Mastered not all 44 sounds yet in English. Today we will analyze 4 sounds - paired | ʃ | – | ʒ | and | ʧ | – | ʤ |.

For those who read the rubric for the first time, I will explain: we select several similar sounds and compare them with their Russian counterparts. After we work out correct pronunciation on several dozen words, tongue twisters and examples from songs.

1. English consonant |ʃ| - pronunciation

Pronounced in words: shape, she, shirt and etc.

The sound resembles Russian | w |, but there is an important difference:

Pay attention to the advice “make the sound more noisy”. Due to a different position, the English version is more “hissing” (imagine when you or your friend “hissed” so that you even hear a whistle).

Also more noisy and “whistling” is. This “noise” is perfectly audible in the pronunciation of actor Jim Parsons, who plays Sheldon Cooper.

Leonard: What are you doing?
Sheldon: We're going to be late. I'm pa c ing nervous s ly.
Leonard: You're jogging.
Sheldon: Thi s i s how the Fla sh pa ces.
Leonard; Just chill out, Sheldon.
Sheldon: I'm not Sh eldon. I'm the Fla sh. And now I'm going to the Grand Canyon to s cream in fruit s tra tion. I'm back.

English sounds exercises

So, we figured out the pronunciation. Now let's hone the skill on a set of words. We adjust the speech organs to the desired position and proceed:

shower /ˈʃaʊər/

shrimp /ʃrɪmp/

shoulder /ˈʃəʊldər/

Tongue twisters for the sounds of the English language

• Sh e sells sea sh ells by the sea sh ore. The sh ells sh e sells are s urely sea sh ells. So if sh e sells sh ells on the sea sh ore, I'm s ure sh e sells sea sh ore sh ells.
• Sh irley has just fine sh edwa sh ing this sh eet in the wa sh in ma ch ine.
• Sh aron-wa sh ed di sh es in a di sh wa sh er, next sh e wa sh ed sh ades in a wa sh in ma ch ine. Sh old sh e wa sh the di sh es in di sh wa sh er, before wa sh ing the sh ades in the wa sh in ma ch ine?

And the last step is a line from a song that will burn into your auditory memory. I settled on the immortal song “Shake Shake Shake” by KC & The Sunshine Band.

From 0:33 to 0:51

2. English consonant |ʒ| - pronunciation

Pronounced in words: vision, usual, beige, decision and etc.

Differs from the Russian version | w | exactly the same as its deaf predecessor.

Another important point is the English sound | ʒ | not stunned at the end of words, e.g.: bei ge . It becomes weaker, but remains sonorous.

Examples of words with |ʒ|

pleasure /ˈpleʒər/

measure /ˈmeʒər/

treasure /ˈtreʒər/

leisure /ˈleʒər/

vision /ˈvɪʒn/

decision /dɪˈsɪʒn/

explosion /ɪkˈspləʊʒn/

invasion /ɪnˈveɪʒn/

usual /ˈjuːʒuəl/

casual /ˈkæʒuəl/

Asia /ˈeɪʒə/

occasion /əˈkeɪʒn/

conclusion /kənˈkluːʒn/

garage /ˈɡærɑːʒ/

confusion /kənˈfjuːʒn/

mirage /ˈmɪrɑːʒ/

provision /prəˈvɪʒn/

television /ˈtelɪvɪʒn/

massage /ˈmæsɑːʒ/

English tongue twisters for practicing sound |ʒ|

• After much persua si on he took the deci si on to watch “Trea s ure Island” on televi si on at lei s ure.
• bei ge lin g erie is more u s ual than a z ure bi j ou, a z ure bi j ou is less u s ual than bei g e lin g erie.
• Vi s ual revi s ion of a fusela g e for corro s ion u s occa s ions gara g e, camoufla g e and demonta g e of the fusela g e.

Closing song: Argent, "Pleasure".

From 1:01 to 1:14.

3. Consonant |tʃ| - pronunciation of English sounds

Pronounced in English words: chair, cheap, lunch, champion etc. Reminds me of Russian sound | h |, but not identical to it.

To accustom yourself to a harder and noisier English version, report the exercise on the contrast of words: сheese - clean, child - tea, сhalk - Chop, choose - sensitive etc.

I also decided to find an example for this sound in the famous TV series. This time "Friends":

Words: chair, Chandler, Joey (voiced version of the sound, but more on that below).

Examples for voiceless |tʃ| in English

chair /tʃeər/

champion /ˈtʃæmpiən/

change /tʃeɪndʒ/

question /ˈkwestʃən/

cheers /tʃɪəz/

chapter /ˈtʃæptər/

cherry /ˈtʃeri/

chicken /ˈtʃɪkɪn/

child /tʃaɪld/

China /ˈtʃaɪnə/

church /tʃɜːtʃ/

Tongue twisters with the sound |tʃ|

• Ch erry tea ch es ch ildren at ch ur ch. Ch erry also ch ecks the rooms and does ch ores.
• The tea ch er ch angged the ques t ion in the ch allenge. The ch allengers ch answered the answers for the ques t ion.
• Ch Arles is a ch erful ch icken farmer. A poa ch er is wat ch ing Ch arles' ch ickens ch oosing whi ch to snat ch, and ch uckles at the ch ance of a ch eye ch icken to ch ew for his moon ch. But the ch ucklerea ch es Ch arles who ch ases the poa ch er and cat ch es him.

As a song example, the classic “We Are The Champions” by Queen.

From 0:38 to 1:17

4. Consonant |dʒ| - pronunciation of English sounds

Pronounced in words job, jam, jazz, joke and others. There are no analogues to this sound in Russian!

A typical mistake of Russian speakers is to pronounce this sound as a combination | j |. Actually sound | dʒ | - it's just a voiced version of the previous sound - | tʃ |, as in chair. There will be no problems with it if you have learned to pronounce the deaf version. But just in case, let's repeat.

WE RECOMMEND: say it first Russian word hour, and then say it with the tip of the tongue at the back of the alveoli. Make the sound a little more solid and noisy. The third step is to make the sound sonorous ⇒ you will get an English sound | dʒ | and something like the word jazz 🙂

To feel the contrast between Russian |j| and English | dʒ |, compare pronunciation of words jazz at Catherine Zeta-Jones and jazz from Larisa Dolina:

If we look for analogies in the Russian language, then | ʤ | rather reminiscent of voiced | h | in confluent pronunciation combinations: before whose _hero, ne whose _pancakes, le whose _yes_ have a rest.

So, everything is clear with pronunciation, let's move on to training in words.

Pronunciation of |dʒ| in English: word examples

procedure /prəˈsiːdʒər/

jealous /ˈdʒeləs/

judge /dʒʌdʒ/

January /ˈdʒænjuəri/

Japan /dʒəˈpæn/

jeans /dʒiːnz/

jelly /ˈdʒeli/

jewelery /ˈdʒuːəlri/

jogging /ˈdʒɒɡɪŋ/

journey /ˈdʒɜːni/

Georgia /ˈdʒɔːdʒə/

bridge /brɪdʒ/

Patter |dʒ|

• J oyful j oggers j og j oyously. J ames, J Ohn, J enny and J ohny are j oggers.
• The g energetic g ymnasts like oran g e j uice. The oran g e j uice makes the g ymnasts g enuinely happy.
• Can you ima g ine an ima g inary mena g erie mana g er ima g ining mana g ing an ima g inary mena g erie?

As a musical example (besides the already mentioned "All That Jazz") Ray Charles' song "Georgia On My Mind".

To summarize: the pronunciation of consonants in English

1. English sounds| ʃ | – | ʒ | noisier, stronger and softer than their counterparts | sh | – | w |. For their pronunciation to the posterior slope of the alveoli should be raised Tip of the tongue, and not its front part, pronounce with more noise.
2. English sound | tʃ |, on the other hand, is harder than Russian | h |. Tip of the tongue touches the posterior slope of the alveoli again.
3. English | dʒ | has no analogue in Russian at all. This is voiced pair previous sound– | tʃ |. In no case do not pronounce it like a Russian combination | j |. To set the pronunciation, first practice the previous voiceless sound, and then just make it voiced.
4. Do not forget that sonorous sound | ʒ | and | dʒ | are not stunned at the end of a word! They become a little weaker, but remain sonorous.

See you, friend!

After that, we were left with 19 English sounds. Therefore, for today there are 19 - 4 = 15. Next time, according to tradition, we will take several similar vowels.

“I don’t understand transcription”, “How is it written in Russian letters?”, “Why do I need these sounds?”... If you start learning English with such moods, then I will have to disappoint you: it is unlikely that you will achieve significant success in English.

Without mastering the transcription, it will be difficult for you to understand the structure of English pronunciation, you will constantly make mistakes, experience difficulties in learning new words and using dictionaries.

Since school, the attitude of many to transcription is frankly negative. In fact, there is nothing complicated in transcribing English. If you do not understand it, then you have not explained this topic properly. In this article, we will try to fix this.

To understand the essence of transcription, you must clearly understand the difference between letters and sounds. Letters is what we write, and sounds- what we hear. Transcription marks are the sounds represented in writing. For musicians, this role is performed by notes, and for you and me, transcription. In Russian, transcription does not play a big role in you, as in English. Here are vowels that are read differently, and combinations that need to be remembered, and letters that are not pronounced. The number of letters and sounds in a word does not always match.

For example, the word daughter has 8 letters, and four sounds ["dɔːtə]. If the final [r] is pronounced, as in American English, then there are five sounds. The combination of vowels au gives the sound [ɔː], gh is not read at all, er can be read as [ə] or [ər], depending on the variant of English.

There are a huge number of similar examples. It is difficult to understand how to read a word and how many sounds are pronounced in it if you do not know the basic rules of transcription.

Where can you find transcription? First of all, in dictionaries. When you find a new word in the dictionary, there must be information nearby about how the word is pronounced, that is, transcription. In addition, in textbooks, the lexical part always contains transcription. Knowledge of the sound structure of the language will not allow you to remember the incorrect pronunciation of words, because you will always identify the word not only with its literal representation, but also with its sound.

In domestic publications, transcription is usually placed in square brackets, and in dictionaries and manuals of foreign publishers, transcription is presented in slash brackets / /. Many teachers use slash brackets when they write the transcription of words on the board.

Now more about the sounds of the English language.

There are 44 sounds in the English language, which are divided into vowels(vowels ["vauəlz]), consonants(consonants "kɔn(t)s(ə)nənts]). Vowels and consonants can form combinations including diphthongs(diphthongs ["dɪfθɔŋz]). Vowels in English differ in longitude by brief(short vovels) and long(long vowels), and consonants can be divided into deaf(voicels consonants ), voiced(voiced consonants). There are also those consonants that are difficult to classify as deaf or voiced. We will not delve into phonetics, since at the initial stage this information is quite enough. Consider the English sound table:

Let's start with vowels. Two dots near the symbol indicate that the sound is pronounced for a long time, if there are no dots, then the sound should be pronounced briefly. Let's see how the vowel sounds are pronounced:

- long sound I: tree, free

[ɪ ] — short sound AND: big, lip

[ʊ] - short sound U: book, look

- long sound U: root , boot

[e] - sound E. Pronounced the same as in Russian: hen, pen

[ə] - neutral sound E. It sounds when the vowel is not stressed or at the end of the word: mother ["mʌðə], computer

[ɜː] - a sound similar to the sound Yo in the word honey: bird, turn

[ɔː] - long sound O: door, more

[æ] - sound E. Pronounced widely: cat, lamp

[ʌ] - short sound A: cup, but

- long sound A: car , mark

[ɒ] - short sound O: box, dog

diphthongs- these are combinations of sounds consisting of two vowels, always pronounced together. Consider the pronunciation of diphthongs:

[ɪə] - IE: here, near

- uh: fair, bear

[əʊ] - EU (OU): go, no

- AU: how, now

[ʊə] - UE: sure [ʃauə], tourist ["tuerrest]

- HEY: make, day

- AI: my bike

[ɔɪ] - OH: : boy, toy

Consider consonants sounds. Voiceless and voiced consonants are easy to remember, since each of them has a pair:

Voiceless consonants:	Voiced consonants:
[ p ] - sound P: pen, pet	[ b ] - sound B: big, boot
[f] - sound Ф: flag, fat	[ v ] - sound B: vet, van
[ t ] - sound T: tree, toy	[d] - sound D: day, dog
[ θ ] - interdental sound, which is often confused with C, but when pronounced, the tip of the tongue is between the lower and upper front teeth: thick [θɪk], think [θɪŋk]	[ð] - interdental sound, which is often confused with З, but when pronouncing, the tip of the tongue is between the lower and upper front teeth: this [ðɪs], that [ðæt]
[ tʃ ] - sound Ch: chin [ʧɪn], chat [ʧæt]	[dʒ] - sound J: jam [ʤæm], page
[ s ] - sound C: sit, sun	[z] - sound З:
[ʃ] - sound Ш: shelf [ʃelf], brush	[ ʒ ] - sound Zh: vision ["vɪʒ(ə)n], decision
[ k ] - sound K: kite, cat	[ g ] - sound Г: get, go

Other consonants:

[h] - sound X: hat, home
[m] - sound M: make, meet
[n] - English sound H: nose, net
[ŋ] - a sound reminiscent of H, but pronounced through the nose: song , long - a sound reminiscent of P: run , rest
[l] - English sound L: leg, lip
[w] - a sound reminiscent of B, but pronounced with rounded lips: , west
[j] - sound Y: you, music ["mjuːzɪk]

Those who want to learn more about the phonetic structure of the English language can look for resources on the Internet, where they will tell you what sonorants, stops, fricatives and other consonants are.

If you just want to understand the pronunciation of English consonants and learn how to read transcription without unnecessary theory, then we recommend that you share everything consonants sounds into the following groups:

• The sounds that are pronounced almost the same as in Russian : this is the majority of consonants.
• The sounds that similar to those in Russian but are pronounced differently. There are only four of them.
• The sounds that not in Russian . There are only five of them and it is a mistake to pronounce them the same way as in Russian.

Pronunciation of sounds marked yellow, practically does not differ from Russian, only sounds [p, k, h] are pronounced with "aspiration".

green sounds- these are the sounds that need to be pronounced in the English manner, they are the cause of the accent. The sounds are alviolar (for sure, you heard this word from your school teacher), to pronounce them, you need to raise your tongue to the alviols, then you will sound "in English".

Sounds tagged red, are absent in Russian at all (although it seems to someone that this is not the case), so you should pay attention to their pronunciation. Do not confuse [θ] and [s], [ð] and [z], [w] and [v], [ŋ] and [n]. The [ r ] sound is less of a problem.

Another aspect of transcription is stress, which is marked with an apostrophe in transcription. If the word has more than two syllables, then the stress is always present:

Hotel -
police-
interesting - ["ɪntrəstɪŋ]

When a word is long, polysyllabic, then it may contain two accents, with one upper (main), and the second - lower. The lower stress is indicated by a comma-like sign and is pronounced weaker than the upper one:

disadvantaged - [ˌdɪsəd"vɑːntɪʤ]

When reading the transcription, you may notice that some sounds are presented in parentheses (). This means that the sound can be read in the word, but you can not pronounce it. Usually in brackets you can find a neutral sound [ə], sound [r] at the end of a word, and some others:

Information - [ˌɪnfə" meɪʃ (ə) n]
teacher - ["tiːʧə(r)]

Some words have two pronunciations:

Forehead ["fɔrɪd] or ["fɔːhed]
Monday ["mʌndeɪ] or ["mʌndɪ]

In this case, choose the option that you like best, but remember that given word may be pronounced differently.

Many words in the English language have two variants of pronunciation (and, accordingly, transcription): in British English and in American English. In this situation, learn the pronunciation that corresponds to the variant of the language you are studying, try not to mix words from British English and American English in your speech:

Schedule - ["ʃedjuːl] (BrE) / ["skeʤuːl] (AmE)
neither - ["naɪðə] (BrE) / [ˈniːðə] (AmE)

Even if before that you couldn’t stand transcription, after reading this article you saw that reading and transcribing is not at all difficult! After all, you were able to read all the words recorded in the transcription, right? Apply this knowledge, use dictionaries and be sure to pay attention to transcription if you have a new word in front of you, so that you can memorize the correct pronunciation from the very beginning and not relearn later!

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Transcription (International Phonetic Alphabet) is used to represent the sounds of a language with special characters.

It is interesting: A wide variety of sounds are found in foreign languages: all kinds of clicks, grunts and sniffles, and for each such sound in international phonetic alphabet there is a symbol.

For transcribing sounds characters of the Latin and Greek alphabets are used, to designate some sounds, italic writing of Latin letters is used, and sometimes their spelling is reversed.

Transcription of English sounds

In total, there are 44 sounds in the English language, of which 20 are vowels and 24 are consonants.

Vowels. There are 20 vowels in English:
7 - short vowels (short vowels)
5 - long vowels (long vowels)
8 - diphthongs / double vowels (diphthongs)

Consonant sounds (consonants). There are 24 consonants in English:
8 - deaf consonants (voiceless consonants)
8 - voiced consonants (voiced consonants)
8 - other consonants (other consonants)

Below you will see very useful speaking tables of English sounds. On the left you will listen to the sound performed by the BBC announcer, and by clicking on the transcription symbol on the right you will be able to listen to examples (three words) for each sound of the English language.

Pronunciation of English sounds. (Briefly.)

The pearl of this material is the table of pronunciation of English sounds, which is located below: If you click on the transcription sign, you can watch a two-minute video of a wonderful teacher of English for foreigners Alex Bellem where she explains and shows how to pronounce one or another English sound, and also talks about the differences in pronunciation with similar sounds. These videos were first published on the bbc website.

Pronunciation of English sounds with examples. (Full detailed description)

Click on the transcription symbol, watch the video where the BBC announcer tells and shows how to pronounce this English sound correctly.

The sounds are organized into the following different groups:
(The sounds are divided into the following groups)

Phonetics is the branch that studies sounds. Its main goal is to teach you how to pronounce English sounds and words correctly, as well as to develop your ability to perceive the speech of native speakers. Therefore, in order to learn how to speak and read English competently, you need to know the English alphabet and learn the pronunciation of individual phonemes and the words in which they are used. English phonetics The English language is based on the Latin alphabet, it has only 26 letters (instead of the usual 33), but almost twice as many sounds are superimposed on these familiar letters, namely 46 different phonemes. English sounds are very important for learners of this language, so you need to understand how they are used in speech and for what.

As stated above, distinguishing feature English language is great amount sounds that do not match the number of available letters. That is, one letter can convey several phonemes, depending on the letters that are nearby. Based on this, it is necessary to speak very carefully and accurately. Incorrect use of this or that sound leads to misunderstanding.

For example, the word "bed" (bed) and the word "bad" (bad) They are pronounced and spelled almost the same, so it's easy to get confused. At this stage of learning English, many begin to transcribe the pronunciation in Russian in order to facilitate the memorization process.

However, this "relief" is very misleading, as it often leads to even more confusion between words with similar pronunciations. After all, both words "bed" and "bad" in Russian can be transcribed exclusively as "bad", without displaying the duality of sound. Therefore, it is better to learn sounds separately.

How to learn English sounds correctly?

Learning the phonetics of the English language will undoubtedly bring some clarity to the pronunciation and development of all the phrases and words that will come your way during the training.

First of all, you should have a dictionary in which you will designate all sounds in traditional transcription, and after that, next to them, their sound in your native language.
It is also worth pointing out special cases of pronunciation, indicating that this word needs to be pronounced somehow in a special way or written down, that it is impossible to give an analogy to the Russian sound. London - London For convenience, phonemes are best divided into groups. For example, consonants, vowels, diphthongs and triphthongs. You also need to constantly practice and perform exercises of this type:

The main city of Great Britain is London. London- 6 letters, 6 sounds. Let's find it on the map of England. Where is it? Then, let's check with our friend: How do you write it? How do you spell it? Now spell this name - Spell this name for us:

- London - [Landen]

Thus, you will not only practice the pronunciation of sounds, but also learn useful words and phrases in a foreign language.

Now let's move on to their spelling and pronunciation.

Sounds of English

Let's get acquainted with brief description all sounds using this table

Sound	Pronunciation
Vowels
[ı]	short [and], as in "outside and»
[e]	similar to [e] - "w e st"
[ɒ]	short [o] - "in about t"
[ʊ]	short, close to [y]
[ʌ]	similar to Russian [a]
[ə]	unstressed, close to [e]
	looks like a long [and]
[ɑ:]	deep and long [a] - “g a lka"
[ə:] = [ɜ:]	long [ё] in "sv yo cla"
	long [y], like "b at lka"
[ᴐ:]	deep and long [o] - "d about lgo"
[æ]	Russian [e]
Diphtogi (two tones)
	[hey] - same
[ʊə]	[ue] - poor
[əʊ]	[oh] - tone
[ᴐı]	[oops] - join
	[ah] - kite
	[ea] - hair
[ıə]	[ie] - fear
Tripthongs (three tones)
	[aue] - power
	[yue] - European
	[ae] - fire
Consonants
[b]	Russian [b]
[v]	analogue [c]
[j]	weak Russian [th]
[d]	like [d]
[w]	short [y]
[k]	[k] breathy
[ɡ]	like [g]
[z]	like [h]
[ʤ]	[d] and [g] together
[ʒ]	how [f]
[l]	soft [l]
[m]	as M]
[n]	like [n]
[ŋ]	[n] "on the nose"
[p]	[p] aspirated
[r]	weak [r]
[t]	[t] aspirated
[f]	like [f]
[h]	just exhale
[ʧ]	like [h]
[ʃ]	middle between [w] and [w]
[s]	like [c]
[ð]	voiced [θ] with voice
[θ]	tip of tongue between upper and lower teeth, no voice

Notes:

• Double vowels are read as one sound: moon - - [mun] or bitter - ["bitǝ] - [bit]
• Voiced consonants in English, unlike Russian, do not become voiceless: in a word good [gud] sound [d] is pronounced clearly, just like [g] in dog [dog] etc.

The meaning of correct pronunciation

As I said, it is very important and urgently necessary to improve English pronunciation, because a large number of words in this language differ by only one or two sounds. But sometimes, even such a small difference is critical for correct and accurate contact with primary native speakers.