Saturday, November 10, 2018

Common Mistakes in ESL: SAID

One of the most common mistakes that I have heard over the years as an ESL teacher, is the mispronunciation of said.

I suppose it would be logical for the word to be pronounced as 'say-ed', but unfortunately, English is not always a logical language. The correct pronunciation is as follows:

/sɛd/

I know not everyone reads phonetics - basically, it rhymes with the word bed. If you're still not sure about it, you can listen here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/said

However, I have to admit that I have occasionally heard native speakers pronounce it incorrectly. I suspect that this is due to some regional dialects.

Business English Listening Activities

I have just uploaded a new listening section on Road to Grammar's business English page. It features 20 short conversations suitable for...