Pronunciation I: sounds that challenge Bangla speakers

One sound can change your word, and your band

Pronunciation is 25% of your Speaking score, the same weight as vocabulary and grammar. Yet most Bangladeshi candidates never practise it directly. They assume their accent is ‘the problem’ and that nothing can be done about it.

Both ideas are wrong. You are not marked down for having a Bangladeshi accent. You are marked down when the listener has to work to understand you, and that usually comes from a small, predictable set of sound problems:

• very comes out as bery or bhery, so vest sounds like best
• zero comes out as jero, and zoo sounds like Jew
• same comes out as shame, so ‘We have the same opinion’ means something very different
• think comes out as tink (or thhink), and this as dis
• school comes out as ischool, and asked as ask
• ship and sheep, full and fool sound identical

Each of these has a clear cause in the Bangla sound system, and each has a clear fix: a mouth position you can learn in minutes and make automatic with a few weeks of daily practice. This lesson takes you through them one by one, with listen-and-repeat drills that check your pronunciation using speech recognition.

/v/, /b/ and /w/: three different mouth shapes

These three sounds are made in completely different places. Use a mirror.

The buzz test: put your fingers on your throat and say vvvvv. You should feel a buzz (that's your voice) and air escaping between your teeth and lip. If your lips touch each other, it has turned into /b/.

Don't over-correct. Once learners start fixing /v/, some turn every w into a v: vest for west, vork for work. For /w/ your teeth never touch your lip.

Words to get right for IELTS topics: village, very, visit, vehicle, environment, government, development, seven, eleven, view, value. And yes, the f in of is actually a /v/: /əv/.

/z/ and /dʒ/: zero is not ‘jero’

Bangla জ and য are both pronounced /dʒ/, the sound at the start of jam. English has a separate sound, /z/, which is simply /s/ with your voice switched on: the same tongue position just behind the top teeth, with a continuous buzzing hiss like a bee.

• /dʒ/ Jew, jam, page: the tongue touches the roof of the mouth, then releases. A short, stopped sound.
• /z/ zoo, zero, easy: the tongue never touches. Air flows the whole time: zzzzzz.

Try it: say ssssss, then switch your voice on without moving your tongue: ssssszzzzzz. That's /z/.

/z/ is far more common than its spelling suggests. You hear it in many words written with s: is, was, has, busy, easy, music, reason, result, choose, these, those, always, and in plural and verb endings after voiced sounds: dogs, friends, cars, lives, plays. Saying biji for busy or mujic for music is one of the most noticeable features of Bangla-influenced English.

/s/ and /ʃ/: sea is not ‘she’

In standard Bangla, স, শ and ষ are usually all pronounced /ʃ/, the sh sound, so many speakers say she for sea and ship for sip. (Speakers of some regional dialects swap in the other direction and say sop for shop.) In English, mixing them up changes the word: same/shame, sort/short, sip/ship, save/shave.

• /s/ sea: tongue tip close behind the top teeth, lips spread in a slight smile. A thin, high hiss.
• /ʃ/ she: tongue pulled slightly back, lips rounded and pushed forward. A wider, softer ‘shhh’, like asking someone to be quiet.

Mirror check: for /s/ you see your teeth in a smile; for /ʃ/ your lips come forward.

/θ/ and /ð/: think, not ‘tink’; this, not ‘dis’

Bangla থ and দ are stops: the tongue blocks the air completely, then releases it. English /θ/ and /ð/ are continuous: the air never stops.

1. Put the tip of your tongue lightly between your teeth (or just touching the back of the top teeth).
2. Blow air out over the tongue. That's /θ/ (no voice) in think, three, health, month, both.
3. Do exactly the same with your voice on. That's /ð/ in this, that, the, mother, weather, without.

If your tongue pushes against your teeth and pops, you've made a t or a d. If the air flows and you can hold the sound (thhhhh), you've got it.

Why it matters: three/tree, thin/tin, thought/taught, they/day. And /ð/ is in the most frequent words of English (the, this, that, they, there, with), so a substitution is heard dozens of times a minute.

/f/: fan, not ‘phan’

Bangla ফ is traditionally pronounced as an aspirated /pʰ/: both lips close and burst open with a puff of air. English /f/ uses top teeth on the lower lip, like /v/ but without voice, and the air flows continuously.

• fan/pan, feel/peel, fast/past
• coffee, often, laugh, phone (ph and gh can spell /f/ too)

Paper test: hold a strip of paper in front of your mouth. On /pʰ/ it jumps once; on /f/ it flutters steadily.

Consonant clusters: school, not ‘ischool’

Bangla words don't begin with s + consonant, so Bangla adds a vowel in front: that's why স্কুল is commonly said iskul. Carried into English, this gives ischool, isport, istreet, istation, istage. Some speakers also slip a vowel inside a cluster: filim for film, pilease for please. Linguists call an added vowel like this epenthesis.

The fix: start with the hiss. Begin with a long ssss, then glide straight into the next consonant with no vowel in between: ssss-kool → school, ssss-port → sport, ssss-treet → street. Gradually shorten the ssss until the word sounds normal. After a word ending in a vowel, link them: go‿to‿school, not go to ischool.

Final clusters: asked, months, texts

Bangla words rarely end in two or three consonants, so final clusters get cut: asked → ask, months → mons, texts → tex, helped → help. The problem is that these endings often carry grammar. Drop the -ed and the examiner hears a tense error; drop the -s and they hear a plural or agreement error. Your Grammatical Range and Accuracy score can suffer for what is really a pronunciation habit.

To be fair, native speakers simplify some clusters in fast speech (many say months as something close to /mʌns/). But they never drop the grammatical ending. Keep the -s and the -ed.

Long and short vowels: ship or sheep?

Bangla doesn't use vowel length to change meaning, so many speakers have one ‘i’ and one ‘u’ where English has two of each. In English the difference changes the word: I live in Dhaka vs I leave Dhaka; It's full vs It's a fool.

The difference is not only length. The mouth changes too:

Spelling clue (not a rule): ee, ea and ie often spell /iː/ (see, team, field). oo can be either (food /uː/, but good and book /ʊ/).

The schwa /ə/: the most common sound in English

The schwa is a short, lazy ‘uh’. It appears in almost every unstressed syllable: about, doctor, computer, banana, today, Bangladesh (/ˌbæŋɡləˈdeʃ/), and in small words like a, the, to, of, and when they are unstressed.

Bangla gives every syllable its full vowel, so Bangla speakers often say doc-TOR, com-PU-TER or ba-NA-NA with equal weight on each syllable. This makes speech sound mechanical and hides which syllable is stressed. Relax the unstressed syllables into /ə/ and your English sounds more natural straight away. (You'll build on this in Pronunciation II: stress, rhythm and intonation.)