In this post, I want to test your listening skills and I’m going to give you some information about the British weather. It’s our favourite topic of conversation, after all!

You need to listen to what I say and answer the questions.

The questions are in the video and they are also below. The answers and the full transcript are below the video (but don’t look until you’ve done the work!).

The questions:
1. What was the rainfall in December 2015?
2. How many days per year does in rain in the UK?
3. Which year is famous for its heatwave and what was the hottest temperature that year?
4. What was the hottest temperature ever recorded in the UK?
5. How much of their life does the average British person spend talking about the weather?

Watch the video here

The answers (no looking until you’ve done the work!):
1. What was the rainfall in December 2015?
91% above average.
2. How many days per year does in rain in the UK?
156.2
3. Which year is famous for its heatwave and what was the hottest temperature that year?
1976 / 35.9°C
4. What was the hottest temperature ever recorded in the UK?
40.3°C
5. How much of their life does the average British person spend talking about the weather?
6 months

The full text:

There have been a few weather records broken in recent years: December 2015 was the wettest month on record with rainfall 91% above average. It rains on average for 156.2 days each year and Cardiff is the UK’s wettest city.
1976 is famous for its heatwave although the hottest day was a mere 35.9 °C compared to the record of 40.3 in July 2022.
Apparently more than 9 out of 10 Brits have spoken about the weather in the last 6 hours and in total we spend about 6 months of our lives talking about it.

Was that easy? Difficult? Somewhere in between? Let me know in the comments!

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In this post you’ll find a video with some geography facts about the United Kingdom.

This video is one of many videos and transcripts you’ll find to help your listening skills.

I’d like you to listen to the video and then EITHER write down the numbers you hear OR transcribe the whole text.

The full transcript is below the video (but no looking until you’ve done the work!):

You can watch the video here

The full transcript:

The UK’s coastline is 7,723 miles which makes it the third largest in Europe after Norway and Greenland.

The highest mountain is Ben Nevis in Scotland at 1,345 m

The longest river is the river Severn at 220 miles.

The largest freshwater lake is Lough Neagh which is 383 km2 or 3.53 km³ in volume.

 Was this easy? Were some facts easier than others? Let me know in the comments.

But don’t worry – I’m here to help! 

In this video I’m going to give you some facts about screen time in the United Kingdom and I’m going to ask you some questions. The answers are below the video (but don’t look until you’ve done the work!).

I’d like you to listen and then EITHER answer the questions OR transcribe the whole text.

Your questions:

1. Who loves screen time?
2. How long do around half of British adults spend binge-watching TV each day?
3. How long do we spend on Facebook?
4. How long on Instagram?
5. How long on Tiktok?
6. How long on YouTube?

Watch the video here:

Here are the answers and the full transcript:

As a nation, the UK loves screen time. About half of British adults spend between 3 and 4 hours a day binge-watching TV, about 2 hours a day on Facebook, 90 minutes on Instagram and 75 and 25 minutes on TikTok and YouTube respectively.

Even if we’re multitasking and watching more than one thing at once, that’s a lot of screens!

1. Who loves screen time? People of the UK
2. How long do around half of British adults spend binge-watching TV each day? 3-4 hours
3. How long do we spend on Facebook? About 2 hours a day
4. How long on Instagram? 90 minutes
5. How long on Tiktok? 75 minutes
6. How long on YouTube? 25 minutes

How was that? Easy? Difficult? Somewhere in between?

Let me know in the comments.

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In this post I want to help you with the “ei” spelling. I’m going to give you a list of words with ei spelling grouped together into different sound groups.

At the bottom of the post you’ll find a link to a video quiz to test how many of these words with “ei” you can confidently pronounce.

• With the FACE vowel /eɪ/ (like make, day, wait)

Weight, weigh, eight, veil, vein, rein, beige, feint, abseil, reign, neighbour, spontaneity 

• With the PRICE vowel /aɪ/ (like my, why, island)

Height, feisty, neither/either, heist, kaleidoscope, eider

• With the FLEECE vowel /iː/ (like sheep, me, people)

Ceiling, seize, caffeine, neither/either, protein, conceive, receive, 

• With the KIT vowel / ɪ/ (like sing, bit, England)

Forfeit, counterfeit, surfeit, sovereign, sovereignty, 

• With the DRESS vowel /e/ (like egg, help, head) 

Leisure, Leicester, heifer, 

• With the NEAR vowel /ɪə/ (like hear, appear, beer)

Weird, weir, 

• With the SQUARE vowel /e:/ (like care, wear, area)

Their, heir, 

• Unstressed

Foreign

Now watch this video to test how much you know about how to pronounce “ei” in British English:

The pronunciations are in the video and the transcriptions are here too:

weight – /weɪt/
seize – /siːz/
forfeit – /ˈfɔː.fɪt/
leisure – /ˈleʒ.ər/
weird – /wɪəd
their – /ðe:/

How many did you get right? Let me know!

In modern British English there are five – yes FIVE – ways we pronounce “OO”. There’s no logic behind why some words have one pronunciation while others have a different one. As a learner of English pronunciation you will need to learn these different pronunciations by heart.

I live in Yorkshire and in my accent (and many other northern British English accents) there are only (only!) four ways to pronounce “OO”. This is because the vowel in “flood” and “blood” does not exist in most northern accents. Instead, we pronounce these words with the same vowel as “good” and “look”.

There are two main ways to pronounce “OO” though – these are with the long GOOSE vowel /uː/ or the short FOOT vowel /ʊ/.

Words with the long GOOSE vowel and “OO” spelling include:

/uː/ : food, moon, soon, spook, smooth, loose, choose etc

Words with the short FOOT vowel include:

/ʊ/ : good, wool, stood, wood, cook, look, etc

I frequently hear students who are learning English pronounce some of these words with the FOOT vowel /ʊ/ with the long vowel of GOOSE. If you are learning a Standard British Accent you will need to be careful here. For example, I often hear students use the same vowel in “good food” but the correct pronunciation in Standard British English is /ɡʊd fuːd/.

There are also three other, less common, ways to pronounce “OO”,

Some words use the long vowel found in THOUGHT, NORTH or FORCE /ɔː/ for example
floor, poor, moor, door, etc

There are a pair of words with the short STRUT vowel /ʌ/, these are  
flood, blood

And finally there is one word that uses the GOAT vowel /əʊ/:

Brooch

In this video I will show you how to pronounce the sounds and I will also test how well you know which words use which vowel.

This sentence will help you remember the main four ways to pronounce “OO”:

The poor cook flooded the floor.

I hope that was helpful. Let me know what other spellings you find difficult to confidently pronounce.

Galentine’s Day is February 13^th – the day before Valentine’s Day. It’s a day where women celebrate their friendship with other women. It’s a day to feel good about platonic relationships, regardless of whether or you are married or in another romantic relationship.

The first part of the word “gal” is an informal way to “girl” and it rhymes with the first part of Valentine – “Val”. In British English “gal” is less common than it is in American English, in fact it’s still quite rare here.

I have created a video for you here explaining the word and its pronunciation:

How to pronounce Galentine’s Day

Some ways that you could use “Galentine’s Day” include:

“Hey, happy Galentine’s!”

“The girls are coming over later for Galentine’s.”

“I’ve arranged a pamper party tonight for Galentine’s Day. Are you coming?”

As you can see, you can say either “Galentine’s Day” or just “Galentine’s” on its own. The meaning is totally clear whichever you use.

So my dears, Happy Galentine’s!

HOLY /ˈhəʊ.li/:

The vowel is the first syllable is a diphthong. This means there is movement in the vowel. Linguists and English teachers call this vowel the GOAT vowel and it is also found in words like:

• SOAP, HOPE, OPEN, OWN, TOE, ALTHOUGH

To make the GOAT vowel sound you start with a SCHWA /ə/. This is the unstressed vowel. You create this by relaxing the mouth fully and breathing out. Air passes your vocal folds (your voice box) and vibrates them so the sound, like all vowels, is voiced.

The second part of the vowel is called the FOOT vowel. This is also found in words like:

• PUT, LOOK, WOMAN, SHOULD

Like all vowels, the sound is voiced so your vocal folds vibrate.

You need to make sure that both parts of the vowel are clear if you want to pronounce this word in a standard British English accent.

HOLLY /ˈhɒl.i/:

Now on to the second word in the pair. 

The vowel in the first syllable here is the LOT/CLOTH vowel. The way this vowel is pronounced in a British English accent is quite different from the same vowel in an American accent. The most noticeable difference between this vowel is that in a standard British English accent, the vowel in the words LOT and CLOTH is exactly the same. In General American, the two words contain two different vowels.

In British English, LOT/CLOTH is a rounded low back vowel.

This means the lips are in a rounded shape. It’s low in the mouth which means the mouth needs to be wide open. It’s physically challenging to both open the mouth wide and round the lips at the same time so don’t expect that the rounding of the lips will be that obvious. It’s also a back vowel. If you say the word APPLE then say the word LOT, you should feel the tongue pulling backwards and the sound moving back in the mouth.

Other words that contain the LOT/CLOTH vowel are:

 -OFFER, GOT, SOCK, QUALITY, WATCH.

To help you with these differences in pronunciation, I have created a video for you and you can watch it here.

How to pronounce HOLY and HOLLY in a British English accent.

You can also try these sentences:

1. Let’s decorate this holy place with holly.

2. Holly had grown by the holy site.

And if you’re looking for more… try these sentences with the GOAT and LOT/CLOTH vowels in different words. I have highlighted the GOAT vowels in a bold font and have underlined the LOT/CLOTH vowels (and don’t forget – LOT and CLOTH vowels are pronounced exactly the same in British English!):

1. The goat spoke a lot.

2. The sausage is too hot and I don’t want it.

3. I know Tom got the old box.

The glottal stop is a common sound in British English and often replaces /t/ between vowels like “water” or at the end of words after a vowel in words like “lot”. In some accents, notably Geordie which is spoken in Newcastle area, the glottal stop replaces all voiceless plosives, so for example “picking” would become /pɪʔɪn/ rather than /pɪkɪŋ/ (notice the different pronunciation of “ing” too).

If you’re interested in hearing an example of the Geordie accent, I’ve got a blog post about that. 

However, it’s also a sound that is viewed by those in more powerful social groups as something “bad”. It’s “wrong” and it should be discouraged. Many parents and teachers for example will “correct” their children/students who use this sound.

You’ll notice a lot of speech marks around some of these words that describe the sound. This is because, as someone whose academic background is linguistics and phonetics, I understand very well the impact of social power on the prestige of an accent. Put simply, the glottal stop is not a feature of RP, the variant spoken by the British upper classes. Because of this, it’s viewed by those in power as something inferior.

To be super clear about what I mean by those in power, I’m not just talking about the upper echelons of society like the Royal Family etc, I’m also talking about those who work in the media, those who work in government and other professional groups. All view the glottal stop as something “wrong” even though many of them use the sound themselves.

So why haven’t I made a video about this sound before now? Especially given that I use this sound A LOT in my own speech?

Although I find language fascinating and adore the secret clues we get about someone’s background and experiences through their accent, I am also very pragmatic.

Because the glottal stop is something stigmatised, it hasn’t been something I’ve wanted to actively teach. I don’t want to encourage my students to use something that the powerful classes look down on.

However, lots and lots of you over on Instagram have asked for this video, so who am I to deny you!

Enjoy:

Picture credit: By Szczecinolog – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15973738

Some words though still look and feel like they are borrowed. They may still retain the spelling of the original word or the pronunciation may still be heavily influenced by the pronunciation in the original language. And as with everything in language, deciding whether a word is seen to be borrowed and still a foreign word or now accepted as a “proper” English word is open to debate.

The words below are Spanish loan words that are fairly common in English. As with all loan words the pronunciation and nuance of meanings change.

The words in this list are common enough to be helpful to learn – but do focus on the pronunciation as we pronounce them pretty differently from the original Spanish.

Here are your five words:

• Aficionado /əˌfɪʃ.i.əˈnɑː.dəʊ/
• Tornado /tɔːˈneɪ.dəʊ/
• Incommunicado /ˌɪn.kəˌmjuː.nɪˈkɑː.dəʊ/
• Macho /ˈmætʃ.əʊ/
• Junta /ˈdʒʌn.tə/

Try reading these sentences out loud, focusing on the pronunciation of the Spanish loanword:

• My husband is a crossword aficionado.
• A tornado destroyed her vegetable patch – which was pretty upsetting all told.
• Anyone know where Michael is? He’s incommunicado.
• The macho stereotype of a man leaves me cold.
• Since 1994 the country has been ruled by a military junta.

Pronouncing these words in an English way can help your clarity and confidence so practising these sentences is a helpful exercise – especially if your first language is Spanish.

What other loanwords in English do you know? Let me know in the comments.