A short instructional video (YouTube) by Hadar Shemesh teaching the American English pronunciation of the word “genre.” She contrasts the French one-syllable pronunciation with the two-syllable American pronunciation (Jean + ra), breaks the word into sounds (J, A as in father, N; then R + schwa), models the word, and encourages practice and use in conversation.
Chapters
Hi guys. It's hadar. And this is the accent's way, your way to finding clarity, confidence and freedom in English. Judy asked me to explain how to.
Pronounce the word genre. Genre.
Now, this word is derived from French. Now in French you pronounce this word as one syllable, something like this. Sorry, French speakers. I'm not French speakers, so I guess it's somewhat close. But it's not like how you pronounce it in American English, although it's the same spelling. All right, so a lot of non native speakers still try to make it like the French pronunciation genre. Okay. And no, you have to remember that it's two syllables. So the first syllable is Jean.
Jean.
It's a J sound. Then the A as in father and then an N sound.
Jean.
The second syllable is an R sound and a schwa. R. R. So basically it's just like you're making an R sound and you forget to stop speaking. Okay, so it's genre.
Genre. Genre.
What's your favorite genre?
Genre.
Alright, good. I know it's not the most common word, but I know that a lot of speakers get stuck when they say this word because they just don't know how to use it. So they don't use it and then they don't talk about sophisticated things like different literary genres. All right, so there you go. I hope this solves your problem. Problems. Okay, so practice this word and try to use this word this week somehow, somewhere and let us know how it goes. Write in the comments below. That's it. Thank you for watching. Come on over to my website to check it out. Sign up to my newsletter and get more great content every single week. Have a wonderful week and I will see you next week in the next video. Bye.
