English pronunciation, explained through songs
8 short lessons on how English actually sounds — the sounds a learner's ear misses and why. Each one lists the songs where you can hear it.
TH is not a T, an S or an F
The tongue tip touches the top teeth and the air keeps flowing. Nothing stops.
There are two versions: voiceless, where only air comes out, and voiced, where the throat vibrates. Same spelling for both.
It matters: swapping TH for S, T or F turns one word into another one that already exists.
This song's TH words are below — say them with the tongue visible, exaggerating on purpose.
Hear it in: Bleeding Love (Leona Lewis) · Can't Stop the Feeling! (Justin Timberlake) · No More Lies (Iron Maiden)
The final -S has three sounds
The -s of plurals and of he/she/it is written one way and pronounced three, and the sound is not a choice: it follows the letter before it.
After a voiceless sound it is an S. After a voiced sound or a vowel it is a Z — and this is the one most learners miss.
After a hissing sound it adds a whole extra syllable.
The -ed of the past follows exactly the same logic, which is why the two are worth learning together.
Hear it in: Don't Stand So Close to Me (The Police) · Sultans of Swing (Dire Straits) · Viva la Vida (Coldplay)
The -ED of the past, three ways
Written one way, said three, and getting it wrong is the fastest way to sound foreign.
After a voiceless sound it is a T. After a voiced sound or a vowel it is a D.
Only after a T or a D does it add a syllable of its own — and that is the only time it does.
So most -ed verbs do NOT gain a syllable, which is the mistake learners make most often.
Hear it in: Candle in the Wind 1997 (Elton John) · Someone Like You (Adele)
The letters English stopped saying
English kept letters it stopped pronouncing centuries ago, and the spelling never caught up.
Whole groups are silent in fixed positions: a K or a W before another consonant at the start, a B after M, an L before certain consonants, a GH almost anywhere.
There is no rule you can derive — these are learnt word by word, which is why the list below is this song's own.
The safe assumption is the opposite of most languages: if it looks odd, a letter is probably silent.
Hear it in: Blinding Lights (The Weeknd) · Flowers (Miley Cyrus) · Somebody That I Used to Know (Gotye ft. Kimbra)
The schwa: the most common sound in English
Every English word has ONE strong syllable. The others collapse into a short, neutral, colourless sound — the schwa.
It is the commonest sound in the language, and it can be spelled with any vowel letter: the spelling tells you nothing.
This is the opposite of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, where every vowel stays full.
So the trick is not to pronounce more clearly — it is to pronounce the weak syllables LESS clearly. Say the words below with one strong beat and let the rest blur.
Hear it in: Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen) · Hips Don't Lie (Shakira) · Love the Way You Lie (Eminem ft. Rihanna)
Stress carries the word
English does not mark stress in writing, and nothing in the spelling tells you where it goes. It has to be learnt with the word.
Get it wrong and the word can stop being understood altogether — far more than a wrong vowel would.
In some pairs the stress alone decides whether a word is a noun or a verb, with no other change.
And the whole rhythm follows from it: the strong beats fall at roughly even intervals and everything between them gets squeezed.
Hear it in: I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That) (Meat Loaf) · November Rain (Guns N' Roses) · Perfect (Ed Sheeran)
The R you do not say
In British English an R is only pronounced when a vowel follows it. At the end of a word, or before a consonant, it disappears and just lengthens the vowel before.
American English keeps all of them. Both are correct — but pick one and stay there, because mixing them is what sounds odd.
In the British version an R comes BACK when the next word starts with a vowel, which is why the same word can sound different in two lines of the same song.
For a Spanish, Italian or Portuguese speaker the instinct is to roll it: that is the one thing to avoid.
Hear it in: It Wasn't Me (Shaggy) · Keep the Faith (Bon Jovi) · The Pretender (Foo Fighters)
The H you have to breathe
In English the H at the start of a word is a real puff of air, and leaving it out changes the word into another one.
Spanish and Italian speakers drop it because their own H is silent; French speakers do the same for the same reason. It is the single most audible import from those languages.
A handful of English words do keep a silent H, and they have to be learnt one by one.
Put your hand in front of your mouth: on the words below you should feel the air.
Hear it in: Poker Face (Lady Gaga) · Roar (Katy Perry) · Taste (Sabrina Carpenter)
Practise it with the songs
Inside the app every lesson comes with exercises, example sentences and conjugation tables built from the songs you study.