Poor english learner asks how to pronounce the ending syllable of words ended with il,al,ul,le.?

Question

for example,words like capital,local,grammatical, they are ended with al, but why i think the pronunciation of them are different when i listen to the radio

words like gentle,circle,battle, they are ended with le, i also have the same feeling when i listen to the radio

and words like colorful,hopeful,beautiful. they are ended with ul,but i think the pronunciation of the ending syllable of hopeful is different

words like council,how to pronounce the the last two letters "il"?

i really don't know,could some native americans tell me how to pronounce those words,please

Answer 1

all of the groups of words that you have listed do sound the same at the end. of course, depending on what part of the country you are in, the pronunciation may change. also, the word local can have an 'e' added to the end that will change the pronunciation you hear on the radio. on top of that, there are many words in the english language that will be pronounced differently to change the word from a noun to a verb or an adjective. like 'he is a suspect' and 'i suspect' , but i can also be 'suspect' of someone. or they can even sound the same and have completely different meanings as well as spellings, like heard and herd and hear and here. my guess is that you are doing quite well.

the ending 'al' sounds like 'ul', the 'le sounds like a dull 'l' in all the words listed. the 'ul' is actually 'ful' added to each word to make the an adjective. and is pronounced 'full' which is definitely different from 'il' which sounds like 'ill'. council sounds like 'cow n sill'; capital is pronounced ' cap i (short i) tul' ;hopeful is pronounced 'hop (long o) full'; the word colorful is pronounced 'cu lor full'. i hope i haven't been too confusing.

Answer 2

CAPITAL- cap-pee-tal

CIRCLE- sir-kull

COLOURFUL- kull-er-full

COUNCIL- cow-n-sill

If you want to say COUNCIL, try saying COWN SILK but without the K!

Hope this helps!

Answer 3

Look up into a dictionary. If you have one, near each word there is its pronunciation written in the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) symbols, which are very easy to learn.

Answer 4

As far as it goes where I am, the il/al/ul/le of those words have pretty much the same sound. Any difference is very very slight.

Try this site: http://www.howjsay.com

Answer 5

Try using Merriam Webster's online dictionary.  You can type in words, and the definition page will have a sound link, letting you hear what the word should sound like.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/