To make an /ɪ/ sound, hold the front part of your tongue high. Relax your lips and tongue. When /ɪ/ comes before a voiced consonant, it is a bit longer than when it comes before a voiceless consonant.
Categories
Tag: Pronunciation
To make /u/ round your lips. Lower the front part of your tongue and raise the back of your tongue.
/u/ /u/ is made by rounding your lips and pushing air out. /u/ is a long sound. Ooh before a voiceless consonant ooh Before a voiceless consonant tooth juice fruit proof suit loot hooch And before a voiced consonant: cool pool blue ghoul soon lure move And let’s look at some example sentences: Jude’s tooth broke in the cool juice pool. A pool made of juice? No, that’s probably a pool filled with juice, which is still pretty crazy. Ruben will soon be a blue ghoul. If you’d like some more practice, look below.
- Tags /u/, English lesson, English sounds, Pronunciation
Vowels are a very important part of learning and language, but especially English. English has more vowels than many other languages, which means that ESL learners often have to hear and distinguish new vowel sounds when they learn English.
Now that you understand these ideas, go back to the English Sounds page and practise the sounds of English vowels until you’re a master!
Hello, I’ve made a series of videos about English vowels, but before you watch those videos you should watch this one because I’m going to explain some ideas here that you’ll need to understand to understand what I’m talking about in those other videos. So let’s get started. So first of all, why do we need to study English vowels? Well hearing a sound is the first step to being able to say a sound, So if you are learning a new language, you are learning not just new words, but new sounds as well, and this is one of the most difficult things. I remember when I was trying – not very hard, I have to admit – and I was trying to learn Chinese and people would say no, no, don’t say it like that, say it like this. And it would sound exactly the same to me because I wasn’t hearing the different sounds that they were making. So if you want to learn to speak English you’re going to have to learn to hear those sounds even if they are different from your language. The idea here is that once you can hear the sound you’re trying to make it gets much easier to say the sound, which makes you much easier to understand. So let’s start at the very beginning here. What is a vowel? We know that there are vowels and we know that there are consonants. A vowel is a type of sound that we make when our mouth is more or less open. So with consonants, we will very often slow down or completely block the air that’s coming out of our mouth. With a vowel, our mouths are more or less open and the air is coming out more or less freely. One of the most basic questions that we should be able to answer is, “How many vowel sounds are there in English?” Well, it would be nice if we could answer that simply, but we can’t. It depends which English or Englishes you are looking at. It also depends on which linguist you’re talking to. The estimates that I remember reading about when I was doing my Master’s degree was anywhere from kind of the low 20s to kind of the mid 20s, so kind of 20 21 22 up to 26, I think was the highest number that I ever read. That doesn’t matter. You are not becoming a linguist What we’re trying to do here is is to teach you how to speak English. Here’s what you need to remember. There are probably more vowel sounds in English than there are in your language. Now, it’s not a contest but this is just the way it is. And it’s one of the things that can make learning English difficult. Let’s take a look… in England, of course they have many people who come to to learn English there, and people from Spain in particular, they say, “I come to England on a sheep.” Well, they don’t probably say that this is actually an old joke, but just just just follow along. “Really? You came to English on a sheep, did you? Well when I went to England, I went to England on a ship. So… the point of this is that in Spanish the /i/ and the /I/ are interchangeable. There isn’t what we call a contrast of difference, and in English, that’s not the case. In English the /i/ and the /I/ are different sounds and they make different words as you can see here. By the way, I apolog… apologize for that terrible Spanish accent. I promise I won’t do that again. Something else we have to understand is voicing. What is voicing? Let’s just take a look here. So here are two sounds that or two letters, rather. Well they’re sounds because they’ve got the slash but a lot of people when you first look at them, you think well they’re really quite different. One’s at the beginning of the alphabet, the other one’s at the end. They don’t look anything alike. Actually, these are almost identical. So the one on the left here, so I’m over here. Here’s how I make this sound. /f/ Now, to go from there to there and make this sound, the only difference is I’m going to turn my voice on so I’m going to make the /f/ sound first: /f/. Now you hear there’s no difference there? Now I’m going to make the other sound, the V sound. /v/ And you can hear the difference in quality of the sound because when I’m making the /v/ sound when I hit my throat, it disrupts the air so the point is /f/ and /v/ are exactly the same except for voicing. Okay. So there are a lot of pairs and if you look at the consonants, the consonant videos that I made, I explain this and they ,we, I go through all of the different pairs. You need to understand this because the sound that comes after the vowel will very often affect the vowel. So let’s take a look at an example here. So life and live Life and live. Now because we were just talking about it, you probably noticed the /f/ sound here and the /v/ sound here. But I want you to listen to what comes before that. I want you to listen to The I sounds: life, life. Live, live. The one… this word over here, the vowel is a lot longer, okay? So it’s not really – it’s the same sound, but it’s it’s quite a bit longer, which gives it a different quality. So once again on the left: life. On the right: live. Now take a look here. I got this from an online dictionary and take a look at the way they… So in the in the UK and in the US, all of those are the same. So the dictionary will tell you that they sound exactly the same even though we just heard that they don’t. So, as we go through, I have different lists of words. I have the vowels that come before a voiced consonant and vowels that come before a devoiced, or a voiceless consonant. Okay, and just in case you’re wondering I got that from the online dictionary: dictionary. Cambridge.org, so if you don’t believe me if you think I’m playing games with you, you can go and check that. But if you don’t believe me, why are you still listening to me? The next thing that we need to look at is this: The International Phonetic Alphabet. Now, it’s kind of interesting that we call it “The International Phonetic Alphabet” because really, over the years, there have been many different versions of it and unfortunately many different books, many different language teaching books use partly their own system, partly the… the system that the author liked. Some of them use the kind of the most current official version. The point here is that unfortunately we talk about “The” International Phonetic Alphabet; the truth is, for people like you and me learning English, there’s really no such thing because there are so many different versions of that, which means that when you use a new book, you might have to learn some new symbols or some new ways of talking about those sounds. And, just in case I talked about this later, IPA is just short for International Phonetic Alphabet. If you search I P A, you will probably get some kind of beer, but that’s not what I’m talking about. The symbols that I’m going to use I’ve chosen them for a specific reason, and that is so that you can go from this to a website that I think is really great: English Accent Coach.com I’ll make a separate video about that because it would take too long now, but the symbols that I’m using here are…I chose them because you will be able to transfer, and you’ll be able to use those at EnglishAccentCoach.com. So that’s all for the introduction and enjoy the videos! It’s not the kind of thing you can do all in one day, so maybe do a few and then come back in a day or two and continue. All right. Thank you!
Consonants are all the sounds that are not vowels. The difference between consonants and vowels is that consonants limit or stop the flow of air out of the mouth. For example, to make a /b/ sound, you have to first close your mouth to stop any air from escaping. You also need to use your voice – which you don’t need to do for some consonant sounds. Interested? I hope so. Watch this video to prepare yourself for the remaining consonant videos on this site.
Hello! I’ve made a whole bunch of different videos about consonants, but before we get started with those videos, you need to watch this video so that you know what I’m talking about when I use some of the terminology when I go through those those other sounds. So, let’s take a look. First of all, what is a consonant? Well, a consonant is: not a vowel. Vowels are sounds that we make when our mouth is more or less completely open. With consonants on the other hand, your mouth is limiting the air that comes out. So if I make a an example vowel: AAA You can see my mouth is wide open and there’s lots of air and lots of sound coming out. With a consonant – I’ll just choose one randomly /b/ /b/ – my mouth at one point is completely closed stopping all the air from coming out. So vowels are sounds that that come out quite freely; there’s no restriction or very little restriction. Consonants have a lot more limit on the sound that is coming out, so that’s the difference. So before we talk too much about consonants and before you watch those other videos, there are three things that you need to know. First of all: what voicing is. There are two different… or there’s one way of dividing consonants into two different categories, and that’s whether they are voiced or devoiced, or we can also say voiceless. And that means quite simply whether or not I’m using my voice. If you are thinking: “Wait a minute when I’m speaking I’m always using my voice” I have some interesting news for you, so hold on. Many consonants appear in voiced and voiceless pairs. So, let’s take a look at this little table here. The top row, these sounds, these consonants are all voiceless. The bottom row, those are all voiced. Let’s take a look… a good way to explain it is with this pair, so I’m going to use those two. So, if I say, for example, this word or this word, those are almost exactly the same. They are what we call minimal pairs. Listen carefully as to how I… as to what those words sound like. So I’ll start with the top one: fan, fan. Now I’m going to say the bottom one: van, van. Now I want you… I’m going to say both those words again, but I want you to only look at my mouth. Okay I’m in fact – you know what? I’m gonna turn… when I edit, I’m going to turn the sound off so that you can’t hear what I’m saying. Just looking at my mouth, tell me: Am I saying the top one or am I saying the bottom one? Ready? Okay so which one did I say? There’s absolutely no way to know. My mouth makes exactly the same motion in both situations, so the only difference between those two words when I say them is whether or not I use my voice on the first sound. And with this one, I do not use my voice, so watch /f/ and down here, I’m going to put my mouth in exactly the same position but I am going to use my voice. /v/ Watch this: I’m gonna say the top one: /f/. I hit my throat and it makes no difference to the sound because I’m not using my voice. Now, watch what happens or listen what happens when I say the bottom one: /v/ There we do hear the difference because when I hit my my throat it’s interrupting the flow of air that’s coming out. Okay, so again the top one: fan, the bottom one: van. My mouth is exactly the same shape; I’m doing exactly the same thing. The only difference is whether or not I’m using my voice and as you can see from from this table here, there are lots of voiced/voiceless pairs. So that’s one idea that you need to understand; you need to know whether you’re using your voice or not to make a particular sound. There are other consonants as well. Now these, as I said, these are paired consonants one – some are voiced, some are voiceless – these are not all the consonants, but we’ll look at those other ones later. I’m going to talk just briefly about something else that’s related to voicing… kind of. It’s called aspiration, and that’s the sound, but the sound of the breath only. So if I say the word “hockey” for example, I say the word “hockey”. This is a good example in English. You hear all of those sounds, right? I don’t say “ocky” I don’t start, I don’t start here. I don’t say “ockey” there is definitely a sound that comes from this H but I’m not using my voice; it’s only the air that’s coming out. “Hockey, hockey” That’s true of a lot of words that start with H in English but not only there! If I say for example the name: “Peter, Peter” – now you might or might not notice but there’s actually a tiny little H sound there as well. Peter, Peter, and that’s the the sound of the aspiration. So aspiration, again, it’s the sound of the breath only. I’m not using my voice but the air is coming out fast enough that I can … the air is coming out fast enough that you can hear it. Okay, the next thing you need to know is the effects of voicing. So if a consonant is voiced or devoiced, of course that’s going to make a difference in how it sounds, but it also affects other things. It often changes the vowel before it. “Wait a minute! This is a video about consonants!” Yes it is, but the consonant and whether it’s voiced or voiceless also affects the vowels. This is important both when speaking and listening. Let’s take a look at an example here. So again we have another minimal pair here. These two words are identical there… there all the way to the last letter. So, /t/ which, is what I’m saying here and /d/ which is what I’m saying here, those two consonants are identical except for the fact that /t/ is voiceless and /d/ is voiced. So we know that, but don’t listen to that; listen to the vowel sound that comes before: goat, goat. All right, now listen to the second one: goat, goat. The vowel sound is the same but I stretch it out with the second one. I stretch it out here. Why? Because this is voiced. Now if you ask native speakers about this, they won’t, they won’t probably agree with you; they don’t get it, they don’t notice it, but if somebody, like you, who’s listening very closely to the sounds that people are making, you need to know that when the… when there’s a voiceless – sorry when there’s a voiced consonant, it often changes the sound of the vowel that comes before it. Let’s look at another example. Now if you look these up in the dictionary you will see that that the spelling is different but you will see that the sound that’s here and here are the same. But, listen when I say it It depends on what comes after as to how long I hold the vowel: root, root, rude, rude. So again, the sound of the vowel gets changed very often depending on the consonant that comes after it – if it’s voiced or voiceless. Here’s an example of why you want to be careful with this: I eat my food for dinner. Now, I’m going to leave this sound the same but I’m going to shorten the vowels here: I eat my foo(t) for dinner. It sounds like something that you don’t want to say, okay? So, when this is voiced, these vowels become longer. All right, the next thing you need to know is that location matters. So (a) letter’s plac… a letter’s placement in the word or sentence (which we call the environment) sometimes dictates the sound that the letter makes. So the /t/ sounds different depending on where it appears in the word. Okay so sorry, I’ll just go back here. So here we are, we’re looking at /t/ and /d/. Okay so /t/ sounds different depending where it appears in the word: /t/ take, take, take. It’s easy to hear. Look here though, when I put those sounds in the middle: latter, ladder. Which one am I saying? Well, it doesn’t matter because they sound exactly the same, okay? So, a /t/, /t/ and a /d/, /d/ in the middle, they can sound… they can sound the same in some dialects of English, including mine, which is a standard North American accent. So, I’ll say this one over here: latter. I’ll say this one: ladder. They sound exactly the same, so at the beginning of the word there was a difference in the sound. In the middle of the word, sometimes there isn’t and this is a good example of there not being a difference. Now, take a look at this one: listen carefully to this T: wet clothes, wet clothes. “Well you didn’t say the T!” No, I didn’t. Why? Well because it’s in the middle of this phrase. If I said inst… instead of saying “I had wet clothes” I said “My clothes were wet.” Now that wet comes at the end of the sentence; now it’s more likely that most speakers would say it, but when it’s in the middle, you may or may not hear it, okay? So again: He was wearing wet clothes. It’s quite common to not release that, so we don’t hear the aspiration that comes after that. Okay, so now that you know those three things – or maybe I should say three and a half because we learned about aspiration as well, now that you know these things, now you’re ready for the consonant videos, and you’ll understand what is being said, okay? Good luck!
Now that you understand these ideas, go back to the English Sounds page and practise the sounds of English until you’re a master!
- Tags Consonants, English sounds, ESL, Pronunciation