英会話ワンポイントレッスン 2. トーク･アベニュー新宿 Pronunciation of Plurals
Contributed by Daniel Evans
ONE POINT LESSON: PRONUNCIATION
Pronunciation of Plurals
Pronouncing most plurals is very easy, we just need to finish with a SS sound. For example:
one cat --------------- two cats
one book --------------- three books
one painter -------------- four painters
These words sound exactly the same for singular (one) and plural (more than one), except with the plural we pronounce a short SS sound at the end.
But what happens if the singular word already has a SS sound at the end?
Eg. boss, box, wash, house
In this situation, we need to add a SIZ sound.
bosses sounds like BOSSIZ
boxes ---------------- BOKSIZ
washes ------------------ WASHIZ
houses ------------------- HOUSIZ
IMPORTANT: Many people make a mistake with TH words. Eg. clothes, months, baths.
Words with ...ths or ...thes NEVER have the ...SIZ pronunciation. We ALWAYS finish these words with a normal SS sound.
So the word 'clothes' is pronounced CLOWTHS, not CLOWTHSIZ.
MONTHS not MONTHSIZ
