Pronunciation of English letter combinations in Russian. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley - “Frankenstein, or Modern Prometheus”, Mary Shelley

It is not easy to learn to read English correctly, because the rules for reading each individual letter in this language directly depend on its position in the word. For example, the vowel letter “a”, depending on its “neighbors”, can convey two different sounds: a - date or a [ǽ] - bag . Letter combinations can also be pronounced differently. Today we will look at the basic living rules for reading English, including vowel letters and combinations. How to read English correctly There are a lot of words in English, the use of which you just need to remember, since they do not follow the rules. There are also many exceptions, including from the rules of pronunciation, How to pronounce English sounds correctly, which also need to be memorized. Plus, you also need to learn how to pronounce phonemes, which have no analogues in the Russian language. However, for almost a billion people on Earth, English is a foreign language that they have studied and learned.

This huge number of people have learned to read foreign languages ​​correctly and pronounce “foreign” sounds. With persistence and diligence, it is not difficult to acquire any skill. Therefore, tune yourself in to exciting videos or text lessons and interesting exercises, to learn not only the living rules of reading English, but also be able to acquire good British or American pronunciation.

As I already said, vowels can convey several phonemes at once, depending on the type of syllable they are included in. It is very difficult to trace these patterns. And yet their reading can be divided into two categories: stressed vowels and unstressed vowels. Drum pronunciation rules:

• In an open (go) or conventionally open (polea) syllable, vowels are read in the same way as they are called in the alphabet
• In a closed syllable, vowels convey short sounds
• When a vowel is followed by the letter “r” or “r” and a consonant, a long sound is pronounced
• When a vowel is followed by “re” or “r” and a vowel, it is read as a triphthong or diphthong

This table will demonstrate these rules to you most clearly:

Download this worksheet and print it out. It will be a good help for you when doing practical exercises. Reading rules Rules for pronunciation of unstressed words:

• The letters “e”, “y”, “i” are pronounced as [i] unless they are followed by an “r”: divide
• Vowels “a”, “u”, “o” without stress, as well as in prefixes and suffixes, are read as the sound [∂]: glorious
• The letter “i” before a vowel is pronounced [j]: union [`ju:nj∂n]
• Vowels before “r” convey the sound [∂]: player [`plei∂ ®]

Do not forget to consolidate all acquired knowledge with the help of practical exercises. Watch an educational video demonstrating the position of the tongue and lips when pronouncing various phonemes.

Living rules for reading English

In fact, “Living Rules for Reading the English Language” is one of the best book guides on foreign reading and pronunciation from Yu. A. Ivanova. This tutorial clearly and simply explains the various English laws of pronunciation and reading. After each short lesson exercises immediately follow practical work and self-tests with examples.

In the text and exercises you will see tasks that you need to listen to or watch a video, and at the end of each page there is a link where these Additional materials you can take it. To make the exercises more interesting and exciting, the author diluted the rules with funny rhymes and funny tongue twisters to practice pronunciation, which not only adults, but also children will be able to do.

The book contains many practical, exciting and varied exercises designed to teach a beginner or child the basic laws of reading and to distinguish by ear sounds that are not characteristic of the Russian language. The self-instruction manual can be used by students who have just begun to master the language and want to comprehend its basic postulates. The publication is recommended for both group classes and self-study.

Transcription and reading rules in English language– two closely related concepts. Reading rules explain how letters and letter combinations are pronounced in different cases, and with the help of transcription we record and read speech sounds.

Reading rules can confuse a beginner. There are many of them, they are confusing, and there are more exceptions than the rules themselves. In fact, these rules are only so scary if you understand them deeply and try to learn them by heart, along with the exceptions. In reality, everything is much simpler: reading rules do not need to be remembered by heart.

While studying English, you will constantly be doing something, and will soon learn to relate letter designations and sounds without thinking, automatically. There is no need to worry about exceptions either. Usually the pronunciation, spelling and meaning of a word are remembered as one whole - you just know that such and such a word is pronounced this way.

Feature of English phonetics: we write “Manchester” - we read “Liverpool”

The phonetics of the English language has a noticeable feature: words are often read differently from how they are written, that is, from the spelling of a word it is not always possible to guess how it is pronounced. As linguists joke: “We write “Manchester”, but read “Liverpool.”

In the history of many languages, the following pattern can be traced: the phonetic structure becomes more complex, but the letters and spelling remain the same or change with great delay. English is no exception. At the dawn of its development, words were read and pronounced more or less similar, but over time this discrepancy became greater and greater, the situation was aggravated by the diversity of dialects, and now we are in words though, thought And through read a combination of letters - ough completely different, although the words themselves differ by one letter.

Nobody is in a hurry to reform English spelling; there are many reasons for this. For example, the English language has long no longer had a single “control center”. Reforms initiated in London may be coolly received in Sydney and rejected in Washington. And in general, spelling reform is always a painful process that meets resistance among a significant part of native speakers. It's much easier to leave it as is.

What is transcription and why is it needed?

Transcription in English is the recording of speech sounds using special characters. She should not be afraid or avoided, because she is a very good assistant in learning the language, which will be great for saving time and helping to avoid mistakes. One glance at the transcription of an English word is enough for you to understand how it is read correctly.

When you memorize or write down a new word that comes across in the text, you definitely need to look at its transcription and/or listen to the pronunciation (for example, in), otherwise you may remember it incorrectly, and then they will not understand you.

Is it possible to write English words in Russian letters?

Sometimes on websites or even in books you can see “ English transcription in Russian” or “pronunciation English words in Russian letters” – that is, writing English words in Russian letters. Like, why learn sophisticated icons if Can convey sounds in Russian letters? Then what it is forbidden. The phonetics of the Russian language differs from the English phonetics so much that the sound can only be conveyed very, very approximately. We simply do not have some sounds of English speech, as well as vice versa.

Transcription and pronunciation of all sounds of the English language separately (video)

With this interesting video table, you can listen to the sound of all sounds separately and see how they are recorded using transcription. Click on play and wait for the video to load completely, then click on the sound you want.

Please note that in the transcription, in addition to the symbols themselves denoting sounds, the following are used:

• Square brackets– traditionally, transcription is always written in [square brackets]. For example: [z].
• Vowel length icon– in English, vowels can be long or short, longitude is indicated by a colon after the vowel. For example: .
• Accent icon– if a word with more than one syllable is transcribed, the stress must be indicated with an apostrophe (comma at the top). It is placed before the stressed syllable. For example: – decision.

In total, there are 44 sounds in the English language, which, like in Russian, are divided into consonants and vowels. Among them there are sounds similar to Russian, for example: [b] - [b], [n] - [n], and sounds that have no analogues in the Russian language: [ ð ], [θ ].

In English phonetics there are no such concepts as softness/hardness of consonants, but there is longitude of vowels (not characteristic of the Russian language) - vowels can be short [a] and long. It should also be noted that vowel sounds in English can be:

• single (monophthongs): [ i: ], [ e ],
• consisting of two sounds (diphtogni): [ ai ], [ ɔi ],
• consisting of three sounds (triphthongs): [ aiə ].

Diphthongs and triphthongs are read and perceived as solid sounds.

English sound table with examples and cards

Having studied how English sounds are pronounced individually, be sure to listen to how they are read whole words. It is often easier for students to understand and hear the pronunciation English sounds when they sound as part of a word, and not separately.

In the tables below, all sounds are given with example words. Using electronic cards you can listen to the pronunciation.

How to learn to pronounce English sounds?

There are two approaches:

1. Theoretical- usually in textbooks detailed description how to press your tongue against the roof of your mouth to form a certain sound. With an illustration showing a cross-section of a human head. The method is scientifically correct, but it is difficult to use on your own: not everyone will understand what it means to “slide the upper teeth along the lower lip” and will be able to perform this action.
2. Practical– listen, watch and repeat. I think it's much easier this way. You simply repeat after the announcer, trying to imitate the sound as accurately as possible. Pay attention to articulation, try to repeat all movements of the lips and tongue. Ideally, of course, someone should supervise, but you can simply record yourself on a webcam and watch from the outside.

If you want to repeat after the speaker, imitating his speech, I recommend using the materials on Puzzle English, namely the “Video Puzzles” exercises, which are aimed at developing listening comprehension. In video puzzles, you can slow down your speech and, as in Lingvaleo, watch the translation of words by clicking on them directly in the subtitles.

In video puzzles, you first need to watch a video and then assemble sentences from words.

Detailed review of this service:

In addition, for practical training in different kind people Many videos have been shot and are available on YouTube. For example, these two videos examine in detail the sounds of English speech in the American and British versions:

British pronunciation

American pronunciation

When you start learning English, you shouldn’t strive to achieve “perfect” pronunciation. Firstly, there are a lot of varieties of pronunciation (the above are, as it were, “generalized” British and American options), and secondly, even native speakers who speak professionally (for example, actors) often take lessons from special trainers in order to master the features of a particular pronunciation option - practicing speech is not an easy task.

Just try to speak in a way that 1) is understandable and 2) doesn’t hurt your ears too much.

Reading rules in English: table and cards

Reading rules in English are, rather, not even rules, but generalized recommendations that are not particularly accurate. Not only that, say, the letter “o” in different combinations and types of syllables can be read as nine different ways, there are also exceptions. For example, in the words food, too it is read as , and in the words good, look – as [u]. There is no pattern here, you just need to remember this.

If you look in different books, it turns out that the rules of reading, and indeed phonetics in general, can be told differently by different authors with varying degrees of immersion in detail. I think that there is no point in delving into the jungle of phonetic science (you can dive into it ad infinitum), and the easiest way is to take as a basis the most simplified version of the reading rules, that is reading rules in English for children.

For this article, I took as a basis the rules given in the textbook “English. Grades 1 – 4 in diagrams and tables” N. Vakulenko. Believe me, this is more than enough for both children and adults!

What is an open and closed syllable?

In English, there are open and closed syllables; it also matters whether it ends with the letter “r” and whether it is stressed.

A syllable is called open if:

• the syllable ends with a vowel and is the last in the word,
• a vowel is followed by another vowel,
• a vowel is followed by a consonant, and followed by one or more vowels.

A syllable is closed if:

• it is the last in the word, and ends with a consonant,
• A vowel is followed by two or more consonants.

In these cards and the table below you can see how to pronounce different letters in different combinations and syllable types.

The most important reading rules

The table above looks very busy, even intimidating. From this we can highlight several of the most important rules, which have almost no exceptions.

Basic rules for reading consonants

• The combination ph is read as [f]: photo, Morpheus.
• The combination th is read as [ð] or [θ]: think there. These sounds do not exist in the Russian language; their pronunciation requires some practice. Do not confuse them with the sounds [s], [z].
• The combination ng at the end of a word is read as [ŋ] - this is a nasal (that is, pronounced as if in the nose) version of the sound [n]. A common mistake is to read it as . There is no “g” in this sound. Examples: strong, King Kong, wrong.
• The combination sh is read as [ʃ]: ship, show, shop.
• The letter “c” before i, e, y is read as [s]: celebrity, cent, pencil.
• The letter “g” before i, e, y is read as: age, magic, gym.
• The combination ch is read as: match, catch.

Basic rules for reading vowels

• In an open stressed syllable, vowels are usually read as in: no, go, name, face, pupil, he, five. These can be monophthongs and diphthongs.
• In a closed syllable, vowels are read as short monophthongs: nut, got, ten.

How to remember reading rules?

Most people who are fluent in English as a foreign language will not be able to immediately name even a few basic reading rules. Rules readings do not need to be memorized, you need to be able to use them. But is it possible to use what you don’t know? As much as possible! Thanks to frequent practice, knowledge turns into skills and actions begin to be performed automatically, unconsciously.

In order for the reading rules to quickly reach the automatic stage, I recommend:

• Study the rules themselves - read, comprehend, speak examples out loud.
• Practicing reading aloud will help develop pronunciation skills, and at the same time, the rules of reading will be reinforced. Take the text with audio, video with subtitles so that you have something to compare it with.
• Do small written works – writing practice is good for development vocabulary, consolidating grammar knowledge and, of course, improving spelling.

On initial stage learning English inevitably comes across differences between your native language and a foreign language. Reading in English for beginners, children and adults, is usually one of the first stages in learning. And the first such differences between Russian and English appear as soon as you begin to learn to read English. You are faced with transcription and reading rules of the English language. These two concepts are related, since with the help of transcription we can write down and read the sounds that vowel and consonant letters convey in various combinations. But the reading rules explain exactly how letters are pronounced in different environments.

There are quite a lot of reading rules in English, and they concern both vowels and consonants. In addition, a huge number of words are not read according to the rules, that is, they are exceptions. Therefore, it begins to seem that it is extremely difficult to learn all this. In fact, the rules of reading need to be learned, but there is no need to learn them by heart. After doing several exercises on reading rules, you will already know exactly how words of the same type are read. As you learn, as you read and listen to a variety of educational materials, spelling, pronunciation and meaning of new words will be remembered as a whole.

Features of English pronunciation

Reading in English for beginners at first presents some difficulties due to the peculiarities of pronunciation - words are often pronounced differently from how they are written. Linguists even have a saying: “We write Manchester, we pronounce Liverpool.” This situation is due to the fact that historically there were, and still are, many dialects in the English language in which the same letters and combinations of letters were read differently, which over time became entrenched in official English. An example is the letter combination ough. The words though, through, thought differ in only one letter, and the letter combination ough is read differently in all words.

The role of transcription in teaching reading in English

So, as we have already said, in addition to the numerous rules for reading in English, difficulties arise when mastering the transcription of the English language. Transcription is the recording of speech sounds using special symbols. You should not avoid it, as it is the best assistant in learning a language, which, firstly, will save you time when learning new words, and secondly, will help you avoid mistakes in pronunciation. After all, when you write out or memorize new words, you definitely need to know how to read them correctly. There are two options on how to do this. The first is to listen to it in some online resource, and the second is to look at the transcription.

Now in some tutorials, as well as on training sites, you can find “English transcription in Russian”. It is believed that writing an English word in Russian letters is much easier than learning some incomprehensible phonetic symbols. In fact, this is a misconception. English phonetics differs from Russian so much that Russian letters can only approximately convey the pronunciation of English words, mostly the simplest ones, the reading of which is not particularly difficult even without this kind of “transcription.” Some English sounds simply do not exist in the Russian language, and correct pronunciation English and Russian sounds that are similar at first glance may have certain differences.

Therefore, we recommend that you take the time to learn the transcription symbols and read the sounds. This is one of the basic knowledge when mastering the rules of reading English for beginners. Knowledge of transcription will serve you faithfully at all stages of your training.

Let's look at the rules of reading English

Exist different classifications rules for reading consonants and vowels in English. For vowel letters, as a rule, 4 types of syllables are distinguished. These are 4 types of environment in which a vowel may find itself, and which affects its pronunciation. Some textbooks consider only the first two syllable types - open and closed, but consider whether the letter r is involved in these syllable types - as it affects the reading of vowels. Consonants in different combinations can also be read differently. It must be said that the number of exceptions and reading options for the same letter combinations in in different words give reason to consider the reading rules rather as generalized recommendations that should be studied before you start reading.

To familiarize yourself with the rules of reading in English, we suggest that you take as a basis the tables with options for reading letters, which are given in our textbook for children “English Language. Grades 1-4 in diagrams and tables” N. Vakulenko. These English reading rules for children cover almost everything possible options reading vowels and consonants in English. But before we move directly to the tables, let’s look at two more concepts that you will definitely come across when getting acquainted with the rules of reading. This open And closed syllable.

The syllable is called open, When

• ends with a vowel and is the last of the word
• a vowel is followed by a consonant and then a vowel again
• a vowel is again followed by another vowel

Examples of words with an open syllable type (You can listen with sound):

age, blue, bye, fly, go

The syllable is called closed, When

• ends with a consonant and is the last of the word
• a vowel is followed by several consonants

Examples of words with a closed syllable type:

bed, big, box, hungry, stand

So, let’s formulate the rules for reading English for beginners: tables for reading vowels and consonants.

Vowel Reading Charts

Consonant Reading Tables

Intonation in English

Even if a student learns all the basic grammatical rules and 10-12 thousand lexemes, this will not make him close to the native speaker, because he also needs to delve into the phonemic structure of the language, in particular, to learn in which cases to use which type of intonation.

There are two main types - ascending and descending.

The first is used in request sentences, when addressing a person, when announcing a list (in this case, the intonation goes up on each of the words except the last), after adverbs and introductory words at the beginning of a phrase, at the beginning alternative question, in a dividing question.

The second type of intonation, lowering the tone, is relevant in statements when giving orders. It can be found in exclamations and special questions.

How to train this skill?

• Listen to how native speakers speak, how this or that word, sound, phrase is read in audiobooks.
• Watch videos on this topic. Moreover, English should be the narrator’s first and main language.
• Use educational materials and apply the acquired knowledge in practice. Read aloud in English, after listening to the recording, talk at least several times a week.
• Record your speech and do comparative analysis with the native language.

Accent in English

If the accent is incorrectly placed in certain letter combinations, it will be difficult for a native English speaker to understand you. However, it is pointless to memorize the stress for each word, since there is a certain systematicity in this aspect.

Most words have stress on the first syllable. But there are those who obey a different rule. For example, the suffix formations -tion, -cian and -cial require an accent in front of them (inform A tion, opt i cian). The suffixes -(g)nomy and -logy (ge) also behave O logy, ec O nomy).

With prefixes it’s even simpler - they are skipped and remain unaccented. This works with the prefixes in-, en-, con-, com-, re-, de-, ex-, etc.: exch A nge, enc O mpass.

Prefixes with the meaning of negation (non-, un-, in-, ir-, not-) also fall under this rule: un U sual, irr E levant

There are a number of words that change the stressed syllable type in English to unstressed, depending on the meaning:

• to object - object; O bject - object;
• to press E nt - to give; pr E sent - gift, present moment.

Having learned the basic provisions that regulate stress and with a little practice, you can easily reach a high language level.

How to learn reading rules. Online exercises

As we said earlier, there is no need to memorize the rules of reading. You just need to use them. To begin, go through several exercises on reading rules, reading aloud the same type of words in a row. This will help reinforce reading rules and develop pronunciation skills. For additional control, you can take exercises with audio accompaniment. In fact, the rules of reading are practiced automatically by themselves, since by regularly studying English, you listen, read, write - that is, practice for practicing the rules of reading is quite enough.

Choose words that have similar vowel sounds

Choose words that have the same consonant sounds

Make up an English tongue twister from the words

You can apply the reading rules in practice on our website. By going through unique exercises using the Lim English method, you will be able to master not only reading, but also writing English words, as well as learn basic grammatical rules and continue learning further.

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Greetings, friends.

I think each of you - whether you are a parent or a teacher - understands that the rules for reading English for children differ from the rules for adults, but not in content, but in the volume and presentation of the material.

For preschoolers or children school age who are just starting to learn English, you need to give such information in very portions, accompanying it all bright pictures, video and audio materials. Of course, you should immediately give memorable examples and, if possible, reinforce everything with exercises. Then this topic will be easy and even interesting for the young student.

On this page you will find very colorful and useful tables with the basic vowel sounds of the English language. ().

In the first table you can see the basic vowel letters and how to read them.

In the second table - the most common combinations of vowels in words and also ways to read them.

And in the third and fourth — examples of sentences with words containing the mentioned letters and combinations.

How to work with them?

1. First, explain to your child that each vowel letter in English can be read differently and, using table 1, look at the examples and read them together (you can also study if it is not clear to the child).
2. Then talk about the fact that in the English language there are vowel letters that often stand next to each other, and in this case they will sound differently together. You will see and read this together using the examples from table 2.
3. In the third and fourth tables, you and your child will be able to read entire sentences, each of which contains several words with the same vowel sounds (they are underlined). Before each example sentence, a transcription icon with the sound being practiced is highlighted in red. Read it first, and then the whole sentence.

To make it easier for you, I recorded audio for these materials. Listen and practice.

Letters and sounds

Comment to table 1: If you noticed, each vowel letter in the English language can be read in two ways: either the way we read it in the alphabet, or another way. So, usually in alphabetical order the letters "a, e, i, o, u" are read in words that end with a letter "e" or consisting of more than one syllable . But in short monosyllabic words ending with a consonant, they are read differently. You need to remember this! Reading a letter "y" you also need to remember in two ways - but here the logic is different - in short words, where it stands on last place, we read it alphabetically (to be precise, almost alphabetically), and in long ones - in a different way.

Regularly re-read with your children examples of short monosyllabic and longer English words with vowel letters - then their reading rules will be “written” in the child’s memory, and subsequently he will be able to use analogy to recognize the way in which the letter will be read. You will find a lot of similar practice in mine.

Example sentences

Hope you enjoyed it!

By the way, about important rules when teaching a child correct reading I wrote in English - there you will also find some practice with the voiced material.

How to learn to read English (M. Kaufman) - This is a very interesting guide for children. What is very remarkable is that in parallel with learning to read, acquaintance with the English-speaking culture occurs. This awakens the child’s interest and curiosity in the language... And interest, as you know, is already 50% of success! If not more...

If you have any questions, write and ask them in the comments - I’ll be happy to help.