A minimal pair is two words that sound the same excpet for one sound. Can you recognise which of two words is being spoken? Have a go! Continue reading
phonemes
Donald Tram
‘Trump’ is a little bit tricky for Indonesians for two reasons:
- It contains the phoneme /ʌ/, which is extremely rare in Bahasa Indonesia.
- It ends with a ‘consonant cluster’ (/mp/) – also rare in Bahasa Indonesia.
Indonesians will use sounds that are close enough for the sake of communication, and when they say ‘Donald Tram’, we know they mean ‘Donald Trump’. But if you’re taking IELTS you can easily score points for pronunciation by producing the correct sounds:
- /trʌmp/
The phoneme /ʌ/ is very common in spoken English: up, under, mother, thorough, etc.
Finding spoken examples of ‘Trump‘ should be easy – just switch on CNN! (And remember to switch on your ears, too!)
BTW in British English, ‘trump’ is a slang word for ‘fart’! 🙂