Letters | Position | Pronunciation | Examples | Exceptions |
c | Before e, i, y | [ s ] | Cell, decide | |
Before o, a, u, consonants and at the end of a word | [ k ] | Cap, come, direct | ||
g | Before e, i, y | [ dʒ] | Page, gin, gypsy | Get [ get ], give [ giv ], girl [ g3:l ] |
Before o, a, u, consonants and at the end of a word | [ g ] | Game, big, green | ||
In some French words | [ ʒ ] | Beige | ||
s | Between vowels, after and before voiced consonant sounds and vowels | [ z ] | Please, ties, pens | |
In all other cases | [ s ] | Sit, student, lists | ||
x | Before consonant sounds and at the end of a word | [ ks ] | Text, six | |
Before stressed vowels | [ gz ] | Exam, exact | ||
At the beginning of a word | [ z ] | xerox |
Exercise 28.Write down the phonetic symbol and practice reading the words.
[ ] city, ice, pencil, peace, piece, scene, certainly, century, celebrate, circle, cycle;
c
[ ] cup, code, cool, crack, cute, concert, complete, carrot, copy, case, Coca-Cola;
[ ] stern, sip, site, sorry, seem, steamer, absorb, soap, soup, standard, mistake, maps;
s
[ ] cans, toys, bags, words, flies, eyes, please, season, disaster, misery, invisible;
[ ] cage, gym, ginger, giant, gentleman, magic, giraffe, imagine, geography, sponge;
g [ ] glad, goal, guilt, dig, girl, gate, glory, pregnant, ignore, greedy, group, fag, gamer;
[ ] beige, garage, massage;
[ ] fax, six, sex, exercise, mixer, fix, fox, text, pretext, explain, reflex, reflexive;
x [ ] exotic, example, exemplar, exalt, exact, exactly, exist, existing, exam;
[ ] xerox, xylophone, xylograph.
Exercise 29.Read and transcribe the words. Do not forget to put the stress mark if a word has two or more syllables.
Cell, start, scar, bridge, give, exist, big, ask, must, reason, imagine, next, practice, Greek, xerox, bees, list, exemplar, gown, civil, easy, same, cutting, exam, busy, beige, ox, certain, coast, age, garden, visit, says, xylose, style, icy, exactly, fox, send, explosion.
Exercise 30.Read the text. Find all the words with letters c, s, g, x. Explain their pronunciation.