ESL: Why Some Words Never Come Out Right
Nov 1
2 min read
Updated: 43 minutes ago
If you’re a professional working in the United States and English is your second language, you’ve probably noticed some English sounds don’t exist in your first language. So your mouth never had to learn how to make them. No matter how much you practice the word, it doesn’t come out the way you want.
For many international professionals, this isn’t a knowledge problem. It’s a physical one.
Speech is movement. Lips, jaw, tongue — all moving in coordinated positions you learned automatically as a child. If your first language never required a certain position, your mouth has no muscle memory for it.
For example: when you say the word bet, your lips are pulled straight across and your jaw is mostly closed.
When you say the word bought, your lips round and your jaw drops open.
Two short words.
Two completely different mouth shapes.
When you say the word beet lips and tongue are sitting like those shown in the graphic. If you’ve never had to make one of those shapes before, you have to teach your mouth from scratch.
Most native speakers never think about this. They learned the sounds as children, without instruction. But for an adult learner, the fastest way to fix a stubborn sound is often to see it — to watch how the mouth is positioned, and copy it.
There are resources that show exactly that: images of mouth and jaw position for each sound. There are diagrams that show exactly where the lips, jaw, and tongue should sit for each sound. They’re easy to find online.
Once you can see what a sound looks like, you can practice producing it on purpose—not by accident. The words that used to cause confusion will start landing clearly the first time.
If you’re an international professional working in the U.S., is there a sound in English that you keep practicing, but it still doesn’t come out the way you want? Do you have a few words that listeners often misunderstand?
Related Articles
Comments