that one as well with the word chocolate. But anyway, this is a common phenomenon. Learners mispronouncing because they try to read out to take every syllable and pronounce each one of them. And relying on spelling, I think, is the biggest reason why we non-natives get it wrong. There's other words that come to mind. These ones are longer. And I've taken note here of some, like the word luxurious. Luxurious.

Do you know that one? Yeah, that's what is tricky one. Not only because it's long, but because it changes the sound, right? If it's luxury, it's the sound "sh", but in luxurious, it also changes the "sh" into "zh" sound, right? And what does that mean? Luxurious? Oh, it's very fancy, something very expensive, good looking.

And there's some things about the actual spelling here, like the ending of this word. It's O-U-S, the letters O-U-S, which tends to trick learners as well. So it should be us, right? The pronunciation of that syllable is just us. So there's other words like courageous or...

I have one here that I took note. Mischievous. Do you know what that is? Mischievous. That's a common word where people make mistakes, right? Mischievous. I used to make a mistake here. I would say mischievous, somehow like that. But it's mischievous, right? What does it mean? It does read like mysterious, right?

Yeah, maybe that's why I was confusing it with this word. Mysterious, mischievous, but it is mischievous. Yeah, so mischievous, like maybe your puppy is mischievous, right? It likes to cause trouble in a playful way. Or a kid sometimes can be mischievous. So that's what it is, right? Like an animal or a person who likes to cause trouble. But again, in a playful way.

Yeah. That's what it is. And it is, the pronunciation is Ms. Che. Vs. That simple. Lots of letters there, but no need to overcomplicate it. Right. Another one that comes to mind would be conscientious.

Oh, what a long word again, conscientious. And that's a tricky to explain. If I try to explain it is very thoughtful and aware, right? There's also something about righteousness about it, like a wanting to be right, right? In situations. So you act conscientiously or a conscientious person.

You want to do things right. Anyway, so these three words, luxurious, mischievous, conscientious, they are not only hard to pronounce, or you could see them as hard to pronounce, but they are not, right? And once you know the syllables, like mis-chievous, and they're advanced words too. Maybe you guys listening and watching this, you'd have trouble remembering them. And that's why we put all of these advanced words together.

in the app as flashcards. If you unlock this lesson and you watch it on the real life app, you can save all these expressions and practice them later and practice not only remembering the meaning and not just checking if you remember the meaning of them, but also the pronunciation. So this is a great way for you to master these words and master the pronunciation of them as well. Unlock this lesson for free right now if it's your first one by clicking the link in the description below or you can simply search for RealLife English on your favorite app store.

What's cool about it, they also can practice the spelling of the words, right? With the writing exercise. That is true, yeah. And they will see example sentences to see how the word is used in the context.

I thought of a simpler word here and we brought it up earlier with me trying to teach Mira say this word like vegetable. Again, this word has like four syllables, but it's just pronounced with three, right? Vegetable. Vegetable. All the words in English, they have one syllable, maybe two, but 99% of the cases, it's just one syllable that's more stressed and the other ones are severely stressed.

unstressed they are just in your own language you're in a native language guys like that could probably sound like just mumbling like right um give you examples here like dangerous dangerous that word has three syllables and the first one is emphasized dan the other two is jurors jurors or beautiful beautiful same pattern da da da

First syllable is emphasized. Other two, riful, riful, beautiful. Other languages don't tend to have that, right? Do you have that in Ukrainian? I don't think so. I don't think so. I can't think of it now. But yeah, in English, it's just like much more emphasized, like stands out this feature, right? I could think of the word comfortable, right? Comfortable.

There you go. Yeah, which I've heard it has different ways to pronounce it. There's those two ways. There's the one you just said, and there's also the less intuitive comfortable.

Comfortable. Comfortable. Even more. Yeah, there's an added R sound there. Like turbo. What is that like? Yeah. That's how some people say it. Comfortable. But anyway, so you have these patterns. Let's think about words with three syllables. You have da-da-da. Da-da-da. Or you may have da-da-da.

Can you think of any word that has that pattern? Like, I don't know, remember? Remember, yeah. Allowance? There you go, yeah. Even the word example, like, those are examples of this. Example, zam, example, pull, pull, pull, right? The first syllable and the third syllable are very short. And I find that...

Portuguese speakers and Spanish speakers, they tend to enunciate too much these unstressed syllables. So if you are a native Portuguese speaker or Spanish speaker, or everybody listening and watching to us,

work on that and make those even shorter, make those even more unstressed. Isa, let me ask you here. You said they tend to enunciate each syllable. Would you define the word enunciate? What does it mean when you enunciate? Yeah, it's when you speak clearly each syllable and you make it yourself like very clear in your speech, like you open your mouth and

you can be understood. Yeah, the opposite of it would be another word that you used earlier, to mumble. When you don't enunciate, you mumble, right? Exactly. So you don't need to enunciate everything because that's not how English sounds. You sort of mumble the unstressed syllables. And we can understand it. You can understand based on this sort of pattern. I can guarantee you that. Like all of you guys listening, the word understand, for example,

It's the third pattern that I wanted to mention. It's like da-da-da, understand. You don't care so much about the first syllable or the second. Under, under, understand. You rely a lot on the third syllable for understanding the word understand. I thought of this difficult word, picturesque, right? Picturesque.

There you go. Yeah. Anyway, so if you understand this, these patterns, it becomes a lot easier to pronounce words correctly because you know where the pattern is and you're going to make yourself be more understood more easily. So I have a challenge for you here, Xenia. I have six words that I'm just going to say them and I want you to tell me where the stress is by doing the da-da, da-da-da, or da-da-da. Can you do that? Okay. Let's do this. Okay. Photograph. Photograph.

Photography. Yeah, photography has four syllables, right? Yeah, you got it. Not three. There you go. Yeah, but that's interesting, right? Because I can photograph. It's almost the same word, but the emphasis is on the first one. Photograph. Photography or photographer. Anyway, moving on. Prosperous. 23.

Yeah, it's just like there is a main and secondary stress, I guess, 23. Like, the main stress falls on the last syllable, right? Yeah.

Yeah, because it's nice to emphasize a little bit the 2, the 20, right? But still, it is less emphasized than 3. So if you think about the word chunk 23, and you're saying it, you're reading it, you're speaking English, and you have this sort of composite numbers, like 35, any of that, you want to make the last word or last syllable stronger. So 25, 23, 24.

In this set of words, I really like the word "prosperous". It means wealthy. Oh yeah. Yeah, it's a more advanced one. Yeah, prosperous. Like a prosperous family or country or person. Right? But anyway, I have just two more. Candidate. Da-da-da.

Yeah. And one thing that is interesting about this word that is often mispronounced as well is the last syllable because it's date, right? But you don't say date. It's date, right? Candidate. Candidate. Or even candidate with a dropping the D in the middle. Candidate. Yeah. Yeah. Because of the ND, right? And finally, overcome. Overcome. Da-da-da.

Yeah, the way I pronounced it could sound like that. But maybe overcome. Overcome. Overcome. In that sense, it would be da-da-da. Overcome. I would say overcome. Yeah, I think it's like overcome. If you say overcome, it sounds like you're saying over-come. But if it's the single word overcome, the emphasis is on that last syllable, I would say. Do you want to check? Go.

Overcome. There you go. It says overcome. This word, by the way, reminds me of the song We Shall Overcome. I think I heard it in some movie because it is related to the civil rights movement. So it was popularized during those times. So it's something from the cultural thing. We always like to learn about culture when we learn about language, right? So you guys can check it out. So many reasons to learn about culture.

Because I think not only a lot of times you need culture to understand what's going on in a conversation, you may understand all the words, but you still don't get exactly what people are talking about because you may be missing the culture. But I also think it helps you remember stuff like life is a box of chocolates. Like if you if you remember that because you like the movie and movies are culture, then it's easier to remember the correct pronunciation like chocolates. It's plural in that case.

But anyway, and I think that's how we learned it too, right? I could say, because I know, back in college, you'd read a lot, right? Be really into literature. Am I right? We would read, we would act out dialogues, and we would do a lot of mimicking. And those patterns, they sometimes would come from the lyrics of the songs.

Yeah, or some popular proverbs maybe. And same thing with me. I mean, not so much with...

all the reading but i would say with movies and tv series so there's the presence of culture in our learning and guys if you want to do just like xenia and myself did and use culture as a foundation for your english learning you should know that every single week we make lessons just like this one filled with real life stories of real people or movies tv series music pop culture and all of that so subscribe to this channel if you're watching us on youtube

or follow us if you're on Spotify or Apple Podcasts so you don't miss any of our new lessons and you can become a confident natural English speaker just like Xenia and I. Now I do have a new set of words here, Xenia, that are more related to unclear vowel sounds. And to start this little segment here, I have a clip that I want to play.

with a guy that has become really popular. He's all over Instagram. His name is Bobby Finn. And I know I've already played a clip from him in a previous lesson, but this is another clip that I think is just really funny. And it shows this inconsistency of the English language when it comes to pronunciation. So let's check it out.

So this word is... "One" Which means this word is... "Bun" No! Why would you think it's "bone"? You don't see how... It's because it's "one" with a "b" "Bone" That's why. Okay. Which means this word is... "Don" No! It's "done" You don't see how... It's because it's not the same. That's why. Okay. So obviously this word would be... So it'd be... "Zun" No! Why would you think...

Let's take a step back. This word is... "One" Which means this word is... "Gone" No! It's "Gone" You don't see how? It's because it's "one" with a "g" "Gone" That's why. Oh, okay. Which means this word is... "Hon" No! It's "Hone" You don't see how? It's because it's not "Hon"

What's funny here is that he explains it as if there is the rule, but there is no rule, it's just like this random pronunciation, right?

Yeah, and he's always saying like the same sentences that are so annoying but so funny like "you don't see how" Yeah, this is funny. This guy is really funny. "You don't see how" Anyway, so talk about vowel sounds. I have some words here that I think are just... I used to say them incorrectly up until recently I'd say. The word... there's a fish actually.

A type of fish that is popular, especially in Japan. Japanese food. You know the one I'm talking about? It's even the name of a color. Slightly pink, slightly orange. Salmon? Yeah. Do you like salmon? I like salmon, yeah. Nice. Nice, yeah. Salmon. So it reads, it spells like S-A-L-M-O-N. So not Salmon. Or like, you know, Salmon, as you said it. Salmon. Salmon.

Oh, there is a bunch of them. Those silent letters, right? Right. And there's something about the vowel sound there, the A sound, which is sa, not sal. Because if you say salmon, it's also incorrect. It's sa, at least in American English. Or other words that come to mind are half, similar pattern, half, not half. Or how about walk? Now, the A sound changes there.

The L is dropped again or talk, but the A is different. Walk, talk. There are lots and lots of words like that, right? And it's not only the L which can be silent. There are also words with B or T letters which are silent. Like, for example, right now I can think of climb, which is a common mistake. People would say climb with this B at the end, but it shouldn't be there, right? Or debut.

With the T at the end, but yeah, but that's because it's a French word. And so according to French rule, it doesn't have that sound at the end.

But what about those "island" and "isle", right? "Island" with "s", which is something you see in the oceans, or you find in the oceans, or "isle". And it's crazy, like "isle" and "island" are the same, right? But what's crazy is that "island" is such an easy word to say, to pronounce, "island". It's like "I", like me, "land".

And yet when learners, non-natives like my students, they see the word, they get confused. They're like, how should I say it again? It's like island, island. It's two syllables, island. Right. Anyway, but you mentioned a debut and that's a French word, isn't it? Yeah, it is. But it exists in English. And there's all these different words that sound quite foreign to me.

For example? They are tricky to pronounce. Yeah, like facade. I think that's French too. Yeah, facade. Mm-hmm. Façade. What is that? It's the frontal part of the building. There you go. And debut, by the way, what is that? We didn't define it. It's something that you do for the first time. For example, there is a play and you are a young actor and you make a debut. So you play for the first time.

You appear in the movie for the first time. Yeah. How about the word, albeit?

I mean, it is English, but does that come from English? Because it does sound like you're saying three words in one, like I'll be it. Maybe that's what's happening here. I'll be it. Yeah, I think that's an English word, I'll be it. It's a little bit tricky to explain it. It's the same as although, like although it's hard or like, yeah, it's like a conjunction. It functions as a conjunction in the sentence. Mm-hmm.

Like there's all of these details, but ignoring that or, you know, let me add something else. Despite all of this. No, no, no, no, no. I'll be it. Okay. So other words that come to mind here that are sound foreign. I think they are foreign is genre.

Oh, genre. Yeah, I think it took me some time to remember the pronunciation of this one. So for example, if I ask you, Izzy, what's your favorite genre of the movie? I'd say comedy or adventure. Adventure comedy. Adventure comedy. Comedy with some adventures. I think it comes from French, right? It sounds French to me. Genre.

Yeah, there's another French word that is synonymous with appropriate, but in its French form in English, like we say this in English. Do you know what that is? It sounds similar. Appropriate. Apropos. Oh, no, I don't know that. Apropos. Yeah. So it's used like together with the appropriate. It means the same. It's just like comes from French, right? It's the same. I believe. Yeah. Yeah. It's very apropos.

apropos yeah okay or fiance yeah that's all these different words right anyway is entrepreneur a french word as well i don't know but that's another word that took me a while to learn the pronunciation of entrepreneur and i would really really recommend it that like

Like for our students to practice it, it's really easy when you just break it down, right? Like entrepreneur, entrepreneur. It's just like what scares learners the most is how the word is spelled, right? It's like you don't have a clue how to read that. But if you trust your ears and just like try to repeat it,

entrepreneur entrepreneur that just makes it so much easier just don't rely on what you see rely on what you hear breaking down definitely helps okay senia now i have another challenge for you

This time, I'm going to give you some tips, and I want you to guess what the word is and teach us the correct way to pronounce it. And it's a simple form, like by simplifying something that may feel like it's kind of complex. So the first word is a verb, and it's what a dog does with a bone.

Okay, I think you mean the word no. This is something we mentioned in one of the recent podcasts. When it's done at nine. That's a good one, yeah. Like with the G, right? G-N-A-W. Yeah. With a silent G. So that wasn't the word you meant. It is not, but it's such an awesome one because it has you...

It's like two really advanced patterns, like the silent G and the A-W of "a yeh" "a" "la" "a yeh" There's no drop in the vowel sound, it's not a diphthong like "aw" It's "na" But I'm not talking about that, it is the verb, the action of when the dog is done "na"ing, biting, chewing Which is the same as "na" Chewing the bone So what does it do with the bone? Typically, like that you'd see in a cartoon, for example

What are they doing with the bone? They're like... They bury it, right? No, they don't bury it. I was trying to think how to say like the biting action, not burying it. Okay, they bury, of course. I would also think of squirrels that bury their nuts everywhere, right? The nuts they find. So they bury. That's a tricky word, right? Because you would want to say something like bury, right?

Right. But it's the same as the. Yeah, but that's the same as the berry, like B-E-R-R-Y like this, like a fruit, but smaller, right? Like a strawberry. So it's the same pronunciation. Berry like to put in the ground is the same pronunciation as the berry in strawberry. Yeah. Burying the sand. Anyway, so next one to measure something. It's another word for measuring. That starts with a G.

That's the word I think I learned in 2024. So it's a new word for me. Are you talking about gauging? Is it gauge? So it's the same as evaluating things, but more informally, like it's more your personal evaluations, not something very formal scientific. Gauging is like, hmm, I was gauging by the look of his face what he's thinking of right now. Yeah, it can be technical too in some ways.

situations but the spelling is confusing right because it's g-a-u it's gauge it's not gauge it's gage yes it's very confusing exactly all right so next one is something valuable that you'd find in a typical like pirate treasure a pirate chest there's many things in there like coins but then there's also this thing that starts with a j

I think you are talking about jewelry, right? Jewelry. It's a different word for pronunciation, right? Again, because of the spelling. Yeah, even there's jewelry, but let's start with the more simple jewel, which is J and then like a UL. UL.

"ool" sound. Like a double "o" and an "l" sound. Jewel. And if you want to finish that with the noun "jewelry", you just say "ry" at the end. Jewelry. Jewelry. But what's funny is that in the British English, the spelling is... there's an added "e". Jewelry. Jewelry. Again, you don't say it. It's just jewelry. Yeah. Now talk about British English.

Many words that have different pronunciation, I would say. So we're talking a lot about American English here. But some words that come to mind that are just really different is the word schedule. Schedule versus, do you know that one? Yeah, so that's the word that my students used to struggle a lot with. So it's schedule versus casual. Schedule.

So this is British and American variants, either schedule or schedule. But this is such a common word nowadays, especially with all the international companies, so British working with Americans, that I hear that it's become more universal to say schedule. As if in my experience, I hear schedule more than schedule. What about you? Well, I hear schedule a lot because I'm in contact with all this media.

from the United States, right? So I would say, but let's say you're late. You have a schedule or schedule and you are late to do something. And there is all these people in front of you who have, who came first and you are like in a line, but in British English. It's the queue. You know what's funny? This is the word that I would confuse with the word key. Do you know the word key? This Q-U-A-Y.

Oh my God, help me spell it. A-Y, something like that. Like, which is by the water. This is something you have by the water. Q-U-A-Y. This is key. But you are talking about Q and Q is the line. Yeah. So, yeah, we're talking about a Q. And a Q, which sounds like C-U-E.

A Q is a line in American English. There is another word like Q to give cues in English, right? C-U-E. C-U-E. Same pronunciation. Yeah. British English has all of these different words, I'd say. And even one that comes to mind as well, it's like a name. I think it's, yeah, it is a name, but it is also has a meaning that I want to challenge you to see, you know, the meaning of that.

The word is Earl. Earl. I know this because that's my favorite type of tea. Earl Grey. Tea, like the drink, the beverage. Yes. I mean, if that's the same word, do you spell it like E-A-R-L? Earl? In English, yeah. Earl. Yeah.

there's and it's also a name like the actor james earl jones who did the voice of darth vader mufasa oh i didn't know i didn't know but the earl is just like this status it's just like a prince there is um yeah there you go yeah all like royalty right royalty especially right because i mentioned british english and it's common in uh

I would say like I have the count. What else? The Duke. Like Duke, Duchess. All these positions. The Earl. So that's what it is. Yeah. Earl. So this makes me think of the dark L sound that is so difficult for English.

learners too, right? Like I would say the word, is the word world? - World is a very difficult word to pronounce, right? Especially for Ukrainian learners, because we don't have the sound w, this for W, we don't have it. So this makes it difficult for us. Then this combination of R plus L, right? World. And then it ends with D.

Yeah, it can be easy though. Like you can make it easier. And that's the whole point of this lesson as well, like to break it down and make it easier. So it's like were, then there's a dark ale, which you have to master it. But you can master it in a more isolated way, like ul, ul, la, la, la, la, la. But it's the sound that comes before you actually put your tongue out, like la, it's ul, ul.

And then a D sound. D, D. Old. World. Or old. Some more practice, right? Girl. Bold. Bold. Yeah. Bull. Like B-O-W-L. And finally...

I did have, we're talking about British English, which is interesting. And I took note of a word here that is a proper noun, right? Proper noun is, refers to real people, real places, right? Words that refer to those things. And these are the words ending in sure. S-H-I-R-E, sure. Like, what's the sure? Do you know that one? I heard a lot that people struggle with that.

Even native speakers, right? Yeah, even natives. We hear a lot of Worcestershire. Worcestershire. It's Worcestershire. Worcestershire sauce. Worcestershire sauce. It's a sauce, right? It's a traditional sauce. All right, Xenia. This was a lot of fun. And guys, as we like to say on this podcast, no matter what divides us, that which unites us is far greater. One, two, three.

Aww yeah!

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You can unlock this lesson for free by clicking on the link in the description below. I want to start today's lesson by sharing what I think is a little bit of a controversial remark. Okay, what is a controversial remark? So there's two words there. Controversial refers to something that produces controversy, that produces disagreement, debate, arguments.

And remark is simply a statement, something you say as a comment. So yeah, I think this is a controversial remark because we always hear that confidence is important. I should be confident in all that, but I have come to accept after fighting it so much that confidence is overrated.