London, Boston and Washington are not only very nice cities to visit but also happen to be very often pronounced incorrectly by non-native speakers. This includes people on television, radio, and even English teachers. As I will tell you below, there are many other examples of the same mistake. English and other pronunciations Before calling
[Zur deutschen Version dieses Posts wechseln] Loose, lose, looser, and loser often cause problems among both native and non-native speakers. The reason is quite obvious: their spelling and pronunciation are rather similar. Just by counting the number of o’s, we can guess that lose and loser are related, as are loose and looser. However, the
Non-native speakers often make mistakes pronouncing the words multi and multiple in English. A possible reason is that these words have their origin in Latin, and hence are used in a number of other languages. The typical mistake involves an incorrect pronunciation of the letter u, listen here: Instead of pronouncing it as in the
Although Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees have now spread far beyond English-speaking countries, there is still a lot of confusions about the correct spelling. Importantly, in expression such as Master’s thesis, Bachelor’s thesis, Master’s degree or Master’s student, the apostrophe is part of the correct spelling, indicating that the thesis was written by a person that
The word matrix has become mainstream in 1999 thanks to the movie The Matrix. Long before that, the word had been in use in science and technology. In mathematics and physics (the fields I am most often confronted with in talks and discussions), a matrix is a regular array of objects such as numbers or
Today, I want to cover a topic that has been suggested by Gerrit, a follower of my blog on FB. He pointed out that German native speakers (and quite likely also people with other native languages) sometimes have difficulties getting the pronunciation of the syllable ‘ey’ right. For example, in the words Disney, Kinsey, hockey,
The word height can be quite difficult for non-native speakers because they are tempted to pronounce it in the same way as the word hate. However, there is a clear difference: hate is pronounced as [heɪt], listen here, height is pronounce as [haɪt], listen here. For me, a simple way to remember the correct pronunciation
The pronunciation of the titles lieutenant and colonel, given to selected army and police officers, respectively, is both challenging and interesting. First, the British and American pronunciations are very different in the case of lieutenant. In British English, the pronunciation is [lefˈtenənt], see and listen here, whereas in American English it is [luːˈtenənt]. Second, colonel
The definite article the is the most often used English word, see here. However, even though it only has three letters, its pronunciation can be tricky. There are three different pronunciations, the so-called weak forms [ðə] and [ði], and the strong form [ði:]. You can listen to all three forms here. The is most often
Most scientists are very familiar with the name and work of Richard Feynman. Among his many achievements and contributions, let me mention Feynman diagrams, the Feynman path integral (an alternative formulation of quantum mechanics), and his work on quantum electrodynamics for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965. Feynman is not only