Due
to the difficulty in hearing the British pronunciation, I joined the free
pronunciation class offered by University Language Centre.
I
don't know how other country people learn the English pronunciation, but in
Malaysia, we never learn the phonetic symbol. We learnt the English
pronunciation simply by following what teacher pronounced when we were small.
When we grew up, we naturally developed an "ability" to pronounce the
new word that we didn't know by reference to another word with similar spelling
or pronunciation by someone who we first hear. Therefore, it is not surprising
that for some words we pronounce it in a wrong way.
Well,
it is hard to judge who is wrong or who is right nowadays as the English
speaker are not only British and US (though the pronunciation of these two
countries somehow different to each other), there are also a large population
in India, China, Southeast Asia and some other countries who speak English as
well. The pronunciation is deemed to be correct as long as the majority
pronounce the same way.
And
I am in Manchester now. The Mancunian (what Manchester people call themselves)
pronunciation is thus the correct way. When people tell you "boss",
you should know that he is referring to a "bus". When your friend
says "see you lat-er (pronounce separately)", you should understand
he means see you later. When the kid say I want to eat "tomat-o", you
should give him a tomato.
As
the teacher said, I am not asking you to learn all this, but you need to be
aware that people here pronounce that way and it is better to train your ear
from now. She showed us the phonetic symbol, as well as several features in the
"natural pronunciation" like the sounds, stress and weak form,
intonation and connected speech.
Felt
like went back to the primary school, we read the phonetic symbols one after
another by following the teacher pronunciation. And I did realized that I
mis-pronounce (at least in UK term) several words since small.
Don't
know how much my pronunciation will change by the classes. Hopefully after
returning to my home country in future, my friends will not say that,
"Hey, I find your English is difficult to understand..."
