1062: Over-Pronouncing Nov 5, 2017

People teaching the way that sounds are produced, usually to children but also to second-language speakers ought to be careful not to over-pronounce sounds, so to speak, and make every part of a word or syllable stressed, or vocalize too long, etc. Perhaps the clearest example of this is the word 'a' (and 'an'), which is—outside of exceptional contexts such as emphasis for semantic reasons—pronounced [ə] as in 'duh' but may said to pronounced [ei] which is the name for the letter in the alphabet, but is not the same as how people actually say it in a sentence, and is indeed even a diphthong. The article can be pronounced as [ei], as mentioned before, in certain contexts, such as clarification of the fact that there is only one of something like "I have [only] a shoe", but this is not the typical use. Below is a link to a video from Electric Company which is supposed to teach children about putting sounds together to make a word, but exaggerates the way that 'pr' is spoken in the completed words; the person in the video says [pəɹ]. 

https://youtu.be/lfQseUDQB2o