Five Pronunciation Mistakes That Undermine Your English Clarity (and How to Fix Them)

“I know what the word is, but whenever I say it, people have no idea what I’m saying.” 

This is a sentence I hear constantly from clients in my work as a voice coach. They are fluent in the language, work internationally, or perform in English regularly. However, they consistently have interactions that challenge their sense of confidence in English. One client even said that people have laughed at him when he says basic English words. 

First of all, it makes me angry to no end that people laugh at someone because of their accent. Learning (and successfully speaking!) another language is a challenge -- especially for an adult learner. It’s rude, discouraging, and frankly unnecessary. To those people, I say “I’d like to hear you try French.” 

That said, pronunciation mistakes can make for some embarrassing miscommunication. If you’ve struggled to be understood when you’re speaking English, it’s likely not your knowledge of the language. Rather, there are certain common challenges that every non-native English speaker faces when they are trying to improve their English. 

Here are the most common patterns I see when working with clients -- and how to fix them. 

Challenge 1: Confusing Vowel Sounds — /i/ vs. /ɪ/

What’s the difference between these two words: 

“Eat”   and “It” 

For starters, one is a verb. The other is a pronoun. More importantly, they’re pronounced totally differently. 

At a recent workshop I was teaching in Paris, two of the participants had a visible “aha!” moment when I introduced that concept. They never realized those were different sounds because the sound in the word “sit” doesn’t exist in French. If you speak French, those probably sound the same to you because your brain is programmed to hear them that way. If we were using French pronunciation, those are pronounced the same.

In English, however, the closed /i/ in “eat” and the open or lax /ɪ/ in “it” are different sounds based on the position of your tongue and your lips. While both are what we call “front” vowels and the front of your tongue is raised, the back of the tongue lowers very slightly and the lips relax for the open or lax /ɪ/. 

Try this: Start saying the word “Eat” with your lips in a tense sort of smile and the back of your tongue touching your top teeth. Then, gently drop your jaw a little and let your lips relax. That release of tension will help you find that open or lax /ɪ/. 

Challenge 2: Dropping final consonants 

French is famous for the letters that exist in words that aren’t pronounced, specifically at the end of words. While that is great for the lyrical flow of French, when that habit continues into your English, it strongly impacts your clarity. 

For example, the word “portrait” exists in both languages. In French, the ending ‘t’ is silent, making it sound similar to the English word “portray”. So, if you do the same thing when you’re saying the word “portrait” in English, you actually are saying a completely different word. 

This is especially important for actors or public speakers who need to articulate clearly to a large audience. In a large crowd, sounds can easily become muffled because of the way sound travels, so precise final consonants will improve your ability to get your point across. 

One way to practice your final consonants is to over-exaggerate the sound to get your muscles used to forming the consonants. Try it with the following phrase “ Pat kept a pet cat that sat on a flat mat.” You might spit a little bit -- that just means your articulators are working! 

Challenge 3: Skipping the starting ‘h’

In French, an ‘h’ at the beginning of the word is always silent. If your brain sees it, it skips it instinctively, making this one of the biggest clarity challenges for French speakers when speaking English. 

The starting ‘h’ in English provides definition and precision to a word and skipping it can make your English sound blurry. 

Luckily, this is a pretty easy fix. The first step is just to remind yourself that the ‘h’ is pronounced in English. Then, you just put a little puff of air before the vowel. 

To practice, say the word “Ha” 4 times in a row, putting a strong puff of air before each repetition. You should feel a tuck just below your ribcage, which helps air push through your vocal cords to create that sound. This is the same feeling that you should have each time you say a starting ‘h’ in English.  

Challenge 4: Ignoring unstressed syllables 

My name is Melanie. In English, I pronounce my name with a stress on the first syllable. 

MEL-anie

That first stressed syllable takes a little bit longer to say than the two unstressed syllables that follow. 

When I moved to France, I had to relearn how to pronounce my name. 

Mé-la-nie

All the syllables are even. 

It’s the same name, but pronounced completely differently. Why? 

It comes down to the timing of the language. English is “stress-timed” and French is “syllable-timed”, so the rhythm of the speech is entirely different. 

As a “syllable-timed” language, French words are fairly even; syllables are roughly the same length, length, and emphasis, with the exception of a slight emphasis sometimes at the end of a grouping of words. 

In a “stress-timed” language like English, the emphasized syllables take slightly longer to say and are emphasized with a slight raise in pitch and volume. If you’ve ever thought English sounds very musical or rhythmic, this is why. 

To get this characteristic stress, English doesn’t pronounce all vowels as written. In fact, the most common vowel in the English language is one you’ll never see in print -- the schwa. 

The schwa (/ə/) is a neutral, unstressed sound that can shape shift to replace any written vowel. It sounds kind of like an “uh”, but it’s softer and weaker. This tiny vowel sound is one of the ways that English gets its characteristic rhythm. 

While it can show up anywhere, the schwa is particularly common in the endings “er”, “or”, or “on”. 

Try saying these words as you normally would: 

Mother 

Doctor

Cotton

Now, replace the second vowel syllable with the schwa sound (uh): 

MOTH-er

DOCT-or

COTT-on

Do you feel how the first syllable now takes on more emphasis? That’s the schwa working its magic. 

Challenge 5: The emphasis is on the wrong syllable 

Knowing unstressed syllables exist is one thing… putting the emphasis on the right syllable is what makes your English clear. In fact, even more than sound errors, stress errors can cause some of the biggest problems for non-native speakers. If you put the emphasis on the wrong spot, the word won’t make sense -- or it’ll mean something different entirely. 

Take the word “record”, for example. 

If you put the emphasis on the first syllable RE-cord, it is a noun: a disk played on a turntable. 

If you put the emphasis on the second syllable re-CORD, it is a verb: the act of registering something to save it. 

You can even reCORD something to make a REcord. 

There are a ton of rules to help you learn the correct rhythmic stress, but like most things in English, they are broken constantly. The best way to start to get a sense of English syllabic stress is to listen and mimic native speakers, especially with poetry or rap that puts the word stress into its natural beat. 

Listen to the poem Sick by Shel Silverstein. Do you feel that natural, almost musical bounce as it’s being read? That’s because the strong parts of the words are lining up on the beat, accentuating the stress/unstress pattern. Try repeating it line by line and you’ll start to naturally feel that rhythm.

Start speaking clearer

English pronunciation can be complicated, and improving your articulation takes practice and consistency -- but it’s not impossible! Focusing on a few tweaks and building up over the time will have a huge pay off in the long run. 

A few lessons later, that same client came back telling me about a recent call he had in English. He focused on the clarity of his ending consonants, and said that the number of times people asked him to repeat himself was cut in half -- just from one small fix. 

Want a simple way to begin practicing? Download my free Vowel Minimal Pair Worksheet to start training your muscle today.