What’s unique to us humans is that we all have dreams. But these dreams are often spoiled by “what ifs.” We constantly doubt ourselves and play the worst case scenarios in our heads. What if I suck? What if I fail? What if others think I’m dumb? All these limited beliefs flood our brains. And […]
Pronunciation of regular verbs in past tense
Confusing English pronunciation: R vs. L
A couple of years ago, I worked closely with one of the pronunciation coaches in a local college. My job was to listen to students and correct the sounds they were confusing. Each week we practiced a different sound so I noticed how people had their own challenges depending on their native language. One day, […]
What to do when others comment on your accent
Confusing English pronunciation: voiceless stops
The other day I was watching an Instagram live of a well-known guy in the marketing field. He was sharing his business strategy and talking about how he pitched to clients. The only thing is, instead of “pitching” he was saying “bitching.” Now, pitching to clients and bitching to clients are two very different things […]
Top five posts of 2022
Enjoy the experience, don’t dwell on the goal
The unpredictable word stress in English
I sometimes hear nonnative speakers of English with excellent levels of grammar and vocabulary still struggling with word stress. This is because some languages have fixed word stress, which makes pronunciation of words predictable. But in English this is not the case. That is, some words have their primary stress on the first syllable, while […]
Confusing English pronunciation: L vs. W
During my last trip to Bulgaria, I had a conversation with a person who was helping me with some paperwork. At one point, answering one of my questions, he told me that I could find more details about the topic we were discussing “on wine.” Although this sounded odd to me, I immediately knew that […]
