Visit http://www.EnglishPronunciationCourse.com to sign up for the FREE Pronunciation Short Course!<br /><br />Hi, I'm Heather Hansen, Clear Speech Specialist at English Pronunciation Lab, and I'm here again with your Pronunciation Quick Fix.<br /><br />This is where I help you correctly pronounce a commonly mispronounced word in English.<br /><br />Today's word is: COLLEAGUE.<br /><br />Colleague. Colleague.<br />2 syllables, stress on the first syllable "col".<br /><br />The second syllable, LEAGUE, should sound the same as the normal word 'league' with a long E sound and a G ending.<br /><br />You'll notice that this goes against the typical word stress characteristic (see Part 6 of the free course) that says stressed syllables normally have a pure vowel sound while unstressed syllables are often reduced. We see no reduction in this case and the unstressed syllable remains a pure long E.<br /><br />This is partly due to the fact that 'colleague' has a voiced G ending which forces us to lengthen the E sound so we can better pronounce the G. See Part 3 of the free course for further discussion of voiced consonant sounds.<br /><br />If you're really having trouble with this one, how about using 'co-worker' instead? <br /><br />What other words do you have trouble pronouncing? Post them in the comments and I'll highlight them in the "How to Pronounce" series.
