Formulation of General Rules of the English Pronunciation
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Ningmareo Shimray *
Ningmareo Shimray,
Lecturer,
Ukhrul Higher Secondary
School, Ukhrul, Manipur, India.
Recipient of National Award to Teachers 2021
General rules of the English pronunciation are formulated as an endeavour to give a single English pronunciation to every word in an English dictionary by applying the concept of sub-syllables and mathematics.
There were remarkable changes with the introduction of IPA in English pronunciation towards the end of 19th century and several revisions in 20th and 21st centuries which went unnoticed to many of us.
Prominently, some phonetic sounds/symbols were newly introduced and some of the old phonetic sounds/symbols were deleted in English pronunciation.
(I) Syllabification. Identify the stressed (primary/secondary) syllable(s) of a multi-syllable word from the left hand side of the word. Make the number of letters of the stressed syllable as many as possible. Do not change/delete the letter(s)/the sound of the letter(s) of the stressed syllable as far as possible. Counting from the left, in case of any change, go for the minimum change. Make the number of syllables
of a word as small as possible.
(II) The letters- a, e, i, o, u, y generally do not take the sound- uh (full schwa)/uh (faint schwa) in the stressed syllable (except in some monosyllables and in the formation of diphthongs and
triphthongs). Generally, the letter- a/e/i/o/u/y takes the sound- uh/uh to become unstressed syllable. (III) Do not change/delete the letter(s)/the sound of the letter(s) of the unstressed syllable as far as
possible. In case of any change, go for the minimum change. Counting from the left hand side, make the number of the letters of the unstressed syllable as many as possible.
(IV) Generally, every stressed syllable and unstressed syllable is followed by unstressed syllable and stressed syllable respectively. The unstressed syllable can be followed by unstressed or stressed syllable but the stressed syllable is always followed by the unstressed syllable, except in the case of compound words, some interjections and adverbs. The pronunciation of mutli-syllables with more stressed syllables is
preffered.
Download the extract of the book: "Formulation of General Rules of the English Pronunciation" (PDF - 420 KB)
* Ningmareo Shimray wrote this article for e-pao.net
The writer is from Ukhrul and is a Recipient of National Awards to Teachers 2021
and can be contacted at sningmareo(AT)gmail(DOT)com
This article was webcasted on April 19 2022.
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