VIRTUAL AMERICA: PROPER PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH WORDS

I. Introduction – Hi everyone! Welcome to another Kapihan Session: Virtual America:

the Proper Pronunciation of English Words
a. I am Shirly Benedictos, currently the Coordinator of the Social Communications
Ministry of Holy Cross Parish. Before the ECQ, I used to do traffic reports for
Crossover 105.1 and Home Radio 979, and way back then, news reports for
Mellow 94.7. I have a Disclaimer, though (na hindi po tayo magkakaroon ng
American twang after this talk, that is not the point of this session)
- Sa mga nag-training sa call center, paki-isantabi lang muna yan dahil di po
iyon ang aking orientation
b. Why this Kapihan Session? Why Learn Correct Pronunciation?
- Mainly because we are COMMUNICATORS; the Voice of the Catholic
Church; not only do we have to be truthful, we also have to be clear when
it comes to oral/verbal communication
- Pinoys are more familiar with American English and that is what we usually
hear or use
II. Common Mistakes in Pronunciation
a. The Pinoy problem of /th/, /d/, /f/, /v/, /b/,/p/
These are COMMONLY MISPRONOUNCED LETTERS in English pronunciation,
especially among Filipinos. Maybe because Tagalog is so matigas pag binigkas?
My mother gave me fifty pesos to buy some avocadoes.
Could be sometimes pronounced as:
My mudder gib me pipti peso to buy som abocados.
Hey Father Joseph, I want to eat some bubblegum and fishballs.
Could be sometimes pronounced as:
Hey Pader Josep, I want to eat som babolgam en pisbol.

I want to share with you some exercises that will show us how to place our
tongues whenever we speak in syllables. Syllables are the way words are
divided and pronounced.
For example, the /th/ sound puts the tip of the tongue in between your teeth.
While the /d/ sound puts the tip of your tongue behind your upper teeth
YOU LATHER UP WHILE I GET THE LADDER.

The /f/ sound puts your lower lip on your upper teeth
While the /p/ sound puts both lips together
CUTE FIFTY FLUFFY PUPPIES

The /v/ sound is similar with how you pronounce /f/

While the /b/ sound is made similarly with how you pronounce /p/
 IT’S SO SAVVY TO DANCE AT THE LOBBY.

TIPS! To make it easier to remember, /v/ may vibration, /f/ air rushing out
between teeth
BONUS! PRONOUNCING /d/ and /t/
/d/ is pronounced as “duh”
daddy, deny, differ, doll, duck
/t/ in some cases is pronounced as “dee” or “tuh”
“dee” city, eighty-eight, freight (ex: City Lite 88.3)
“tuh” telephone, tally, telly
combined: totally, daddy

b. The Long and Short of It (English vowels vs. Tagalog vowels)

With FILIPINO VOWELS we pronounce it as: A, E, I, O, U (we say it as it is, the
reason why Tagalog words are matigas)

Now with ENGLISH VOWELS it gets quite tricky.

The short vowels can represented by a curved symbol above the vowel:
ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ, ŭ.
The long vowels can be represented by a horizontal line above the vowel:
ā, ē, ī, ō, ū.

EXAMPLES:
short vowels: art, eggs, iguana, pop, uncle
long vowels: ape, each, ice, owl, use

WANT TO BE CHALLENGED???? SAY THESE SET OF WORDS:

(use whiteboard)
heat – hit
heel – hill
sit – seat
these – this

bat – butt
cap – cup

law – low
fool – full
pool – pull

star – stir
 Sue – zoo

I just have this funny story to share. I have friends who tried this voice-
activated online search and they wanted to go to YouTube. So they said out
loud, YOOCHOOB. And nothing happened. They said YOOCHOOB again and
again and finally, as a joke, sinubukan daw nila na i-slang so one of them said
YOOTOOB. And it worked.

c. STRESS… no, it’s not what you think.

What I meant by STRESS is how a speaker puts an emphasis on a syllable.
Words are made up of letters and syllables. There are a lot of rules when it
comes to this, but I can show you how you can check how a word is
pronounced and which syllables should be emphasized upon pronunciation.

Example: seventy-five
the stress is on the word SEVEN, so it should be read as SEVENty-five
you raise your tone a bit on SEVEN

When I was in grade school, since we moved to the province around 1986 to
1987, I was able to adapt how most of the people in the province pronounced
75, which was seVENTY five. So when we moved back to Manila, my tita had
this horrific look on her face when I asked her for seVENTY five centavos. I had
a hard time adjusting how to pronounce 75 properly.

Also, it is a common mistake among Filipinos how they pronounce the word
CEREMONY. More often then not, I’d hear them say “Okay, fall in line for the
flag ceREmony!”, when the right pronunciation is: CEremony.

Another example: we had to undergo training on how to give traffic reports.

During training, our trainer named Kuya John had to correct me with how I
pronounced EXPRESSWAY. I would pronounce it as: EXpressway, when it
should be pronounced as exPRESSway.

So how do we know where to STRESS a syllable whenever we pronounce a

word? You may use the most basic tool: a DICTIONARY. We are so lucky that
online dictionaries have this speaker icon where we can hear how a word is
pronounced with just a tap or click. Back in the day, when we had these thick,
heavy dictionaries at home, we try to figure out the pronunciation with the
placement of the apostrophe.
 If we look for the word SEVENTY through the online Merriam-Webster
Dictionary, www.m-w.com, we will see it this way:

ˈse-vən-tē

Note that the apostrophe (‘) is placed before SE. Meaning, SE is the stressed
syllable.

Now there are also some online dictionaries that will put the stressed syllable
in bold fonts, like this:

Ceremony
ser-uh-moh-nee

When it gets crazy for me, what I usually do is re-write the word and write the
stressed syllable in capital letters. This is what I usually do when I’m writing a
script for news reports or when recording a VO for a radio ad so that I can
pronounce it right.
Example:
CERrmony, SEVENTy-five, exPRESSway

III. Helpful Tips for those who want to Improve their Pronunciation of English Words
a. DO NOT BE ASHAMED! DO NOT BE AFRAID BECAUSE THAT’S HOW WE LEARN!
PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE!
b. Sharing of Personal Experience
- When I was in grade school, I learned English through Sesame Street and
Filipino through Batibot. Back then all cartoons shown in TV were in
English: The Super Friends, Mighty Man and Yukk, She-Ra, He-Man, Looney
Tunes, heck, even Voltes V and Daimos! When Cartoon Network came out,
I would hear my then 6 year old cousins playing or arguing just like the
Powerpuff Girls! Local TV channels would also feature shows or series like
Miami Vice, The Knight Rider, Small Wonder, Punky Brewster, The Cosbys,
The Equalizer, Baywatch, Friends, etc. without dubbing it in Tagalog. See
how the shows we watch can influence the way we speak?
- My aunt encouraged us to read, read, read. She claims that I used to leaf
through the pages of our encyclopedia when I was 3 years old. She used to
correct us whenever we made a wrong pronunciation. My English teacher
was also very encouraging who would always made us read stories in
English and talk to us in English. My grandmother, who is now 99 years old,
used to correct me and my sister’s grammar. We had Justice League comics,
 Reader’s Digest and my uncle had a Time and Newsweek magazine
subscription.
- Look for someone who can be an example to you: teacher? Theater actor?
News personality? I used to watch The World Tonight anchored by Loren
Legarda and Angelo Castro, Jr. I was also exposed to watching Harry Gasser
(I was like, ang galing naman nito mag English report). And once upon a
time, I dreamed to be part of Junior Newswatch. I love Lea Salonga because
I can understand the lyrics of her songs clearly, even if she is singing a song
that I am not familiar with. There is no need for subtitles.
- I also feel that whenever I do not get to read or watch anything in English
for quite some time, I would feel as if my English is somehow rusty, even
my pronunciation.
- Tongue twisters and other mouth warm ups or exercises
c. Record yourself reading a newspaper or a passage from the Bible and listen to
it afterwards without looking at the reading material. Did you understand what
you just said? (Insert sharing your experience with doing a VO for Diamond
Hotel.) And whenever you speak, please do not go something like:
DO-YOU-KNOW-THE-WAY-TO-SAN-JOSE?
Say it like this: Do you know the way to San Jose?
When we speak we should not chop our sentence per word. You do not want
to sound weird.
d. Aside from people, you may also want to go online and look for resources.
When I was doing news reports for Mellow 94.7, I would have three types of
newscast: International, Local and Hollywood. Whenever I had a tough time
pronouncing a foreign name or a place or a scientific word, I would always go
to youtube (OK NOT YOOCHOOB) and watch news bits from BBC or CNN and
from there, I would know how to pronounce a difficult or new word.

And also, there are some people who would just love to help you out. They
know how to correct you in a nice way that it would not be embarrassing. I
have encountered fellow traffic reporters and even some DJ’s who would teach
me or correct me. Aside from my own family, I also thank the Lord for these
people.

Google now has this new feature where you do not only hear how a word is
pronounced, but also how the lips move when it is pronounced. You can also
adjust the speed so that you can hear the pronunciation by syllable.

IV. And that’s all folks! It takes a lot of commitment to learn more about the English
language, you do not learn all of it in just one Kapihan Session. It has to be
continuous, in whatever and however way you can that works for you. Thank you!
I hope you learned something from this Kapihan Session!