The number one rule I have taught to people who speak English as a second language is to alwaysalwaysalways learn polysyllabic words, especially those with 3+ syllables, to learn them back to front and never from front to back, which is the natural way to approach learning long words.
Instead of learning a word like onomatopeia like this:
This will almost always result in learning to pronounce the word much better. I say almost because there probably are words out there that violate this rule, but I haven't come across any of them yet. The reason this approach works is because the first syllable of almost all polysyllabic words in English is pronounced in a more drawn out fashion than the latter syllables. By learning from back to front, you force yourself to learn to draw out the first syllable and shorten up the last syllable(s).
I have found that this rule is also applicable to almost all Romance languages for English speakers learning, French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.
If you are a speaker of a second language, I strongly urge you to try this out yourself and get feedback from a native speaker on your pronunciation.
I think you have misspelled the word "onomatopoeia". (Which would normally be fine – it's just such an important word in your post that I thought you should know.)
To give my post some much-needed useful content, and not look as though I was simply sniping someone's spelling, I may as well share my mnemonic for spelling "onomatopoeia."
It's 12 letters, and there's a sort-of pattern in four groups of three with a rhythm. o-n-o, m-a-t, o-p-o, e-i-a. The first and third parts are like rhyming lines in a poem.
Doh! Thanks. TBH I just pick the first fun polysyllabic word that I figured foreign speakers might find difficult to pronounce. On a different day I may have chosen another word.
I'm surprised this works for pronunciation: surely it's easier to emphasize the first syllable and then add syllables with soft or altogether lost vowel sounds (-es, -ed, -able etc.) rather than starting with clearly enunciated suffixes and then progressively de-stressing and mangling them
I'd be more comfortable going from com- to comf't'bl than from table to fort-abl to comf't'bl
For the exact same reason I can see how your method works well as a means of teaching spelling by forcing native speakers to voice all the vowels that native speakers replace with the -schwa sound when pronouncing the full word.
Certainly. I have another excellent trick for you that I was able to use to teach my all my Chinese students back in the day how to pronounce the word "usually", which is a notoriously difficult word for Chinese speakers.
Exploiting the technique above, start with a word in the language of the audience that share phonemes with your target word. From there you essentially play something similar to Lewis Carroll's "Doublets" game from the end to the beginning. So for the word "usually" I would usually start with the city in China, "Guanzhou" and proceed as follows (excuse my poor man's phonetic spelling):
Instead of learning a word like onomatopeia like this:
Try saying it out loud this way instead: This will almost always result in learning to pronounce the word much better. I say almost because there probably are words out there that violate this rule, but I haven't come across any of them yet. The reason this approach works is because the first syllable of almost all polysyllabic words in English is pronounced in a more drawn out fashion than the latter syllables. By learning from back to front, you force yourself to learn to draw out the first syllable and shorten up the last syllable(s).I have found that this rule is also applicable to almost all Romance languages for English speakers learning, French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.
If you are a speaker of a second language, I strongly urge you to try this out yourself and get feedback from a native speaker on your pronunciation.