English Pronunciation for Hindi Speakers

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Areas of Difficulty for Hindi Speakers 

Consonants

I.  /p/, /t/, and /k/

Hindi speakers often pronounce these aspirated stops as unaspirated consonants. Be sure to aspirate the initial sounds in these words:

Point          pencil               panic                penalty             penury
Tactic         trace                 track                tension             treachery
Cancer       cancel              courage            cougar             classic               

II.  /p/ and /f/

Practice pronouncing /p/ and /f/ in the following minimal pairs:

Pine           pair      peel      pale      supper             lap       leap
Fine           fair       feel      fail       suffer               laugh   leaf

III.  /b/ vs. /v/

Distinguish between /b/ and /v/ in the following word pairs:

Best           boat     rebel    bile      bent     beer     robe
Vest           vote     revel    vile      vent     veer     rove

IV.  /w/ vs. /v/

Make the distinction between /w/ and /v/, as you pronounce the following word pairs:

Wine          West                lower               rower               went
Vine          vest                  lover                rover                vent

V. /th/ and /dh/
Pronounce these words carefully:

Breath/breathe       bath/bathe        cloth/clothe     
Now try this tongue twister:
Those three thieves threw thirteen things in the thicket of thorn trees.

VI. Initial Consonant Clusters           
Pronounce the following initial consonant clusters without inserting a vowel before or between them:

Plight         slice     fright   pleasant           spill     stale     plaintiff
Splash       straw   scrod   sprinkle           spade   growl   gloat   
Snail          snow   sniper  scathing           sneak   smelt    smile    flight

VII. Final Consonant Clusters           
Pronounce the following final consonant clusters without inserting a vowel between them or dropping the final consonant cluster:

Taxed        relaxed             fixed                mixed              perplexed
Laughed    coughed           roughed           knifed              sniffed
Kissed       missed             hissed              passed             gassed

Vowels:
I. /I/ vs. /i:/
Distinguish between the short and long vowels in the following minimal pairs:

Lid            live      Sid       mitt      sill       fit         fill        hill
Lead          leave    seed     meet     seal      feet      feel      heal

 II. /e/ vs. /ae/
Make the distinction between these vowels in the following minimal pairs:
                              
                              Met            led       fed       med     let        set        bed      gem
                              Mat            lad       fad       mad     lad       sad       bad      jam

III. /e/ vs. /ei/
Make the distinction between the short and long vowels in the following minimal pairs:

Med           fed       let        set        bed      met      get       led
Made         fade     late       sate      bade     made    gate      laid

                  

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