Frequently mispronounced words

The following are words that tend to be frequently mispronounced by Spanish and Catalan speakers of English. The list has been collected by English phonetics teachers at UAB in the course of many years of teaching English pronunciation. Many frequent mispronunciations are the result of spelling pronunciations, as when L2 English speakers pronounce “abroad” with the vowel in “road”, or pronounce the “h” in “honesty” or the “l” in “talk”.  Some common errors are the result of incorrect stress placement, such as “develóp” for “devélop” or “accúrately” for “áccurately”. Some other cases involve words that are often confused by L2 learners, such as “heart” and “hurt”, “bear” and “beer”. And many other errors are the result of unfamiliarity with the English pronunciation of cognate words such as “hygiene”, “series” or “society”. The following list thus provides the English pronunciation for many of these frequently mispronounced words, produced by two near-native speakers of English. An attempt to a Standard Southern British English (SSBE) pronunciation is provided by a female speaker and an attempt to a North American or General American (GA) pronunciation is provided by a male speaker.

Frequently mispronounced words starting with: A, B, C, D-E, F-H I-L, M-N, O-R, S-T, U-Z