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 voiced consonant sounds and vowels at the end of words	[ 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 31. 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 32. 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 33. Read the text. Find all the words with letters c, s, g, x. Explain their pronunciation.

Why do women live longer than men ?

Women generally live about six years longer than men. Evidence suggests that boys are the weaker sex at birth, which means that more die in infancy. Also women do not have as much heart disease as men. In terms of lifestyle, men smoke more than women and thus more die of smoking-related diseases. They drink more and are more aggressive in behaviour, particularly when driving cars, so they are more likely to die in accidents. Also, they generally have more dangerous occupations, such as building work.

Historically, women died in childbirth and men in wars. Hence nuns and philosophers often lived to great ages. Now, childbearing is less risky and there are fewer wars. The country with the highest life expectancy is Japan, where the average age for men is 76 and for women 82.

Exercise 34. Practice reading the following tongue-twister. Explain the reading of the consonants in bold.

Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie