How to pronounce difficult English words (without learning IPA)

English spelling is a poor guide to English sound. Colonel is said "KER-nul". Epitome has four syllables, not three. A learner who avoids saying a word because they are unsure how it sounds will never make it theirs, so pronunciation is not polish. It is part of learning the word.

Why IPA does not help most people

The International Phonetic Alphabet is precise and, for most learners, useless: it is a second writing system to learn before it tells you anything. Dictionaries include it for linguists. If you already read IPA fluently, use it. If not, do not feel you should.

The respelling method

A plain respelling breaks the word into syllables you already know how to say and capitalises the one that takes the stress: ephemeral becomes ih·FEM·er·uhl, ubiquitous becomes yoo·BIK·wi·tus. Anyone who can read English can read that. Nearly every mispronunciation comes from putting the stress on the wrong syllable, and the respelling makes the stress impossible to miss.

Find the stress first

Before anything else, work out which syllable is loudest. Long words of Latin origin usually stress the third syllable from the end (pho·TOG·ra·phy, de·MOC·ra·cy). Words ending in -tion, -sion, -ic stress the syllable just before that ending (in·for·MA·tion, eco·NOM·ic). Two-syllable nouns tend to stress the first syllable and two-syllable verbs the second: a RE·cord is what you re·CORD. These are tendencies, not rules, but they are right often enough to guess with.

Hear it once, say it once

Listening to a word without saying it aloud teaches you roughly nothing; the muscles have to do it. Hear the word, then say it, then say it in the sentence you found it in. On iPhone, WordVale reads every saved word aloud and shows the respelling under it, and its speaking practice listens to you say the word and tells you how close you were, on the device, without sending audio anywhere.

Words that trip up almost everyone

Then let spaced review bring each one back a few times. Pronunciation sticks the same way meaning does: by being retrieved, not by being read.