Hard English Words to Say for Frenchies - Pronounce them better!

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Once you watch this whole video, you will understand the words and the sounds that are really difficult for French people to pronounce, but not only that, you'll also be able to pronounce them better so that you can improve your English or your English pronunciation more quickly and relax when you're speaking English.

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Hi, my name is Kathryn and I have helped hundreds of students with their pronunciation. Now it's your turn.

H sound

Okay. Let's dive right in and get straight to the first sound, which is the 'H' sound or rather than lack of H sound. In these words like holiday hotel, hungry, happy hedgehog. The French find this 'H' sound really hard to pronounce because you guys never pronounce the 'H'. So this is a really tricky sound in English.

We have a lot of air coming out of our mouths in this sound. It's a hhhh sound. If you can feel the air on your hand, in front of your face, then you were pronouncing it correctly. Happy holiday hungry. It takes a lot of practice because you never say this sound and it actually does take effort. But instead of saying 'appy' 'oliday' 'ospital' where you swallow that sound - try the opposite. Try blowing out that 'h' sound. Repeat after me happy hospital hungry. And the last one, it has two H's hedgehog hedgehog, well done. Now to practice these at home I suggest you write them on a posted note, stick it on your bathroom mirror. And when you're maybe shaving or putting on your makeup, you can try and pronounce these words. And if you see that the mirror fogs up, it means you're pronouncing it correctly.

OUGH sound

The second group of the words are words, which have O U G H in them. Now we have three sounds, which is a little bit difficult because this O U G H is not pronounced the same in every word. We have three different pronunciations. The first pronunciation in the word through, through it's an Ooo sound at the end with a little sound at the very, very end of that word. Repeat after me through well done. The next sound is in more like an old sound in the words like thorough all though. Try them again. Thorough. Oh, thorough.

Although. Well done.

The last sound is an F sound in words like cough tough. Let's try those again and repeat after me cough. Tough. Okay.

Very well done for a list of all of these, O U G H words and the pronunciations for them. Click on the link in the description below, and you will have access to that on my website. If there's a word you just cannot pronounce comment below and I might be able to help you with it. I'd love to hear from you.

R sound

The next group of words or sound I should say is the R sound. Now when French people pronounce R it's in the back of the throat, it's like agghhhh sound, for example, in the word in English, when we pronounce it, we say rural, but the French say [rural] okay. It's more in the back of your throat in English.

We do not have that sound. So you need to get from the back of your throat more towards the middle of your mouth. So instead of saying [rural], you say ruh ruh. So the tongue is much more forward in the mouth. And it's up a bit to the top of the mouth. So Ruh, Ruh, Ruh, Ruh, Ruh, no throat sound. It's not [rural]. It's rural. Let's try an easier one with one or sound rabbit rabbit. So in French you would say [rabbit], the tongue goes back to the throat, but no, keep it forward. RA RA rabbit. Very good.

Now let's try the last word. And this is another word with two R's , which causes a lot of problems. Library library. En français -In French, it's librairie. Oh, there's a lot of throat sound in that word in English. There was no throat sound. It's library library. Yes. It's much more gentle sound in English. This will take a lot of practice. Don't give up. I know you can do it.

TH sound

The last sound that I am going to talk about today that the French people find hard to pronounce is the T H sound. Now in French, you have this T H in words like therapie, thermale. Okay. It's rather a hard T H sound. In English, we have those two same words, but I'll pronounce them with my accent... Therapy. Thermal. How different does that sound in French? You put your tongue behind the teeth, therapie. In English we put your tongue between the teeth therapy therapy, and it's quite a soft sound. It's not a hard T H sound like in French. Let's try it together. Therapy thermal.

Well done. Yes. I know. It's going to take a lot of practice to get that T H sound because it sounds strange coming out of your mouth, but to us English speakers, it's a very common sound, for example, in these very common words in English, this, that these and those. Okay. Let's try that together. This, that these and those well done, I often have a lot of French speakers pronouncing this T H with a Zed like zis, zat, zeese and zoze. I honestly don't know where that comes from because, um, you do have a T H sound in French. So never this Zed sound. It's very French. It's very typical French. Uh, I don't like ziss. Uh, I don't like ziz bar. So ZISS is not okay. This much, much better.

Do you think you can pronounce all of these words? Why not test yourself? You can call me for a free half an hour pronunciation consultation. There's a link in the description below to make a booking, check out these videos next on how to improve your pronunciation even further. If you liked this video click like and subscribe, and don't forget to share with all of your friends, thanks and see you in the next video.

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