Mind your tongue

People in Bengal have a tendency to mispronounce English words. Especially now that my job entails translating from Bengali to English and vice versa I find it impossible not raise an eyebrow when I hear a fellow colleague or read a phonetic inscription meticulously penned by our very own indigenous authors.  When Nutso Marmosets commenced I decided it will be a good forum to discuss such issues. It is true that each region has a specific twist of the tongue which is what renders the accent. So trying too hard to accentuate is a malady that few realize. Nonetheless it does not harm to work towards correct pronunciation rather than 'accent'. So when writing in the Bengali script we should pay heed to minute details as in ‘pronunciation’ as ‘fËe¢¾pHpe’ or ‘guardian’ as ‘N¡l¢Xue’so too for ‘test’ (­VØV) and ‘taste’(­VHØV).

                          

  Obviously this list is not exhaustive. In fact if your intent is correct pronunciation then over-dependence on the Bengali script has to be done away with. You'll have to adopt an alternative. One such alternative that I can suggest is trying to pronounce words with the help of other words in the same language. For instance say 'double' can be read as "dub+ul" and not mispronounced as ‘X­h¡m’, sometimes the latter have become phonetically similar to the Hindi ओल.

Again there are some subtle nuances that have to be considered, like in the list we have 'test' and 'taste', the pronunciation of both of which are close- indeed very close; but they are different. Some other such words are listed below

bear

bare
born	borne
cut	cot
langour	langur
stalk	stork
rating	retting
tire	tear
lead(metal)	Lead(verb)
father	farther
nonsense	nuisance
leer	layer
odour	order

No language can be learnt in earnest unless we read and write it without relying on an aiding script. The more mistakes you make the better you'll learn. In this article I have made a small list of homonyms(similar sounding words) too for easy reference. 

aid - aide	altar - alter	arc - ark
bail - bale	bait - bate	bare - bear
bell - belle	born - borne	bough - bow
brake - break	but - butt	buy - by
cache - cash	cell - sell	cent - sent
cereal - serial	cheap - cheep	cite - site
dear - deer	desert - dessert	dew - due
dice - dies	die - dye	eye - I
eyes - ice	fair - fare	feat - feet
flair - flare	foul - fowl	hail - hale
hair - hare	hart - heart	heal - heel
heard - herd	hoard - horde	hole - whole
in - inn	knap - nap	knot - not
lade - laid	leak - leek	lessen - lesson
loan - lone	made - maid	mail - male
main - mane	meat - meet	medal - meddle
might - mite	need - knead	new - knew
none - nun	our - hour	pace - pays
pail - pale	pain - pane	pair - pare
peace - piece	peak - peek	peal - peel
pedal - peddle	plain - plane	pole - poll
pore - pour	pray - prey	rain - reign
raise - raze	read - red	road - rode
role - roll	sail - sale	scene - seen
sea - see	shoes - shoos	son - sun
steal - steel	tail - tale	team - teem
throne - thrown	through - threw	tide - tied
tire - tyre	too - two	wail - whale
waist - waste	wait - weight	waive - wave
ware - wear	weak - week	which - witch
wring - ring	write - right

Please note that these examples have been taken from the website http://www.stufun.com/similar_sounding_words/similar_sounding_words_list.html 

For more information on words and their pronunciation you can consult the following websites:

http://dictionary.reference.com/

http://www.fonetiks.org/

http://www.manythings.org/pp/

http://names.voa.gov/