II. Reading of consonants

Letters	Position	Pronunciation	Examples	Exceptions
c	Before e, i, y	[ s ]	Cell, decide
	Before o, a, u, consonants and at the end of a word	[ k ]	Cap, come, direct
g	Before e, i, y	[ dʒ ]	Page, gin, gypsy	Get [ get ], give [ giv ], girl [ g3:l ]
	Before o, a, u, consonants and at the end of a word	[ g ]	Game, big, green
	In some French words	[ ʒ ]	Beige
s	Between vowels, after and before voiced consonant sounds and vowels	[ z ]	Please, ties, pens
	In all other cases	[ s ]	Sit, student, lists
x	Before consonant sounds and at the end of a word	[ ks ]	Text, six
	Before stressed vowels	[ gz ]	Exam, exact
	At the beginning of a word	[ z ]	xerox

Exercise 28. Write down the phonetic symbol and practice reading the words.

[ ] city, ice, pencil, peace, piece, scene, certainly, century, celebrate, circle, cycle;

c

[ ] cup, code, cool, crack, cute, concert, complete, carrot, copy, case, Coca-Cola;

[ ] stern, sip, site, sorry, seem, steamer, absorb, soap, soup, standard, mistake, maps;

s

[ ] cans, toys, bags, words, flies, eyes, please, season, disaster, misery, invisible;

[ ] cage, gym, ginger, giant, gentleman, magic, giraffe, imagine, geography, sponge;

g [ ] glad, goal, guilt, dig, girl, gate, glory, pregnant, ignore, greedy, group, fag, gamer;

[ ] beige, garage, massage;

[ ] fax, six, sex, exercise, mixer, fix, fox, text, pretext, explain, reflex, reflexive;

x [ ] exotic, example, exemplar, exalt, exact, exactly, exist, existing, exam;

[ ] xerox, xylophone, xylograph.

Exercise 29. Read and transcribe the words. Do not forget to put the stress mark if a word has two or more syllables.

Cell, start, scar, bridge, give, exist, big, ask, must, reason, imagine, next, practice, Greek, xerox, bees, list, exemplar, gown, civil, easy, same, cutting, exam, busy, beige, ox, certain, coast, age, garden, visit, says, xylose, style, icy, exactly, fox, send, explosion.

Exercise 30. Read the text. Find all the words with letters c, s, g, x. Explain their pronunciation.