Last week I gave you an important tip on how to pronounce long words, or more specifically, how to address words with suffixes. If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s the link.
This week I’d like to talk about one ‘long word’ in particular: Opportunity.
Say it to yourself out loud and then watch the video. Does it sound the same?
How to pronounce ‘opportunity’.
TRANSCRIPT
Hi, it’s Hadar. And this is the Accent’s Way, your way to finding clarity, confidence, and freedom in English. Farhan asked me to make a video on the word ‘opportunity’. So I figured, hey, it’s a great opportunity to talk about the word ‘opportunity’. Right? Okay. Let’s just start.
We begin with the ‘ah’ as in ‘father’ vowel sound. ‘ah’. Relax your lips, drop your jaw, relax your tongue and pull it back a bit, make sure it’s flat. ‘ah’. It’s not ‘Opportunity’, although it’s spelled with an O, no. Think about it like it has two A’s – ‘aa’, ‘aa’, ‘aapportunity’. Then we shift to p’r, p’r, as in ‘perfect’ or ‘person’. It’s a P, and then shifting to an R directly – p’r.
Then the primary stress is ‘TU’, like the word ‘two’, the number two. It’s a strong T sound and a long ‘uw’. Think like you’re adding a small W at the end – TUW. It’s not ‘TUnity’, it’s ‘TUW’. Then n’. An N sound: lift the tongue up for the N, it’s a nasal sound, and a schwa – n’. And then the end – ‘dee’, the T is flat. n’-dee. aa-p’r-TUW-n’-dee. Listen to the music of the word as well. aa-p’r-TUW – I go higher in pitch for the primary stress. aa-p’r-TUW-n’-dee. Opportunity. That’s it.
Thank you for watching. Please share this video with your friends if you dig it. Come on over to my website to subscribe and get more great content every single week.
And that’s it. I will see you next week in the next video. Thank you for watching. Bye.
Go ahead and practice this word a few times separately, and then, in context.
Here are a few sentences for practice:
It’s a great opportunity
There are many job opportunities out there?
I jumped on the opportunity
You don’t wanna miss out on this opportunity.
Remember, every time you learn something new, you need to practice and use it enough times in order to make it your own!
3 Responses
Thanks for this video I like your pronunciation Andover would like to know how to speak fast whenever I speak in English I use to stop some times then I think I my mother tongue
I am a mother of three wonderful kids and enjoying your videos every week.
Let me share my problem with you. I have been struggling with saying “in the middle of the table” or “as a matter of fact”. My dd or tt sounds like just “l”. Can you help me??
Hope you will come back here in September with a lot of good memories with your family.
Kind regards,
Sayaka from Japan
thanks for making this video it was useful