All Ears English Podcast
AEE 2610: Walk or Work? 3 Pronunciation Mistakes to Avoid With Dave Nicholls
04 May 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2610, Walk or Work? Three Pronunciation Mistakes to Avoid with Dave Nichols.
Welcome to the All Ears English Podcast, downloaded more than 200 million times. We believe in connection, not perfection. With your American host, Aubrey Carter, and today's featured guest coming to you from Arizona, USA. And to get your transcripts delivered by email every week, go to allearsenglish.com forward slash subscribe.
Chapter 2: What are the three common pronunciation mistakes to avoid?
If you have difficulty pronouncing walk and work, what about clothes and close? Today, English expert Dave Nichols joins us to share tips that will help you avoid three of the most common English pronunciation mistakes. Hello, listeners. I am so excited to introduce you to our guest today, David Nichols. Welcome to the podcast, Dave. Hi, Aubrey. Thank you for having me. Yes. Awesome.
This is fun. Let me quickly introduce you. Dave is an English teacher with 20 years of experience. He spent the first eight years of his life working and teaching English in Moscow, Russia, but then moved back to the UK where you're from, right? And since then, has been making English courses and providing conversation classes online.
And Dave is here to share the three most common pronunciation errors he hears and tips for how to avoid them. So I'm so excited for this. All of our listeners are working to improve their pronunciation just with the goal of being clear, being understood, right? So welcome. Excited for you to share these tips today.
Okay, yeah. Thanks for having me, Aubrey. I've got some different words that I often hear mispronounced here. And I'd be interested to hear how you pronounce them as well, because I'm well aware that in America, you have a slightly different accent than we have in the UK. And so, I'd like to know how you pronounce these words too. Okay.
Okay, yeah, this is going to be interesting, right? The American accent is so different from the British accent. But as we know, there are regional dialects in both countries. So even the way I pronounce things is different from Lindsay or a lot of other American English speakers. And as you said, Dave, very different from many British English speakers.
Yes, all over the country here, people have very different accents, and it's actually much harder for me to understand someone from Scotland or from Ireland than someone from the United States.
Interesting. Yeah, so this is going to be fascinating. Let's start with this first sound that you want to talk to, and we'll hear how they sound in my accent and in your accent.
Okay, yeah. So, firstly, students have a lot of trouble differentiating the sound of walk, and I mean when you're walking or running, that kind of activity, walking and working. And I mean when you go to work and get paid, when you go to the office or go to the factory and you go and get paid, you work. But when you go somewhere on foot, you walk. And so, there is a difference.
In British English, we say walk, Yeah, when you're walking or work, when you're working. How do you say those sounds?
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Chapter 3: How do the words 'walk' and 'work' differ in pronunciation?
Yeah, absolutely. Months. Months. So, it's silent there. You don't need to have any in the background.
And you had shared with me an excellent tip about biting your tongue to make sure you're doing this correctly, because you didn't always pronounce these sounds correctly, or at least a lot of British English speakers don't do this theta, right?
Absolutely. I think a lot of British English speakers, when they're growing up, they use a F for a voiceless TH and a V for a voiced TH.
So that's the F and the V, if you couldn't hear the difference, right?
Yeah, the F and the V. Exactly. They say cloves, and that's how I grew up. That's how I said it when I was growing up, certainly.
And I hear that sometimes on podcasts, TV shows. We'll hear that native English speakers that are creating that sound that way. No right or wrong, but if you are wanting to clearly make sure the sounds are correct, you will want that dental fricative where it sticks out between your teeth, your tongue. So what is this advice about biting your tongue?
So, definitely, any time you need to do a voiced or a voiceless TH, you need to bite your tongue. It needs to be done each and every time. It can't be avoided. A lot of natives will avoid it by using a F. They will say, thank you. Yeah, thank you. I think lots of British speakers say, thanks, thanks. And they do it like an F, like F, F. But it should be F. Thanks. Thanks.
If your tongue isn't between your teeth when you say thanks, then perhaps you're saying it like a British native speaker. Because a lot of Brits say it wrong.
Right. Because I often will recommend to students, you know, record video to make sure you see your tongue sticking between your teeth. But this is great advice to bite down on your tongue to Feel it. Not hard, just you're gently biting down to make sure your tongue is sticking out between your teeth whenever you make this dental fricative, that theta sound, the T-H.
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