American English speech 001

http://oli.cmu.edu/courses/free-open/speech-course-details/

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• The ee-sound is a good example and can seen represented in a variety of ways, as seen in these words:
• Aeschylus, believe, see, Chelsea, latrine, we, people, quay, sea, phoneme, amoeba
• Similarly, the sh-sound is written down in a range of different ways:
• chapparal, ruching, bush, pressure, scansion, emission, patience, eruption, nauseous, oceanic,shoe, sure 
• Words that have the same sounds but are spelled differently, homophones can also confuse the listener:grown, groan one, won eight, ate knead, need scene, seen aisle, I'll aye, eye here, hear red, read mettle, metal tea, tee tax, tacks
• Words that contain silent letters present a particular challenge:
• no B comb, dumb, debt no D Wednesday no G sign, foreign
• no GH daughter, light, right no H why, honest, hour no K know, knight, knob, knee
• no L should, walk, half no P cupboard, psychology no T whistle, listen, fasten
• no U guess, guitar no W who, write, wrong
• Words borrowed from other languages are in our everyday conversation. The English language has always been a melting pot and while often retaining the original spelling, the words do not always preserve their original pronunciation. For example:
• Malay - orang hutang, which means ‘man of the forest’, has been borrowed almost intact in our own ‘orangutan’.
• French - ballet, dozen, centre, aboard, dignity, aplomb, bucket, bureau
• German - angst, kindergarten, sauerkraut, iceberg, blitz, waltz, yodel, noodle, ersatz, frankfurter, hamburger, pretzel
• Yiddish - shtick, bagel, kosher, nebbish, schmooze, tchotchke, maven
• Italian - bravo, forte, vendetta, falsetto, ghetto, braggadocio
• 
  
• Dearest creature in creation,
• Study English pronunciation.
• I will teach you in my verse
• Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
• I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
• Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
• Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
• So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
• Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
• Dies and diet, lord and word,
• Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
• (Mind the latter, how it's written)

• II
• Now I surely will not plague you
• With such words as plaque and ague.
• But be careful how you speak:
• Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
• Cloven, oven, how and low,
• Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
• Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
• Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
• Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
• Exiles, similes, and reviles;
• Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
• Solar, mica, war and far;
• One, anemone, Balmoral,
• Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
• Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
• Scene, Melpomene, mankind.