Pronunciation Quiz - ANSWERS

  1. Form a minimal pair for each of these words:
    • tease-these
    • low-law
    • bird-bored
    • zoo-sue
    • horse-whores
    • wheat-wit
    • so-sore/saw
    • walked-worked
    • hit-heat
    • bloke-block
    • eyes-ice

  2. Why are the “-ed” endings on regular verbs pronounced in three different ways?
    It depends on the last phoneme before the suffix ending – voiced consonants and vowels take /d/, unvoiced consonants /t/, words ending in “d” or “t” already need an extra vowel, so /Id/.

  3. Think of as many words as you can which begin with the letter “w” but are pronounced with the sound/r/.
    wrist, write, wring, wrong, wrap, etc.

  4. Think of as many country names as you can which have two syllables and are stressed on the second syllable.
    Kuwait, Japan, Nepal, Sudan, etc.

  5. What’s the difference between a greenhouse and a green house?
    The first is a compound noun – the stress is always on the first part of the compound.

  6. Think of at least five homophones for parts of the body.
    hare, tow, mussel, hart, knows, heal, soul, naval, I, feat,

  7. Write down some Italian words which have the same spelling as English words but different meanings.
    There are incredibly few, considering how many words have different spellings but the same or similar pronunciations – come, base, via, facile, dove, male, pane, sale, care, mare, tale, lame, ape

  8. What’s unusual about these words? deer tie right desert
    They have both homonyms and homophones i.e. right (n.), right (adj.), write,

  9. Name words where the noun and the verb have the same spelling but different pronunciation.
    desert, export, conscript, etc.

  10. What causes “linking”?
    Sentence stress in English is regular and usually falls on the stressed syllable of the “content” words – the number of syllables between the beats can vary enormously, and the more there are, the more quickly they need to be said. Linking is what happens when unstressed syllables are squeezed together and said quickly – there are various types of linking, such as assimilation, elision and catenation.

  11. Make a list of words in which a vowel or syllable is elided?
    Chocolate, secretary, comfortable, vegetable, etc.

  12. In the phonemic chart, how many phonemes are there in total(44)? Of these, how many are monopthongs(12), how many diphthongs(8), and how many consonants?(24)

  13. Think of words used in English (borrowed words are OK) which start with the letter “h” but where the /h/ sound is not pronounced.
    honest, hour, honour, hors d’oeuvre, etc.

  14. Write down as many words as possible which have the same vowel sound as the word “or” but in which the vowel is spelt in different ways.
    tor, poor, pour, pore, paw, awe, aura, taught, thought, war, corps, board,

  15. In terms of intonation, what is the basic difference between open and closed questions?
    Closed questions rise, open questions don’t.