You don’t pronounce it correctly
During a lesson with a private student this past Saturday my student wrote the word “embarrassed” on a sheet of paper and asked me to pronounce it. I did placing the stress on the second syllable. My student wrinkled his brow and said “you are pronouncing it wrong Mr. Chew”. He ran out of the room and came back with an iPhone 4. He proceeded to open an app and typed “embarrassed” and pressed return. A pretty female voice read the word “embarrassed” with the stress on the first syllable in perfectly enunciated British English. I said to my student “Mr. Chew did not pronounce the word wrong”. “Mr. Chew has an American accent.” I wrote the word “tomato” on the same sheet of paper and said “I pronounce this “toe-MAY-toe”. “I bet if you type in the word “tomato” into your phone it will say toe-MA-toe.” My student disbelievingly typed in “tomato” into the iPhone 4 and pressed return. Sure enough – in the Queen’s it returned “toe-MA-toe”. I said to my student “see!”.
I asked “which do you like better? toe-MAY-toe or toe-MA-toe?” He thought for a moment and replied “toe-MA-toe”.
You can play them the song “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.” The lines include: “You say tomatoe and I say toematoe.” Also, “You say neether and I say niether” (mispellings on purpose, to show the pronunciation). Here’s Louis and Ella doing it as a duet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4qY22rR9tQ
Thank you for the comment. I am going to share this song with my student. The iPhone 4 makes many things easier!