English Sharing - End Consonants

We talked about end consonants yesterday.  Phonetically English alphabets are grouped into two categories: vowels 響音 and consonants 輔音.

Vowels are: “a”, “e”, “i”, “o”, “u” and “y” sometimes doubles up as a vowel too.

The rest of the 26 English alphabets are consonants.

Many English words sound similar but end with a different consonant.  It is therefore important to listen carefully what the end consonant is and when speaking, it is equally important to pronounce the end consonant so that your meaning is correctly conveyed.

Examples:

a   vs   eight

cab 計程車 vs cad 無賴 vs cap 帽 vs cat 猫

carb (short for carbohydrate) 炭化物 vs card 咭 vs carp 鯉魚、挑剔 vs cart 拉車

cob 某一種馬、雄天鵝、粟米棒 vs cod 鱈魚 vs cop 獲得、逮捕、(美式用語)警察 vs cot 幼兒床

dumb 啞、愚蠢 vs dump 丟棄、垃圾

limb 肢體、枝椏 vs limp 跛、拐、無力

pub 酒吧 vs pup (short for puppy) 小狗

tend 照料、趨向 vs tent 帳篷

This is in a way similar to pronouncing "zh" and "z", "ch" and "c", "q" and "j", "n" and "ng", "s" and "x" in Mandarin. If you can master your Mandarin pronunciations well, I do not see why you would have great difficulties in English pronunciations.

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