Caring for Good English Pronunciation

Today I had a conversation about the importance of well-pronounced English and why/if many Germans do not care about it. OK, I may only speak for my fellow IT guys, but here are some conclusions:

• Some really don' t care.
• Many are really busy doing business and don't have time to nurse their language skills.
• Many just do not know better.
• People who know better don't point the others at their mistakes, at least not often enough, since that might be seen as impolite.
• Some false pronunciations are really common, such that people feel acknowledged when hearing and doing the same mistake over and over again.

Here is a collection of words containing the most common verbal attacks, I endured over the last 5 years. I tried to "write" down how to "speak" some of them for my German fellows. If in doubt, just click the word and listen to one of the speakers at dict.cc, or search the web.

Words of Pain

• the analysis vs. to analyze
• to determine
• deter-min, as in "admin"
• NOT deter-my-n
• variability
• var-ee-ability
• related word: variable
• exception: variety
• adaptation vs. adaption
• "adaption" is quite uncommon esp. in books and science. Please don't use it!
• Use "adaptation"!
• additional false friends: to adopt, adoption
• contribute
• tentative
• report
• array
• interpret
• in sync 

I will add more words here when my torturers start speaking again :-) and then point them to this article to help them improve their skills. In case I missed some commonly mispronounced words, just drop me a comment, thus I can add them.

Best Practice: Listen carefully, speak out loudly, repeat, repeat, repeat!

Cheers,
Uwe