All right. Why is English pronunciation so difficult? Well, English comes from many different languages. Greek, French, Spanish, German, Dutch. English has 26 letters, but 44 sounds and English words do not sound the way they are spelled. Here's a cute little brown animal the spelling Sq UIRRE l, but the sound is squirrel, squirrel.

That can be a little difficult So let's look at that crazy English language to, to to their, their plane plane. Now all these words have different spellings, but the same sounds and different meanings. Another example dove, dove, Bow, bow, tear, tear. Now these words have the same spellings but different sounds and different meanings English also has climate letters, like the silence see muscle, scissors. You don't say mosquito or skeezers the silent g design sign and the silent B. Comb whoom You don't say Columbo or boom. Here's another example.

Here we have an o u g h letter combination. Well, how do you say this? We have the through rough cough, I thought, wow they all have the same spellings, but six different pronunciations. Now you see these strange letters here. These are the sounds of the words. This is called phonetic spelling.

And this will help you to find out the pronunciation of words. And we'll talk about that a little more later. Okay, so English is a mishmash. And that's why English learners have problems with the pronunciation And that can be very frustrating for English learners. So coming up, we're going to look at this phonetic spelling. See you in the next lesson.