About the Pronunciation
Hall and Whore
How to differentiate the pronunciation of the word Hall from of the word Whore?
We stood there in respectful silence as the guest of honour entered the hall.
I am a little confused about it.
Best Regards and thanks!
The only accent where this would be a problem is London or Estuary, in which "whore" and "hall" might be both pronounced /ho:/ in some speakers. However, I believe a lot of Londoners seperate the two, into /ho:/ and /hO@/, respectively.
As a speaker of North American English I pronounce them very differently. "Hall" is /hAl/ --> [hA5], and "whore" is [hOr\]. The only thing they share is /h/.
I also pronounce the two very differently, with "hall" being /hOl/ -> [hO:5] and "whore" being /hor\/ -> [ho:r\]. (Hell, I didn't ever even hear of anyone pronouncing the two even close to alike until reading this thread, but then that may partly be due to primarily having contact with NAE dialects.)
hall - /hAl/
whore - /hOr/
You know pronunciation is the most difficult to study. We have to try hard to speak like native speakers.I have learn english for years but my prnunciation is very bad.When i tried to talk to a foreigner they told me that they can't understand what i said.So i try to improve it,but it still very bad .Woud you all please give me some advice how to speak english like native speakers?
For me:
hall - [hQl]
whore - [hor]
Funny, is whore identical with prostitude.
It works best if you split the class into small groups. You will need to produce a set of cards for each group with one word on each card. The sets of cards should be made up of lots of rhyming pairs of words. For example:
house, mouse
die, cry
cook, book
wheat, sheet
I think even in Estuary English there would be a distinction between hall = 'ahw and whore = 'owah!
It's difficult to write how it sounds; "h"s are dropped "ll"s at the ends of words and "r"s in the middle are sounded as "w"s. Not to mention "u"s having "a" sounds, "ing" being pronounced "ink" and "th" sounding like "ff".
Words like "nothing" become a rather curious "naffink"!