Certain sounds seem elusive. All languages contain them and many are notoriously difficult to emulate. For example many Koreans and Japanese struggle with “R” and “L” sounds. In one dramatic example, a radio commercial has a Korean man attempt to correct an American’s pronunciation of the car “Hyundai”. After several attempts the Korean admits he can’t say “Chevrolet.”
Spanish speakers may have fits of the English “T”, “D”, and “Th” sounds but perhaps most noticeable, is their insistence on putting an “Eh” sound in front of words starting with the letter “S”. After all it is the letter “ESS” and they do speak Español. But there really aren’t too many English words beginning with “Es…”(Especially, Essence, Essential, Escape, etc…)That problem is exacerbated when a word ending in the letter “S” is followed immediately by one starting with the letter “S”. To avoid making the “Eh” sound, I encourage students to combine those two words to make their sound like one word. For example, the sentence “This house is sold.” May sound like “This house is Esold.” Combining the two words “is” and “sold” into “issold” without any hesitation between the two words produces a more natural sound and prohibits the invasion of that “Eh sound.
