THE=thuh

I'm still very much traumatized by Mr. R yesterday. No, not about my weight issue, but my terrible English! All my life I thought I was right, that my pronunciation was flawless, and some people even said I spoke good English (this came from an Aussie guy ok, who was surprised that I spoke good English,NOT I, but he said it..). After yesterday, I suddenly became STUPID. MUET band 5 can flush down the drain already =( "Pronunciation salah dik.." "You have a major problem with diction.." So here goes.. The correct way of pronouncing them. I better remember all this and improve or DIE!!!

the = before a consonant thuh; before a vowel thee
negotiation = ni-goh-shee-ey-shuhn (hmm, tricky..)
motor = moh-ter
caucus = kaw-kuhs (usually a meeting of party leaders)
Wednesday = wenz-dey (huge mistake when pronounced Wed-nes-day. It's wrong!)
development = di-vel-uhp-muhnt
entrepreneur = ahn-truh-pruh-nur, -noor

says = sez

said = sed

Sigh, there's much much more...

Have I forgotten something else quite important? Oh yeah, dipthongs.. Nope not G-string, not beach thongs/slipper Jepun, etc.. It's dipthongs = dif-thawng. What's that? Its Phonetics. An unsegmentable, gliding speech sound varying continuously in phonetic quality but held to be a single sound or phoneme and identified by its apparent beginning and ending sound, as the oi-sound of toy or boil. E.g. law and order read as lor endorder.

Practise makes perfect. Better be stupid and learn NOW than never!!!