It’s called ELSA, and was started by a Vietnamese entrepreneur who was frustrated when she wasn’t understood by native speakers. The good news is that there is an app that has been built specifically for learners to study pronunciation. And not everybody can afford to get on a plane and take 6 months off to learn English. Immersing yourself in English is an option, but you need to listen carefully and be able to correct yourself when you make a mistake.
Learning the International Phonetic Alphabet, and studying the pronunciation in textbooks is–for most people–about as interesting as watching paint dry.
It can even be embarrassing, when you try to say “beach”, “fork” or “sheet” and you say…another word altogether. You repeat and repeat the word, you think you’re saying it perfectly, yet the other person still shakes their head. If you’ve been in this situation before, you know how annoying this is. You know the word, you can write it out perfectly, you can even explain exactly what it means.īut why can’t the other person understand you? There are few experiences more frustrating for any language learner than saying something to a native speaker in what you think is perfect English, only to hear the dreaded: “Huh, I can’t understand what you’re saying”
