Friday, March 16, 2012

Pronouncing American Names

My students sometimes struggle with knowing the correct pronunciation of American names. One of my students had a problem with the name of her boss, "Doug." She called him "dog" instead! Link
Some names can be confusing because they are similar. For example:

"Brett" and "Brad"
"Joanne and "Joan"
"Kristin" and "Christine"
"Jan," "Jen" and "Jane"
"Don" and "Dawn"
"Greg" and "Craig"

Other times the names are simply difficult to pronounce, depending on your native language.

Here is a website that helps you to pronounce American names. I think it will be very useful for some of you. Make sure that you can correctly pronounce the name of the person who will be interviewing you for a job. Also, learn the correct pronunciation of the names of your American co-workers to feel more confident when interacting with them.

http://www.hearnames.com/

Which names are difficult for you to pronounce?

2 comments:

Stanislav Petrov said...

Great article and useful tips! Thanks so much for sharing this!

Anonymous said...

i dont think i have a problem with my american accent i just have this thing of swiching back and forth between my native and my american accent and i just want to KEEP MY AMERICAN ACCENT if you know what i mean but thanks for your help anyways