Hadar Shemesh teaches how to pronounce words ending in -ial, covering stress patterns and the two main pronunciations: /iəl/ and /ʃəl/ after sh-like sounds. Examples include memorial, financial, social, and controversial.
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Welcome to the Influency Podcast, and this is your how to Pronounce Friday, where I share with you the pronunciation secrets of tricky and confusing words. Hey, guys, it's Hadar. Today we're going to talk about the suffix iol, as in the word social or testimonial. Now, when you add the suffix iol to a word, it turns it into something that is related to the original word, to the root of the word. So, for example, if we take the word finance and add the suffix IO, it turns into financial, something that is related to finance. Right. And it turns into an adjective, as in finance, financial problems. Right. I use it to describe another noun. Now, when we talk about the suffix, we want to think about two things. The stress in the word that has the suffix ial and the pronunciation of the suffix eel, because it's not consistent. But there are patterns which we're going to discuss today. Now, when you add the suffix IUL to a word, it doesn't matter where the primary stress is in the root of the word. Once you add the suffix, the stress shifts to the one syllable before the suffix. So, for example, if we take the word memory, the primary stress is on the first syllable, right? Memory. But when we add the IO suffix. Okay, it's not memorial. No, the stress does not remain on the first syllable. It shifts to the one syllable before the suffix, and then it becomes memorial. Memorial. Same thing with finance. The primary stress is on fi. Finance. Once I add the suffix, then it turns into financial. From fine, it shifts to the second syllable nan, the one syllable before the suffix. Okay, so this is the first point. The second point is the pronunciation of the suffix. So here's the thing. When the suffix appears after all consonant sounds except for a sh sound, then we pronounce it as eel. Two vowels, eel, as in trivial. You hear it trivial. So it's not trivial. We don't pronounce the a here. It's a schwa. So basically, it's a high E sound. And then you shift to a schwa and a dark l. But something in the shift between the high e and the schwa creates a j sound. Okay, so listen to it. Trivia, Trivial, testimonial, editorial. And notice that in all of these words, the stress is on the one syllable before the suffix, right? Editorial, Testimonial, trivial. Okay, good. Now, when this suffix appears after a SH sound, then you don't hear this. I'll sound as in financial, right? It's not financial. You don't hear two vowels, the SH and The L connect, and it feels like there is nothing in the middle there. It's like they're best buddies and they don't want anything to hold them away from each other. Okay, so financial. It's not so shi'. Al. Now, the sh consonant sound is not represented with the typical spelling pattern of sh. Okay? You will never find an sh before the suffix iol. It will be represented with either a t, as in martial, influential, or potential shoal. And don't forget the dark lips. O. It's not potential. Very light L just produced with the tip of the tongue touching the upper palate. No, you have to engage the back of the tongue to create that really dark L sound. Potential. It can also be represented with the C consonant letter, like social, financial, or commercial. Or it can be represented with an S, as in the word controversial. Controversial. Now, this is a long word, and in fact, this video started from someone asking me how to pronounce the word controversial. Now, I could make a video on how to pronounce controversial, but I decided that I want to give you more tools to know how to pronounce every word that has this IO suffix. And I believe that all you need to know is what, where to place the stress and how to pronounce the suffix, and everything else falls into place. So let's take the word controversial. You know that the primary stress should be before the suffix. So it's the ver, contra ver shul. And because you have the sound represented with the S, you know that the suffix should be pronounced as sh. So you already know the ending vir shul, which makes it a lot easier to understand how everything else should be pronounced. It kind of like once you figure out these two things, the primary stress and the pronunciation of the suffix, everything else just falls into place. Controverial. Controversial. Good. Now, I made a list of a bunch of words with the suffix that I want you to go ahead and take it from my website so you can practice the different pronunciations of this specific suffix and just try out a few words. Because you cannot make true change without practicing it, without feeling it, and without repeating it over and over and over, no matter how boring it may get. This is why I wanted to make it easy on you. So you can go ahead and click on the link below or right here in the video and go to my website and download the PDF and the audio of this specific exercise. Okay, that's it. I hope this was helpful, and please let me know in the comments below how this practice is going. And of course, if you have other things that give you a hard time in English, whether it's pronunciation or vocabulary or grammar or whatever. So don't be shy, leave a comment below and that's it. Bye. Okay, that was your how to Pronounce Friday episode. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you like the podcast, then consider subscribing to the podcast. And if you feel really crazy, you can even rate and review the podcast. And you can find me at Hadar Accentsway on Instagram, where you can DM me and ask for all the crazy, fancy, confusing words that you like to know how to pronounce. Have a beautiful day and I'll see you next time.
