Students of English often have problems with their pronunciation in relation to word endings (suffixes).

In this article we are going to look at how to pronounce some words that end with the letters ‘ge‘.

Can you think of a few words with this ending (suffix)?

There must be many words that come to mind…

We’re not going to look at the pronunciation of all of them because as you may know, they don’t all have the same pronunciation.  In this post we’ll focus on just one kind of ‘ge‘ pronunciation.

Here’s the list of the words that we are looking at – ‘message‘, ‘passage‘, ‘college‘, ‘manage‘,  ‘damage‘, ‘salvage‘, ‘bandage‘ and ‘large‘.

Listen carefully to the recording… and practise!  Each word will be pronounced once slowly and twice at the normal speed.

Listen and practise until you can get it right! Perhaps you can also think of other words with the same kind of ending!!

‘BUTTERFLY’

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly.

One day a small opening appeared. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could, and it could go no further.

So the man decided to help the butterfly. He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon.

The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shrivelled wings.

The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time. Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shrivelled wings. It never was able to fly.

What the man, in his kindness and haste did not understand, was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening, were natural ways of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings, so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our lives. If we were allowed to go through our lives without any obstacles, it would cripple us.
We would not be as strong as what we could have been. We could never fly!

To gain Strength………
We are given Difficulties to make us strong.
To gain Wisdom………
We are given Problems to solve.
To gain Prosperity………
We are given a Brain and Brawn to work.
To gain Courage………
We are given Danger to overcome.
To gain Love………
We are given Troubled People to help.
To gain Favours………
We are given Opportunities.

We can expect to encounter difficulties in the study of Spoken English; but our struggles will be rewarded if we don’t give up.

Stress
“Numbers”

To make the following numbers clear to the listener, you must put the stress on the correct syllable:

(Syllable: Unit of pronunciation uttered without interruption, forming the whole or part of a word and usually having one vowel sound often with consonant(s) before or after.)

Listen and Repeat:

Greg will say each number twice with the correct stress (the syllable in bold):

“Teen”; “-ty”

13 thirteen;  30 thirty:
14 fourteen;  40 forty:
15 fifteen;  50 fifty:
16 sixteen;  60 sixty:
17 seventeen;  70 seventy:
18 eighteen;  80 eighty:
19 nineteen;  90 ninety.

The pronunciation of the letter “w” is sometimes mistakenly mixed up with the pronunciation of the letter “v”.  The pronunciation of “w” is quite different.
The letter “w” has a short sound.

Lets take a look at what our mouth should look like when we pronounce ‘w’ as in ‘west’.

“Make your lips hard and round.”

Next, we’ll take a look at some words with the ‘w’ sound and contrast them with similar sounding words. Greg will say each word twice:

“west” “vest”; “wet” “vet”; “wine” “vine”; “we” “V”

Let’s try a couple of sentences:

“When Vince drank wine he wrote the worst verse we ever heard!”
“Was it windy in the woods when you went there with William on Wednesday?”

The pronunciation of the letter “f” is closely linked with the pronunciation of the letter “v”; and the pronunciation of the letter “v” is often mispronounced as “w”.

Confused? Well, firstly, let’s take a look at what our mouth should look like when we pronounce the letter “f” as in the word “feel”:

“Touch your top teeth with your bottom lip.
Blow out air between your teeth and your lip.”

Next, we’ll take a look at some words with the ‘f’ sound and contrast them with similar sounding words. Greg will say each word twice:

“fin” “pin”; “feel” “peel”; “sniff” “snip”; “half” “harp”; “fat” “hat”; “feat” “heat”

Let’s try a couple of sentences:

“If you want to eat a fillet of fish, then you need to use a knife and fork.”

“Your Father will get fat if he frequently fries his food.”

In our next post we’ll look at the pronunciation of the letter “v”.

As we said in our last post, the pronunciation of the letter “v” is closely linked to the pronunciation of the letter “f”.

Let’s look again at what our mouth should look like when we pronounce the letter “f”; and then at what the mouth should look like when we pronounce the letter “v”:

We see that the mouth positioning is the same; but instead of using ‘air’ to make the sound (as in “f”), to make the sound for “v” we use our voice.

Next, we’ll take a look at some words with the “v” sound and contrast them with similar sounding words. Greg will say each word twice:

“vine” “fine”; “view” “few”; “leave” “leaf”; “vest” “best”; “van” “ban”; “vote” “boat”

Let’s try a couple of sentences:

“Vera will be driving a van to the village in the valley.”
“Victor loved the five autumn leaves that Vanessa gave him in November.”

There are 2 pronunciations for ‘th’. One is as in “the” or “that”, and the other is as in “think”. We’d like to help you with the pronunciation of ‘th’ as in ‘think’.
Many people mispronounce the ‘th’ sound as ‘s’; and so “think” becomes “sink”!

Sentence: “I think I’ll have a conversation with Rita on both Thursday and Friday.”

Firstly, lets take a look at what our mouth should look like when we pronounce ‘th’ as in ‘think’.

“Put your tongue between your teeth.
Blow out air between your tongue and your top teeth.”

Next, we’ll take a look at some words with the ‘th’ sound, and contrast them with the ‘s’ sound. Greg will say each word twice:

“Mouth” “Mouse”; “Thumb” “Sum”;
“Thick” “Sick”; “Think” “Sink”; “Path” “Pass”.

Here you will find an audio recording of the correct pronunciation of “usually”. We have also included a sentence using “usually”.
.
.

“I usually have free-time on the weekend.”