Transcripts
1. Course Introduction: Hi there, My name is Luke and I want to just very quickly introduce this pronunciation course. This is a course about basic pronunciation. That means the simple stuff. Some people would say the easy stuff, but actually no. Actually the simple stuff. Sometimes the hard stuff, sometimes that is the stuff which is really difficult. In this course, we're going to be covering simple vowel sounds, how to say them very clearly, and how to tell them apart from each other. Then we're going to talk about where consonants fit in to the pronunciation and some rules for when words have a long sound or a short sound. And we'll talk about in the course What a long sound is, what a short sound is. We'll be working on syllables. Syllables is a beat in a word, and we'll be talking about how syllables can have some effect or can change the basic pronunciation of a word. We're going to be focusing pretty much on the pronunciation of words, not the pronunciation of whole sentences. We're going to be focusing on words and sounds. We're then going to go on and work on consonants. Consonants are letters like v and w and k and j, these kinds of letters. And we're going to be talking about some of the difficulty, some of the problems with saying these sounds clearly. And we're going to also be working on sounds like th, SH and CH, and making sure that we can easily here and say the differences between them. Then we're going to continue from that and talk about some word endings. That means how to say clearly the end of a word, okay, and from there then we'll go on and talk about words that sound almost the same, similar words, but are actually different. So similar, similar sounding words, we'll go over the differences between them. And then we'll practice a little bit with stress in this course. So I hope you enjoy the course and I hope you learn a lot. And by the end of it, I hope that you have a lot of really, really good pronunciation, habits. Habits will be the main focus of this course and there will be a lot of practice exercises for habits in this course, okay, so I hope you enjoy it.
2. Basic Tips: Alright, so the first thing that we should do in this course about pronunciation is to go over or talk about some important pronunciation tips. I want to give you some advice that you can remember throughout this course, during this course, and in general, which can help you to improve your basic pronunciation skill. So let's just go over a few of those simple, simple, simple, simple things. Okay, So the first one is to develop your ear. Now, what does that mean to develop your ear? This means that you have to be actually pretty good at listening if you want to have good pronunciation. Now, maybe at first you think what listening and pronunciation are two different things. Why should I be good at listening if I want to have good pronunciation? Very simple. How can you know, and how can you compare yourself to what is good? If you're not able to hear what is good and correct first. So you have to have a very sharp ear, English before you can begin to pick out, to find, to catch some of the small differences that we will talk about in later videos in this course. So one thing to really remember is that you need to begin to sharpen to improve your ears and your listening ability. And when you do that, you can begin to hear the small differences between words, phrases, and other things. So keep that in mind. The next one, and maybe it's obvious is that you need to start focusing on mouths. Mouths when people are speaking, watch their mouths and pay attention to the shapes that the mouth makes when it's making words. So if you're watching a movie, if you're watching a TV show, whatever it is, you're watching a native English speaker speak their language. Pay careful attention to the mouth. What is it doing? How is it making the sounds that it's making? A simple example? And one which we will talk about later is on war. Sometimes these two are very quick vote, but sometimes they're very fast. You have to be able to really pay attention to the difference between these two and many, many others to begin to catch the very small differences in pronunciation. So watch mouths. Okay, the next thing which is very, very important is to repeat sounds. If you learn pronunciation. If you learn a certain sound or a certain word or whatever, repeat that until one it feels natural to you. Until you can hear the difference between that and other things, other sounds. And until it becomes a habit, pronunciation needs to become a habit. If it's not a habit, and the habit is something that is just natural for you. You just do it. If it's not a habit, then every time you need to think about what's the pronunciation of this one, I forget and you need to think about that or maybe remember what you wrote down. This is not the best way to do it. The best way to do it is to make it a habit. To make it a habit, a good thing to do is to repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. Okay, So very important. When you learn something new, repeat it, say it over and over again. Okay, The next one is awareness. Awareness means paying attention to something. In this case, paying attention to yourself. Now, I said before, it's important to listen and watch mouth's. So this is part of awareness, but I do want to mention awareness separately because it is so important. If you want to be good, you have to be very, very aware of what you are doing. Sometimes we're just aware of what's going on outside, what that person is doing, what that person is saying. But we're often not careful and aware about what we are doing. So if you make a simple mistake, like every time there's a T-H sound, you say like sinking, I'm sinking about something, right? Should be. I'm thinking about something. Maybe you know this about pronunciation and we will talk about it and practice it later. Maybe you know this. But if you don't pay attention to yourself, then you won't be able to figure out when you do it and why you do it. So really try to focus on some of the things that you don't do correctly so that you can fix those things more quickly. Awareness, paying attention to yourself and others is very important, okay? Now, this one, I think, is a very important part of actually being a good speaker. If you write down the pronunciation of everything, that doesn't really make you a better English speaker, does it. That doesn't really make you better at pronouncing words correctly. It makes you better at knowing maybe how words are pronounced, but it doesn't make you better at speaking. In this course, we will avoid, we will not do any writing of pronunciation, no symbols. Now, I will write words here on the blackboard, but I will not write any symbols because I don't think it's a good way to learn pronunciation. It's just something on paper. I don't think that that's the best way to actually become a good speaker. To become a good speaker, you have to do what I mentioned earlier to repeat until it becomes a habit to be aware to practice doing it as much as possible. And so I think writing down pronunciation symbols is a waste of your time. So I would recommend that you don't do it. We will not be doing it in this course. Okay? It is really key to remember one thing throughout this course, not all rules, work. Language came first, whether it's Chinese or Arabic or English or whatever. And then rules followed to try to explain the language. So we have some pretty good rules for things. But, and learning them maybe is quite useful, but they don't always work not 100% of the time. There are always exceptions. That means examples when it doesn't work and you will find many. So if I give you a rule, just keep that in your mind. Generally I'm going to try to teach using examples. I prefer examples because I think that is the best way for you to get a feeling for the pronunciation rather than saying, Okay, this rule, this rule on his or her, I'm here. I know it's a mess. So there may be some rules, but generally I'm going to focus on examples and exercises which can help you improve your pronunciation because I believe this is the best way and this is the way that I've helped a lot of my students improve in the past. Okay, so just keep that in mind. Okay, The last thing before we start this course for real, I hope that you can relax. Okay? Don't think this is very serious and you have to follow everything like a robot. Relax. Before every lesson you watch. If you're going to practice, relax. Maybe have a cup of tea or a glass of wine, whatever you want to do. Relax, take it easy. Keep your mouth loose. English is a very wide, big, relaxed language, especially American English, which is what I am, I'm American and what I will be teaching you American pronunciation. So I can't really teach you British pronunciation or Australia and the pronunciation because I'm not British or Australian. So relax and also try to be confident, right? If, if you learn something and you feel comfortable and you make it a habit when you go out and speak English, don't not say something, don't stay away and avoid speaking. Speak, practice as much as you can't be confident, tried. No one is going to say, Oh, your English isn't very good year stupid. I don't like, you know, one is going to do that, right? I have lots of friends who have pretty bad English. I didn't care. All right there my friends, Why do I care? So relax, be confident and you will improve faster. All right, so those are the tips. Those are the things to keep in mind throughout this course and after forever for the rest of your life. Also. In the next video, we're going to be talking about vowel sounds. If you don't know what a vowel is, I will explain it in the next video. Okay, so see you in the next lesson.
3. Long Vowel Sounds: Alright, so now the course really begins. We're going to start with the basics. So we're first going to talk about in this video, basic vowel sounds. Now maybe you already know basic vowel sounds, but we need to have a foundation upon which we can build. Okay, So we have to cover this first. What is a foundation? A foundation is the bottom that supports a structure. So for example, a building, right to maybe a very tall building in a city. The bottom of the building. It's called the foundation. The foundation of the building is the very strong part that stops the building from falling over. Okay? So we're going to be talking first about basic vowel sounds. But what is a vowel? We need to make sure that we're clear about what a vowel is. Well, a vowel is simple. It's a letter that is made with the throat, which is this part, pretty much open. So a, E, I, O, U. These are the five basic vowels. Now there are 26 letters in the English alphabet. The alphabet, I'll write that down. The alphabet, 26 letters, 26 letters. In the alphabet. Five of these letters are vowels. The basic vowels, a, e, I, o, and u. The others, all of the other letters in the alphabet are called consonants. All of the other letters are called consonants. So today, in this video anyway, maybe you're going to watch the other videos. Today. We're going to cover vowels. All right, so let's do that. Vowels. Again, the names of the vowels a, e, I, o, and u have two forms. Actually they have more than two forms. There are special vowel forms and we will also talk about that later. But they have two basic forms or sounds. They can make the way it sounds. Okay, there's long and short. Long and short. And we're going to talk about the long first. First we need to talk about the long sounds. So I'm gonna give you a couple of examples of the lung sounds just so that you're very clear on them. Okay, so let's go over all of the long vowel sounds and what they sound like. First one, a, that's the letter. And the long vowel sound is also a. The name of the letter and the long vowel sound are the same. A. Okay, Now that's not true for the short vowel sound. It's true for the long vowel sound, a, a, okay. Example, hate. Here I have the word hate, right? Or maybe rate. Okay, skate. Many different words with the long a sound. So a a, notice my mouth is wide. My mouth is wide. I'm kind of smiling when I say the long a sound. A, and my teeth go up and come down again. A, a, a, my tongue isn't moving very much my tongue. This one. This is called the tongue. It's important to know the tongue isn't moving very much when I say this word, okay? And actually my my lips are also not moving very much. When I say this one, I'm just opening and closing my teeth on the sound is very wide. A, a, a rate. Now the sound is closed but the a part is open. Rate. Hate. Okay. The next one, the e sound, the long vowel sound, and the name of the letter e are the same again, e, e, e. Now this one is even wider than a. Remember we were doing a, it's like this, a, this one is wider, e, e, e, and the sound comes from the base of my throat. My throat. I erase this. It comes from right here. I say the sound back here and have a wide mouth. Like I'm smiling again. E, e, e, example, gene, gene, gene. Don't focus on the other letters if you can't quite see them clearly, just focus on the e sound gene. Okay. Steam, steam. Gene, steam very wide. Okay. Okay, the next one eye. And as you can probably guess, the long sound is the same as the name of the letter I. I. But notice this time I'm not smiling very wide as I did with a and E, right? Not quite know this one. I'm opening my mouth. Watch, I'll say it's silently. Watch my mouth carefully. And the back of my tongue is moving up a little bit. When I say it, I, I, I, and if you want to make it more clear for yourself, you can say I, I, yeah, I, yeah. And that will help you to feel the sound. Once you can feel the sound, cut off the sound and I just leave. I, I I I. Hi, okay, so some examples of this one, white, white. Why? White? Fight style? Style, style. So it's a y in the word, but the sound is the long I sound style, style. Now, the next one is very easy to remember. If you are saying the long o sound correctly, then your mouth should be in the shape of an OH, same shape like a circle. And you open and close your mouth a little bit. When you say it, your bottom jaw will open and close like this. And your tongue should be at the bottom of your mouth. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Mode. Mode. Chrome. Chrome. Chrome. Okay, now finally the long You sound. Now the long u sound is a little bit special because sometimes the long You sound isn't quite the same as the name of the letter U is the name of the letter U, U, U. But when we have it in a word, it doesn't always sound like you exactly. Sometimes we can't hear the sound at the beginning. In the first example, FL OUT. Actually we don't say flute. That would be very strange. We say flute, ooh, ooh, flute, Flute, Flute. So this one, Ooh, ooh, ooh, not okay, So this one is different from the o sound because the lips should be extended forward a bit. Okay. Bu. And you're making the sound from the back of your throat. Your tongue shouldn't move. Ooh, ooh, ooh. Okay. Flute. Flute. My name. Luke. Luke. Luke. So this is the long You sound, but it doesn't sound exactly the same, although sometimes it does. For example, the word MUL is pronounced mule, a mule. So that one has the u sound, moo, moo, moo, moo, moo will. So that one has the u sound, the name of the letter U sound, and the other one has the normal, more common long you sound, which is Boo. Alright, so let's just very quickly review the lung sounds. We have a In hate. We have e as in gene. We have ay as in white, we have o as in mode, we have u as in Flute. Okay, so remember these long vowel sounds, and let's go on to the short vowel sounds in the next video.
4. Short Vowels: Okay, Now we're going to go onto short vowel sounds. So remember in the last video, we talked about the long vowel sounds which are the same as Except for you, sometimes the same as the name of the vowel. Remember vowels, a, e, I, o, u. So let's just begin with the short vowel sounds. The first one, a, the short vowel sound for a is. Now listen to the difference between the long and the short a, a, a, as a. So the difference is not in the shape of the mouth, but comes in the back of the tongue, typically in the back of the tongue, especially. So when we made the a sound a, a, a, we have the tongue a little bit forward. And when we have the sound, the tongue is even more relaxed in the back of the mouth. Okay, So an example, Fan, fan, fan, now a has another sound in the short form, which is like father, right? So for example, fan and the father have two different sounds, but the main short sound for a is like Fen, Fen fan. Okay. Fan. And I also put the other one down here. Father. When you say, ah, ah, it's a lot like the o sound. We don't say fall other. So it's a little bit different, but it is closer to the o sound that, that a, whereas the infant is more like the long a, but not quite difference is in your tongue, okay, the short e sound, the short e sound. Now remember when I did the long e sound, my mouth was very wide, e, e, e, and my tongue was in the middle, right? When I say a. Also my tongue is in the middle, but my mouth isn't nearly as wide. Now, actually, the short a sound and the short e sound are not very different. Listened to the 2 first I'll do a, and then I'll do E, a, a, a, a, at a. So maybe you can hear some difference. The difference is one, my mouth shape is a little bit different, right? A is a little bit more closed. So you want to remember that also for this short e sound, the tongue is totally relaxed. For the a sound. We had the tongue a little bit back in the mouth, and in this one, we have the tongue totally relaxed. It does absolutely nothing. A, a, a, a, a, a, okay, So it should be more relaxed than the short a sound example. Ben, Ben, Ben. Fetch, fetch, fetch, fetch a, a, fetch, fetch fat, fish, fat, fat. Notice when I say the ASA, my mouth is much bigger, right? Seems more relaxed. Okay. The next one is the short I sound the short I sound. It, it, it, it is different than a, a, a. The short I sound comes when you push your jaw. This is called your jaw. A little bit forward when you say it and the sound will come from the back of the throat. Here is the throat like this. So notice when I say that S sound, here is a little wider, pretty relaxed. Nothing special with the jaw. Relaxed. When I say that, it sounds the short I sound, I must stick it out a little bit, push it forward a little bit in a, a, a, a, okay. So this is the short I sound. Sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, lick, lick, lick. If I said L ACK, it would be at LAC la. Lack much bigger, right. This one jaw is forward a little bit. A little bit like the not that much, but a little bit forward. Lick, lick, sit, sit. Okay. Now, very different than the long I sound. The long I sound is I FIT, fight, fit. Five, i, i much wider, right? Fit. Okay, now the o, the short O sound is much wider than the long o sound. Remember when we did the long o sound, we did this. 0, 0, 0. When we do the short O sound, we open our mouth like this. Like we're going to eat a huge sandwich. It's totally open. Your throat, your mouth. And when you say, you do move your tongue down a little bit, it's a very simple sound. There doesn't have to be much action when you say this sound. Okay? Ostrich. Ostrich. Carp. Carp, Carp, ostrich, cup, ostrich, COP. Okay. Now finally, the short UCL, remember the long You sound was either you or who? Who with a very extended mouth. This one is so relaxed. Remember I said when we say the e sound, It's pretty relaxed. Right? The mouth is a little bit wider like that, and the tongue comes back a little bit. Well, when we say the u sound, It's totally relaxed. So your throat should be loose, your jaw should be loose and come down a little bit. And your mouth should almost be coming down. Like you're sad. Okay. Like that. My tongue isn't moving at all. So my jaw is very loose, relaxed. Okay. So let's try this one. Under under, under son. Son. Some, some under some under the sun has a very different than the long sound. Very different than the long sound. Okay, so let's quickly review all of these short vowel sounds. We have a and the sound is as in fan, fan, okay? Or also we could say sometimes, ah, as in father, father, okay, we also have the e sound. E, a, a, Ben, Ben, fetch. Okay. We also have the i sound okay. It in sit, sit, lick, lick. Okay. And the o sound, ah, ah, Ostrich, Ostrich, cop, cop. Finally, the u sound under, under, Sun, under, under. Okay, So keep repeating those sounds over and over and over again. Watch my mouth as I was making the sounds. Go back, maybe watch it a couple times, and keep practicing them until it's really easy for you until it becomes a habit. Okay? Okay, so in the next video, we're going to be working on why some words have long or short sounds. And we're going to be talking about this and practicing some examples of both long and short sounds. So I'll see you in the next video.
5. Silent 'e': All right, so now we're going to talk a little bit about why some words have a long sound, vowel with a long sound, and some words have a vowel with a short sound. But first, we need to talk about a couple of important words. The first one is a syllable. A syllable is very simple, it's just a beat in a word. For example, the word Facebook. Facebook has two syllables. Do, do two beats. Facebook. How about the word? Usually? Use you lead, that's four syllables. Use you leave four syllables. Okay? So it will be important to understand this word also, we need to know consonants, which I did talk about before. A consonant is a letter in the alphabet, which is not a vowel. So a, e, I, o, and u are vowels. The others, 21, others are consonants, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, and so on. Okay, so let's talk about now why the common reasons why a vowel may be long or short in a word. And we'll talk about two very common reasons. The first one is about long vowels. If you have a syllable, remember a syllable is a beat in a word. If you have a syllable that has a vowel and a consonant, or maybe two consonants, and then an E, and the E is silent. That means it says nothing, it makes no sound. Then the vowel before, we'll be long. It'll be a long sound and the e will make no sound. Okay, so let me try to explain that. Okay, let's, let's take a simple word here. Let's take a simple word. Let's say, let's say this one. Let's take this word, okay, now, we have our vowel here. Oh, have a consonant here, N, R consonant. Just right CONST. And then we have E, R, E because we have this structure. Let's call this a structure. Because we have this now. This will be long and this will make no sound or will be silent. We can say that it's almost like this. Does something to this changes this on because it does that because it changes it. Now It's like tired. Let's say it's tired, it's sleepy now so it can't make a sound. And so we say this word as cone 0, because 0 is the long sound of the letter o. And we don't say cone neck because the E is a silent E, which already did something. It already changed the O to a long o. So we say cone. Now, if you have a syllable and the syllable doesn't have an e at the end. And that vowel that's in the syllable. Every, every syllable has to have a valve. The vowel that's in the syllable is the only vowel in the syllable, is only one vowel in the syllable, and it ends with a consonant. Remember, like B or C, or D, or F or Z. It ends in a consonant and there's only one vowel. That vowel will probably, usually, usually be short. Okay, so here's a word, BUT ZZ be used easy. Well, it ends in a consonant. Z is a consonant, right? And it is a one syllable word, a one syllable Word. And so should we say the lung or the short sound for you? We should say the short sound because there's no II after it. Maybe if they're, if it were like that, then we would say booze or something like that. But that's not, that's not a word. So we say Buzz, Buzz because of this, because there's one vowel in the syllable and it ends with a consonant. All right, so let's go through some examples of both long and short vowels and syllables that follow the rules that I just told you. So let's try with a, Let's try with a long sound. Hat, ie. We should pronounce that, hate, hate, a hate. And the short sound HAT. Hat, we will pronounce hat. The short sound hats because it's the only vowel in the syllable. Okay? The next one, our OB. And our OB. This one has an e at the end, so it's silent. So we say robe, robe and the other one because there's only the O is Rob. Rob, Rob, Rob. Okay. The next one, I BIT and BIT. Okay, so the next one, byte, right lung sound because of the e byte, byte, byte, the other one, short sound a bit, bit, bit by bit. Okay, the next one, not quite perfect here. L UK. By the way, that's my name. If you didn't know that, I think you probably do LU CK, short sound. Now here has two, so 22 consonants, but that's okay. I'll UK is pronounced Luke. Luke, long sound, Luke. Lu CK, short sound, luck, luck, Luke, luck. Luke luck. Okay. And the last one here we have SCE and E, which is pronounced scene. Scene. Same pronunciation as SEN, by the way, scene. And then TEN, 10101 is E, one is a teen 10. Teen ten. Okay. So follow these general rules. Doesn't always, always work, but pretty much always. And you should be able to know how to say vowels, long or short just by looking at the word. Alright, in the next video, we're going to be looking at what happens when you put vowels together side-by-side.
6. Vowels Together: Okay, So in this video, we're going to talk about what happens when you put two vowels together. So let me just tell you what happens when you put two vowels together. Actually, a couple of different things can happen. One thing that can happen is if you put two vowels together, is that it will make the vowel long. Which vowel, the first one or the second one. Well, as you can see here, it should be the first one. So if you put certain vowels together, you take the long sound of the first vowel, and that will generally follow, that will generally be a rule. So let's look at a couple of examples. And we can get a feeling for it. We can get a feeling for it. Okay, so let's start first with the long sound of a. All of the sounds are going to be looking at in this video, our lung sounds all along sounds. Okay, so thinking about where are the short sounds. Forget about it. No short sounds in this video. Okay, So the long a, the long a sound. Let's first start with a pie. If you have a and I together in a word, typically it will make the sound a sound like the long a sound. So a couple of examples. Wait, wait. Like wait for me, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay. Or straight. Some people say my handwriting is very weird. I agree. Straight, straight, straight, so long a sound, straight and weight. However, very interestingly, we can actually make the long a sound with another group of vowels. And this one is no a at all. Now, remember I said it takes the long vowel sound of the first vowel usually, well, this is an example when it doesn't, if you have e and I together, sometimes, not always, but sometimes it will make the sound a. That's right. The long a sound. For example, w, e, i, g, h, t, which means how heavy something is. Weight. Same pronunciation, exactly the same pronunciation as this word that we just talked about. Wait and wait, wait and wait. Not different at all. Okay. So this is the a sound, but this is not a and this is not a 0 obviously. So it makes a new sound in this case. Okay, So this is an exception, also freight FOR I GH T freight. Freight. Freight. So wait and freight. Okay, so if we want to make the long o sound, remember the long o sound is 0. If we want to make that sound, the most common way to make it is to put o and a together. Besides the silent e, we talked about the silent t. I mean, if you want to put two vowels together side-by-side, and they make the o sound. The most common one is 0 a, and it's pronounced ow. In these words, here are a couple of examples. B, o, a, t. I'm sure you know this word, right? Correl. O a ts, and L, O a N. So how about these four words? Again, the long o sound, just like if we had an e at the end, for example, L and E and L, O, a, N have the same pronunciation and it should, right? Because this is two vowels together. And usually, not always, but usually, if we put two vowels together, we take the long sound of the first vowel, right? And the second one that makes this one long. So it makes sense that this is o. And we already talked about the silent E. Silent E here, long o here. Loan, loan, loan, loan. Loan, loan. Loan. Loan. Same exactly. The same. Loan. Loan. I don't even know which one I'm saying anymore. Okay. About these oats. 00, 00 00, 00, 00, 00, 00. How about this one? This is a this one is called a hard to see. Hard see the hard CSE out is like k, hard see is like k, soft see. It's like S. So this one is OK. So coal, coal, coal and the L sound maybe a little difficult here, this one, but we will talk about that later in the course. Coal, coal, coal. So lone oats coal. How about the last one? Boat? But oh, boat, boat, boat, bow. If this were a word. And we would say could be Boat, Boat, boat. Now this has another pronunciation that has two pronunciations. We'll talk about that also later. So let's go through these one more time very quickly. Just quickly. Boat, boat, coal, coal outs, outs loan, loan, loan. Also loan. Okay? So pretty easy. O and a together makes 0. Sometimes if you put o, u together, then it makes, oh, okay, For example, mold. This word. This is a long o sound. The long o sound, mold. Mold. Okay, So sometimes it makes this long o sound, usually when you put o and u together, it makes owl, okay, but in this case it makes 0. All right, The next one is the long e sound. The long e sound. Remember the long e sound is e, like that. Okay? The very common long e sound that doesn't use the silent e that we talked about is when we put E and a together, E and a together is very common. So it can make words like B E a N and D E, C E a S E L E a N like this, okay? It says E. So the first one being Bean, bean. Second one, decrease, decrease, decrease. The next one. Leanne, Leanne, Leanne, beam decrease, lean. Okay, So EA typically makes the long e sound just like this. Okay, now remember I said before that EI can make the a sound like weight and freight, but I can also make the e sound, for example, D seat. So we have here d, which says D and E II, which says E, D siete de siete de seat, seat. So I can say a, and it can say the long e sound as well. Now, another one which you will often see is when you put two e's together. And when you put two e's together, it also says the long e sound, but sometimes it doesn't say the long e sound. So for example, if we say this, for example, is teen. Teams were easily able to recognize the long e sound there. And for example, meat. Meat, right? Meat and team. This meat has the same pronunciation as this meat. Remember we said E a also makes II. So Meat, Meat, Meat, Meat. Exactly the same pronunciation, not different at all. Okay, Now finally, finally, the u sound, the long use. And remember the long u sound is like this. Boo, boo, boo. All right, so how do we make it? Well, one way, because we're talking about putting vowels together, right? One way to do it is to put o and altogether 0 and 0 together, make the long You sound. Okay, so for example, boot, boot food. Ooh, it's the same uw as in my name. Before we said we can make the long You sound with the silent e like my name LU KE, which is Lu Bu Luke Bu boot, Luke boot food. Luke boot food, Luke boot food. It's the same long you sound exactly the same sound. Okay. So it says that sometimes, however, I should mention not all double o. We can call this a double o. Not all double o sound say ooh, they don't always say the long You sound. Sometimes it's a special sound which is like this. Boo, boo, boo like this. And this one changes. You have to change your mouth a little bit in the back of your throat and push your jaw out as you say it. Or book cook. Book, Cook, Wu. So this is not the long You sound. This is different sound. Okay, so double O sometimes says The long you sound, sometimes not. Okay. Book cook. Look, for example. Okay, Now remember I gave you one example of a case in which OU can say, oh, so actually OU can say a lot of different things and we'll talk about another thing that you can say in another video. But you can say the long You sound. Sometimes it does. For example, youth, youth. You youth. This is the long use sound with the why. Usually it follows y. If you say it like this, it is you, you youth AND YOU, YOU, you. So the long You sound can include, can include 0. You. All right, so let's just very, very quickly review all of these. We have a EI and EI as in weight and weight, we have OU as in mold, shoulder saying the long o sound. We have EA, EA II and III saying the long e sound, such as being conceited cheat, we have 0, 0 and 0 using the long you sounds such as youth and cool. Okay, so try to keep these in mind. Remember when you're reading, to pay attention to these two letters which are put together. Sometimes some of these like OU, for example, make other sounds, which we will talk about in a future class. Okay, so in the next video we are going to be talking about some of those special sounds where you put two vowels together and it makes a very different cell that changes. So we will see that in the next video.
7. Diphthongs: Okay, So in the last video we talked about how when we put two vowels together, remember a vowel, a, E, I, O, a new. When we put two together, it usually makes a new sound or says the long sound of the first vowel. Okay, So we looked at examples of that in the last video. In this video we're going to talk about also putting vowels together. But how, when we do that, it makes a totally different sound, a special sound That's not a single sound like a or foo, but instead is a special sound. Actually these sounds are called diphthongs, but we won't really focus on the name. I don't really care if you know the name for these or not. It isn't important at all. So let's go over some of these and it's important to know also how to pronounce them very clearly. The first one we'll talk about is 0 u. Now we talked about OU. In the last one. Ou makes a lot of different sounds. So this one has a special sound here. Ou says, Wow, wow, wow. Here are some examples. F, OU and D, and R, o, u and d. F o, u and d and our OU and D. Now, watch my mouth when I make this sound, you'll notice that my mouth begins larger and get smaller during, or as I make the sound like this. How how, how it's not an up sound like this. Oh, no, it must be out. How? It's not really important. If your mouth is really wide like this. You can say that or like that, but it must go from wide to narrow when you say it. So let's practice a couple of these. Found, found. Be careful not to say Fund, which is a different word, F0 and D Fund is a very different word. Okay, So be careful to say, wow, wow. Wow. Found. Fao, found, found. Okay, the next one, our OU and D, round, round, round her out and round. Okay. Also a couple more simple examples ground, just the same as round but with a G. Ground, ground sound as o, u and d sound. Okay, found round ground sound. It's the same sound for all of them. Okay, owl, our owl, owl. Now, the interesting thing is o u is not the only way to make this sound. We can also make the same sound. If we use o w, It's exactly the same. Ou and o w make the same sound. So let's look at some examples of o w. I'm sure you can guess one of them would be owl. Owl is a word you say it when something painful happens. Owl. Owl. If someone does something to you and it hurts out. So look at my mouth out, how it's the basic sound out. It's the same one. So here are some examples of O W TO OWN. Ceo w, be o w. Now, POW actually has a couple of different pronunciations. So let me go first to the first one TO OWN town, town, same ow sound town, town, town. Next one, Cao, Cao, Cao, Cao town cow, the next one, Bao. Bao. Bao. Bao is a verb which means to do that when you greet someone to bow. Now this does have another, another pronunciation, bot, bot. So sometimes o w doesn't say OWL. It has another sound as well, bot, for example. Or sometimes ROW is pronounced rho or Rao, in some cases row or route. So I want to focus on the ow sound because it's the same as this one. Okay? So one of these sounds is the same as one of these sounds, but this has a couple other sounds, and this has also another sound. The next one is a u. And a u makes the sound Ah, ah, ah, ah, when I make the aw, aw. So when I say the AU sound, I do push my chin a little bit downward. I push it downward and a little bit out, aw, aw, aw. And your tongue should be very flat and straight at the bottom of your mouth. Okay, so a couple of examples of the AU sound, the sound fault, 0, 0, 0 fault, fault. We have to add the o sound there because there's the l fall off fault. Fault also. August, August, August fault and August. Okay. Now, just as with the previous one, OU, NOW AU also has another sort of partner that has the same sound but different letters and that is a w. A w is the same. For example. Claw claw, flaw, flaw, law. Law. So fault August claw flaw and law all have the same sound in them. Okay. So just keep that in mind and remember when you're saying this sound, when you're saying the sound, all, all, all your tongue is at the bottom of your mouth. Your jaw is a little bit down and locked in place. It's a very open sound, okay? Okay, finally, we have o. If you put together, it makes a new sound. And that new sound is oil. Oil. Oil. Just like another sound you might be able to guess which I will write down in a second. So let's look at a couple of examples of oil. When you say, Boy, your mouth starts as a circle or and then goes to a y sound, or oil. Or at the end of the word, I'm kind of smiling here. Boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. And if you want to make it easier to hear the sound clearly, you can say, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh yeah. And make that n sound stronger. That's just for practice. Don't really do that. Then cut it when you want to really say it, oil, oil. Okay, so examples of this are IID, SOL and IST. I'll say them quickly. Void, void soil and moist. Void soil and moist. Void soil. Moist. Okay. Now, just as with the previous two, this one also has a partner, and the partner is 0, y, which I think you could probably have guessed. You probably know that TO YS be 0, y D E L O Y. Okay? So the sound of these two are again exactly the same. Toys. Toys boys, boy, Deploy, deploy, deploy. Okay, So void, soil, moist toys boy deploy. Practice these and you can get a feeling for words that have these letter combinations in them. All right, so let's just very quickly review these special words which are called diphthongs. But who cares? Let's quickly go over the pairs or the partners, OU and OWASA, out, out, like out and like sound. Remember when you say this one, your mouth begins big and then gets either smaller. Okay. Sound cow. A u and a w. O, open sound. 00, 00, 00, 00. Your mouth isn't moving very much and you make sure that you keep your jaw down and your tongue at the bottom of your mouth. Ah, ah, ah, so for example, Fault, right? Fault, fault and flaw claw. Okay. Oh, I and 0, y 0 and 0. Y is another partner or another pair. 0, I says oil 0, y says oil, for example, void, for example, toys. Okay, so just remember these and, and again review them and look out for them. When you hear this sound oil, you might be able to easily guess how to spell words with that sound in them. So in the next video, we're going to be moving on to consonant sounds. We're going to be talking about fee and w, okay, the consonant sounds V and W. So I'll see you in the next lesson.
8. V and W: All right, So in the last video, we talked about special vowel combinations. And so in this video we're going to move on and we're going to talk about consonants. Let me remind you very quickly what a consonant is. A consonant is any letter of the alphabet, remember alphabet a, B, C, D, E, F, G. This is the alphabet. Sorry, I'm a, I'm a very bad singer. Anyway. Any letter of the alphabet which is not a vowel. Well, AEIOU, consonant, b, C, D, E, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, P, Q, C. Okay? These are examples of continents. So v and the w, v and w, these two sounds are, are pretty similar and it's easy to confuse them. It's easy to mix them up. It's easy to mix them up. That means this one instead of this one, this one instead of this one. So after this lesson, I hope you will be able to easily remember which one is which about the pronunciation. Okay, so let's get started with how to make both sounds. So watch my mouth carefully. The v sound is pronounced by touching the bottom lip to the top teeth. The bottom lip to the top teeth. Now not like that. No, that's too much. Just touching it very lightly. It's important. Lightly means not like this, but you don't have to kill yourself to do it. Lightly means very soft. When you say the v sound, every time you have to touch your bottom lip to your top teeth. Okay. So it's like this. Can you see that it's not very hard? And then when you make it, you let go the sound and bring your mouth and jaw down. Fee V, the after sound is the same as e, the letter E, the long sound of e, the e sound. So the second part is like that. The first part is right here. You let it go and then go into E, V, VI, VII. Now the basic, basic sound is just a, and it has slightly different sounds in different words. So let's go over a couple of examples. First one, vibrate. Vibrate. Be careful not to make the sound too hard. It shouldn't be vibrate. Vibrate, that's too hard, should be vibrate. Know the meaning of vibrate. You should make your bottom lip vibrate. Very lightly. Vibrate means move very quickly, a little bit. So you make your bottom lip vibrate against your teeth. Vibrate, vibrate. Vibrate, vibrate. Okay. I'll make sure that you don't do it the same as the f sound. The f sound is for you also touch, but you need to, when you make the v sound, you need to add your voice. Okay, so the next one, vine, vine, vine. The next one, stove. Stove. Now notice in this one, the v sound is the last sound of the word, say one syllable word, and that is the end of the word. So I don't add at the end. It's the last sound, right? So be careful not to add woah after the v sound. So you don't want to say stove, stove. This is not correct. It should just be stove. Stove. Now, I know that you can't hear the ve very clearly, but that's okay. That's okay. As long as you make sure you do make the sound. It is correct. Stove, stove, stove. Be careful not to say stover. Okay. Next one. Move, move, move. Move. Again. Be careful not to say mover. That would be too strong and that would be two syllables. We don't want to say move up because it's a one syllable word, move. So I'll go through these ones quickly. Again. Vibrate, vine, stove, move. Vibrate vine, stove, move. So practice these over and over. One thing you can do to practices, make a sentence with a lot of v words, both the beginning and the end sound in the middle as well. And practice saying the sentence quickly many, many times. We'll do some different exercises for pronunciation later in the course. Okay, Now we move on to the w sound. The w sound, okay, the second letter here, this one. So we've talked about V. Now, w is actually more difficult than V. V is pretty simple. V comes from your teeth and your voice. The sound, the sound comes from the base, the back of your throat and comes through your teeth. So w is a little bit tough because you have to be very, very careful to make sure the sound comes from the right place. You can have your mouth in the right place, but still say the letter, the sound wrong. Let me give you an example of the wrong pronunciation. Let's do like this word. Let's do this word here. Okay? This is incorrect. So don't remember this. This is wrong. Uhd. Uhd, it's wrong. Everything about my mouth is right. So the mouth position is when you have your lips extended and very narrow. Extended and very narrow. Like that. Almost like a kiss. Okay. But when you make the sound, the last part, the last thing that actually makes the beginning of the sound that you need to do is to make sure that your lips actually do something. Your lips actually need to change the sound, and that's the last action you need to do to make the sound correctly. So if I say it the wrong way, UHD, UHD, my lips aren't really doing anything because I can also do this. Uhd, UHD, UHD, and it's also almost the same, right? It's basically the same and wrong. So we need to make sure that there's a small action where your lips move a little bit forward and catch the sound coming out from your throat. If you hear a throat sound in the W, It's not right. It should be a sound that comes basically from here. It starts here and comes through here. And your lips need to actually change the sound. So this is correct. What, what, what, what, what. So notice that I am still using my voice, but my lips are doing something here. My lips are catching the sound and then I release the sound, catch the sound and release the sound like this. It's sort of like pushing it out with your lips so you make sure that your mouth is really doing something. So the correct pronunciation of this word is would, would, would look at my mouth. Now it's not the same for every word because some, some words might be like that. So it's not always, right? But the basic point is that you need to catch it with your lips. Okay? Would, would, would, would, would. Good. So you can see the second one is wrong. The first one is right. Okay. All right, so let's do a couple of quick examples of the w sound in words. Okay? So in words, okay. Water. Water, not water. I don't know. I don't know how to make that sound. Water. Water. Water. Now some people will say water, water with a d sound to make it faster. And I guess that's okay. Words, words, words, words, words. Again, releasing the w sound. It's like you're pushing it out with your lips. Okay. The next one, wives. Wives. Now I am touching my bottom lip on my teeth when I make the v sound, wives, wives, It's very fast. I'm not saying y versus y, but I am doing it quickly. Wives, wives, wives. Okay. The next one. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Okay, The next one, mower, mower. Mower. Now let me just add one here for comparison so you can see the difference between, between this one and the V sound m over v ER. I'll do 12. Okay? Mower mover, mower, mover, mo were mover, mower mover, mower mover. Okay, so practice that back and forth and you can give yourself the feeling of the difference between the v and the w sound. You can also do it for wives. Wives, wives, saying it quickly. But I think more and mover is a better way to practice the two because they look the same except for this one sound difference, w and v. Okay? So for the v and the w sounds, just keep in mind that while the difference is small, it is very important to make sure to do both of them perfectly, okay, so you have to make sure you catch the basic point for each one, for the v sound, make sure you're touching your lip to your teeth every time, even if you say it quickly for the w sound makes sure that you close your mouth and your lips catch the word and then release the word or let it go. Okay? Now, I want to make sure that you remember, that you don't always have to focus on these. It should sound very natural when you're speaking them in words, these two sounds. So I was making them very clear to you. For example, when I said mower were, I've focused on the w sound, but when I'm speaking very quickly, I will do that sound also very quickly, right? I got them over from the garage. I got the mower from the garage. I got the mower from the garage, more from the garage. So I'm still doing it correctly, but I'm doing it very fast. Okay. So you don't have to whenever you say this sound, say I got the more work from the garage, That's it doesn't sound natural. So you have to master the sound and then speed it up and make it more natural, make it soft. Okay, so in the next video, we're going to be looking at some more consonant sounds, are going to be looking at th, s and z.
9. TH: So in the last video we talked about v and w. And in this video we're going to be talking about the sounds of th, of S and Z. Th s and z. Now you may wonder, why are we learning these sounds together? The reason is because many people, students of English, who, who say or tried to say th correctly, accidentally say the S or the Z sound. And so we need to talk about these three sounds together to try to find differences between them and make sure to say them correctly. And especially get into the habit of doing that. It's especially sometimes difficult because if you say the th sound as the sound or the z sound, that's also another word. And people will think that you mean that word. You mean the other word, not the word with th. So let me just give you a couple of quick examples to let you know what I mean. Sink and think. I'll teach you the sounds later. Sync and think. So. Sync is a word, I think is a word. They're two different words. You have to be able to say them differently clearly. Now if you say I sync, most people can guess, you know, you're talking about this one and not where you wash your hands because that's not a verb. But there are other cases when it is not easy, not possible to tell just from the grammar which one you're saying or which one you're trying to say. So let's go over these sounds very carefully. The other two examples, quickly, with and wiz, with and whiz then an zen than an Zen. Okay, so again, the difference between these sounds is very important because it's easy to be misunderstood and that is a bad thing. All right, now we'll start with th, we'll start with the th sound. It's pretty easy to actually do. It's not a hard sound to make. The difficult thing is remembering to do it every time. Now, if you try to just remember to do it every time, you will fail, okay, it won't work. Thinking about that every time you speak is probably not possible. It has to become a habit. A habit is when you do something naturally, you don't think about it, it just happens. So if you want to learn to be good at, let's say ping-pong, right? You practice ping-pong and eventually you get pretty good. Not because you're thinking more about the ball, but because your muscles, right? And the connection between your brain and your hand, for example, is learning to connect to the ball, out of habit, out of muscle memory. Okay, So this is something that you have to do with pronunciation as well. Pronunciation is actually muscle memory. It's not enough just to know how to say something correctly. It really isn't. You have to know it and then do it until it becomes 100% habit, until it becomes total muscle memory. That means when you say a word with th, you say it correctly. Not because you're thinking about it, just because you do, because you've practiced it many times. So just remember this point. Now there are two basic TH sounds. One is with voice and one is without voice. Voice, as I'm sure you know, is using your voice box, which is in your throat to make a sound like that. That is a voiced sound. One is voiced, one is not. Okay. So the basic mouth position for th is to put your tongue between your teeth and make it very, very soft. You don't want to bite your tongue off, right? It will fall on the floor and it will be very, very painful. You don't want that. You want to put your tongue between your teeth without putting too much pressure on it, but still touching like this. Okay. I'm not biting my tongue off, but I am touching my tongue with my teeth, both my bottom and top teeth. Now this is not enough. That's not enough. That is too much. You don't want to stick your tongue totally out of your face. It has to be a little bit out and pretty relaxed. So let's go over the two sounds. The first one without voice. Now in a sentence, you have to put this here before you actually say it. You have to actually get your tongue ready to say the sound before you do it. If you try to do it at the same time as you say it, then it will sound like this, I think. And it will not sound very good. It won't sound natural. So put your tongue on your teeth first before you say the sound and then pull it back. Like that. The other one is the same here, but different here. You add your voice. Now notice this is not a hard sound. I'm not saying I'm not biting my tongue off. It's very soft. It can go on and on and on for a long time. So practice that until you can do it perfectly. It has to have that very soft sound. And, and this is the basic TH, sound. So practice and practice and practice until you can do it just like me. All right, so now we actually need to go over some examples of words that include the th sound. So let's do the unvoiced sound first. The first one, MY th is pronounced myth. Myth. Myth. The pair of this one with the S sound would be miss. So make sure it's different than that myth, miss myth, miss myth, myth. Notice I'm not bringing my voice into the th sound. I'm not saying myth. That's, that's different. Don't do that. Myth, myth. So the last voice sound is a myth. Okay, the next one thing, thing, thing, thing. We want to focus on the end of the ING, because I'm going to teach you that in another lesson and make sure we cover that. I just want you to focus on the th sound. Notice that I'm bringing my tongue back. My tongue is ready. I'm not doing this thing, thing like that. I'm not sticking my tongue out and then back quickly. My tongue is sitting here ready and then pull it back. It's their thing. Thing. Okay. It's already there, sort of waiting to go. The next one, Thor, Thor, Thor, Thor. Thor, soft. Very soft, right? Okay. Now the other sound is the one with the voice added, okay? And this one is the same except for that difference. Here we go. Either, either, either, either. And if you want to really practice this, make the sound very, very long. And that might help you remember it. I there, I, there, I there. That might help you to really remember and focus on the softness, the softness of the sound. The next one, feather, feather, feather, feather, feather, feather. Okay, so very soft. We can do it longer as well. They're fed. They're okay. My tongue is vibrating between my teeth very, very quickly when I say that. Okay, so very quickly again, myth, thing, Thor, either feather, practice those many, many times. Now I think the best practice word for th is this one, because you have to say both the S sound and the th sound very quickly. And the faster you can say the word, the better you will get at doing it and making it a habit. So practice this one many times. Some, some thing, Second one thing, thing, some thing, some. And when I say sum the thready some thing, It's already there waiting to do the thing. So when I say the thing, I just pull it back. I don't need to do this like that suddenly. Sometimes you need to do that, but not in this word. It's pretty fast, but not so fast that you have to do that. It's waiting. When I say some thing, I'm getting my tongue ready. Something, something, something, something, something, something, something, something, something, something, something, something, something faster and faster and faster until you can really do it until it becomes a habit. All right, So what I wanted to give you now is a short paragraph that has many th sounds in it which you can use as a sort of practice for the TH sound for saying it correctly. And remember very, very importantly, making it into a habit. Okay, so I'm going to read this paragraph two times, one time, a little bit slowly, onetime pretty quickly. And I want you to practice it as well, practice it many times until it becomes totally natural and easy for you. And you will thank yourself in the future. There we go. I know it's a little bit long. One of the things that I think is the most threatening to the world is that most people don't think about how their actions impact the rest of the environment. Even though there is a plethora of scientific research that supports the conclusion that global warming is the result of human activity. I wish there was something that I could do. Okay, so that was the slow one. Now I'll do it quickly. Now. Notice I did focus on the th sound a little bit. I said it a little bit more. Clearly. You don't have to do that. Once you get it really, really good. You can not focus on it. You can just say it quickly, right? It has to be still natural. If every word is, for example, something and you say it too hard, then it won't sound good. So now I'll read it totally naturally. Here we go. Try to read it naturally. Oh, okay. Here we go. One of the things that I think is the most threatening to the world is that most people don't think about how their actions impact the rest of the environment. Even though there was a plethora of scientific research that supports the conclusion that global warming is that the result of human activity. I wish there was something that I could do. Okay, so listen to both practice, both do it many times. And this is an excellent way for you to improve your th pronunciation. Next, we will work on S and Z.
10. S and Z: Okay, So in the last video we talked about th. And so in this video we're going to focus on the difference between S and Z. Specifically, that means exactly S and Z. Now, it's important to understand that S doesn't make only one sound, although generally z makes the same sound. So we'll focus on S first. Okay, so, so the basic pronunciation for the S sound, which is, is to close your teeth. To close your teeth and to bring your tongue tight a little bit behind your teeth, but not touching your teeth. Your tongue your tongue should not touch your teeth. But it's close behind it. So like this, sss, Sss. All right, so now let's go over a couple of examples with the S sound like this, this basic as sound S I, N, G and M I, S, S, L, E. Okay? All right, so the first one as ING, sing, sing, sing, sing. Okay. Now I can say it with my teeth not quite touching, but I would recommend just to remember the sound that at the beginning, when you practice it, you should bring your teeth together like that. Okay, the next one, missile, missile, missile, missile, miss. So missile, ok. Now notice that this is not a clear cycle sounds. So here's an example where we learned the ILE should make a long, I sound right eye. But in this case it doesn't. We say, so missile, missile. Now before I talk about the other S sounds, I should probably say something about z because the other S sound is the z sound. One of them is the z sound. So let's talk about how to make the z. When you want to make the z sound correctly, you need to make your tongue pretty firm. Tongue pretty firm. And then you want to bring your tongue up where the sides of your tongue against your teeth. The sides of your tongue are pushed up against your teeth. And the front of your tongue is very, very near your teeth so that it can vibrate or move like this. Okay? Now, your teeth must be closed and must be touching because part of the z sound, teeth must be closed and touching. So for the S sound, I told you you should close your mouth, but you can make the sound without exactly touching your teeth together. But for the z sound, you really have to bring your teeth very tight together to make the sound well, okay. And your again, your tongue is up against the side of your mouth, against your teeth, okay? Also need to use your voice when you say the z sound. So it should be coming from here as well. So tight here, tight up, coming from the back of the throat. If I opened my mouth a little bit like that, I can't make it. This is I can kind of make the sound but it's not correct. So make sure that your mouth is closed tight. Now notice it's not so hard that the sound has to suddenly stop. It's not a sound, it's also a very long sound. You should be able to do it softly for quite a long time, even though your tongue is pushed up against your teeth. So like that. Okay. Now, the reason I'm going to the z sound and then back to the S sound is because I want to first make sure you know the z sound. And then we'll talk about examples when the S does make that sound the same sound. Okay, so a couple of examples here. Ceb are a, Z, and E, and D E. Okay, so let's go through these words carefully. The first two at the beginning, the others at the end of the last sound, Zebra, Zebra, Zebra, Zebra, okay, z, Z, z, Z, which is also the name of the letter. The name of the letter is Z zebra. Okay. The next one, zone, Zone, Zone, Zone, Zone, zebra, zone, zebra zone. The next one at the end should not be as strong. Fas. Fas. Be careful not to add a sound after it. If you're say fuzzy, that's two syllables, That's incorrect. Fas, FAS, FAS, HHS, but not that long. Fas, FAS. The next one, dose, dose, dose, dose. Okay, so the z sound I think is not too difficult. I think if you practice it, you'll be able to get the sound. Make sure, make sure, make sure that you can hold it for a long time. If you can't go for a long time, you're not doing it right. If your Z sound goes woo, woo, woo, and dies every time it's too hard, you need to make it a little bit softer, okay? So practice until you can get it to sound like a forever flat sound. Okay, back to S. Back to S. We go. Here we go back to S, Okay? Now examples when the S makes a z sound, okay, the first one, this one has the why use and remember what we talked about you, right? We said sometimes you make the yeah. Yeah. Sound. Sometimes makes the oo sound. This one makes them yeah. Yeah. Sounds a little bit of why they're fuse, fuse, fuse, fuse, fuse. We can break it up like this. We could say it's similar to f, e, w plus z few, right? This is pronounced few, few z, or for f plus years, USE just like this one. Use, use, use, use not use or not. You use, use, fuse and use. This one has actually two pronunciations, which is interesting. This could be an action like he, this, or it could be an animal more than one of a certain animal. First one does like he, he does, he does. He does. Does. This is i u sound go. Does, does, does, he does. Okay. The next one, which is the other pronunciation of this is a female deer. Maybe you know that famous song from The Sound of Music. It's a movie, a DOE, a deer, a female deer, the toe-to-toe do, I'm a terrible singer, I hate myself anyway. And this is pronounced doze. A female deer is called a dough and more than one is dose, dose, dose just like the last one we wrote d OZ, right? Dose, dose. All right, this one now, the next one, also an end sound. Because, because, because, because B, cause there's that z sound there, it's pretty quick, It's pretty fast, but it is there. You have to make it. But you don't want to make it so much that you add something else which would make another syllable you don't want to say because the right, that would be too strong. Because, because some people say because, because it's very common in America for people to say because, because, because, because, because both are, I guess, okay. Next one, wives, wives, wives. So this one is not visit the zoo. It's much faster, It's vis a vis. You need to go straight from the root to the viz a viz, a, viz, a viz. Remember the v sound here, we talked about that one right, directly to the z sound. There's no break, not a buzzer. That sounds bad. It has to be a wives. But you can't focus on it and you can't say wives, that doesn't sound good. So you have to make it pretty fast. I'm not too strong. Wives, wives, wives, wives. So we don't say wife's, it is a z sound, it is wives. So once again, quickly fuse. Use. Does doughs because wives, okay. Now we have to very quickly talk about a special sound that S makes in certain words, such as, you probably know USU. And these are just two examples. There are more, okay. Or molecular vision. You could say that the vision, that's why my whispering. Why am I talking like this? Who am I? All right. So USU ALL y. One way to say this, which is correct in some places is you surely and some people really will say it like that, but I do not want to teach you that one. I'm teaching you American English. So in American English, we say this one as x0, y0. So my teeth are together tight. Okay? And I'm making the shush sound, which is pretty easy to make, sh, sh, sh, like that sound. Okay, but I'm adding my voice so I'm doing plus Sz, put them together. G, G, G, G, G. It's pretty weird, right? It's a weird sound, but it is a sound in English and you have to be able to do it. American English is full of this sound, okay? So you x2, Bu, Li, Yu, Ju, Li Usually Usually Usually, Usually, Usually. Usually. Usually, Usually, Usually Usually Usually. I like to run around in my house with my cats. And the next one, the session decision here. This C, Oops, sorry. This C makes the S sound, which is sometimes does. It's called a soft. Soft see, it's hard to see. Hard see is like cake. So the C here makes a soft sound, which is like the s sound and the S here. Usually when you see S I O N will say Zhang Jiang Yu, Zhang Zhang decision, decision, decision, vision, vision, geons that sound Vision, Decision vision usually. So practice this one until you can match me, until you can get it just right. And then, as always, make it a habit to go to the next step, make it a habit. Habits are so important, especially for this course. If you remember anything from this course, remember how important it is to make these things habit, not just learn them. Learning is the first step. The next step is Habits. Okay, So just like I did for the th, I want to read and give you a short paragraph to practice the S and the Z sounds. And I hope you can read this many, many times out loud and maybe record yourself reading it out loud so that these can become a habit. Remember, it's very, very important to not only learn basic pronunciation, but also make it a habit. So I'm going to read this two times. The first time slowly with stress on the sound the second time, naturally and quickly. Here we go. Wise zoning wizards. So seldom send whizzing missiles to the fuzzy, whispering zombie people of the basal states that the zoning wizards have caused the fuzzy zombies to become docile donors and some losers. Some people say Basil, some people say basal. Common American pronunciation, basal. All right, Now one more time, this time, faster and natural wise zoning wizards, so seldom send whizzing missiles to the fuzzy whispering zombie people of the basal states that the zoning wizards have caused the fuzzy zombies to become docile donors and snoozes. And you may be wondering, did Luke write that or did he find it somewhere? Ha I wrote it by myself. It's ridiculously stupid and you can't understand it. You know, who to blame. All right, so in the next video we're going to be talking about more consonant sounds. We're going to be focusing on l, r, and n. So I will see you in the next lesson.
11. L R N: All right, so I hope you've had enough practice with th, s and z. Now it's time to move on. And in this video, we will be focusing on L, R, and N sounds are going to be talking about some examples. And we're going to be talking about some of the different sounds that they make in different situations. Well, not necessarily different sounds, but sometimes the stress. We'll change the sound of the word, kind of, okay, We'll talk about that for these three sounds. All right, So now let's start with the l sound. The l sound, okay? Now the l sound is pretty easy to make, but you have to remember to make it correctly every time. Because if you don't make it correctly, it might sound like the r sound or like the n sound. So you have to be careful, I put these three together because just as with the last three, th, s and z, which can be confused, these three can also be confused. So I want to focus on that. Okay, so the l sound make your tongue not like this, but like this, right? Your tongue can be relaxed and wide or it can be narrow. So you want to make your tongue narrow. And then you want to bring your tongue up and you want to put it against your teeth and the roof of your mouth. So the front of your tongue will be at the point where your teeth meet the roof of your mouth. The roof is the top of your mouth. So right at that beginning point where it begins and the teeth put your tongue there and again, bring your tongue like this. It should be narrow, not wide, right? So the sound correctly is like this then all, all, all, all le, le, le. So if I make my tongue too wide, then it will fill the top of my mouth and it will make all of the air come out through my nose, right? N stands for nose. Because when you make the n sound, all of the air comes out through your nose. But when you make this sound, it doesn't. The air should be coming out on this side of your tongue and on this side of your tongue, here and here, not through your nose. So if I make it very wide, everything is here. It's the n sound, right? So it should be 0, 0, 0, 0. The sound is coming out through my mouth, not my notes. Very important to remember. Narrow top of the mouth and air coming out on both sides of the tongue. One way to practice this is just to repeat. This simple repetition of the law sound. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. And do it quickly. And you can begin to quickly build the habit of making that sound every time, okay? When you pull your tongue away from the roof. Away from the roof of your mouth. La, la. It should make us sound like that. La, la, la, la, la, la, la. Okay, so that's the L sound. Couple of examples now, let's look at first beginning sounds. Start with the beginning sound. That means where L is at the beginning. Who? Let me fix this. Sorry, L, I'm sorry. Where? It's at the beginning of the word. Okay. So L E a V, L E F T, L UK, LU, and CH k. So let's try this first one. Again. Same position. Leave, leave, leave, leave. Okay. The next one, left, left, left, left. Now, my my teeth are not touching. All law. But if I make them touch, It's okay. La, la, I can still make the sound, but you don't have to bring your teeth together, not necessary. Leave left. Luke, my name, Luke. Luke. Luke. Luke, next one, lunch. Lunch la la, lunch, lunch. Leave left Luke lunch. Okay. Leave left Luke lunch. All right. The next one in the middle. One, elevator. Ella. Ella, Ella elevator, elevator, elevator. So you want to say pretty quickly elevator, elevator, but it's important to always do it if we say innovator or something like that era of error and the Vader, and it doesn't sound right, must still hit your tongue in this case because I'm saying it pretty fast. My tongue is sort of hitting the top of my mouth where my teeth meet the roof of my mouth and bringing it back, It's very fast. Ella elevator, elastic, Elastic, Elastic, Elastic, Elastic willow, willow, willow, willow, willow, elevator elastic willow, elevator elastic willow. Alright, so now when we make the l sound at the end of the word, It's really much less than the previous two. When we make the other two, we have to hit the back of the teeth, but this one isn't obvious. L shall we bring our tongue against our teeth as before, but we don't have to take it away if we're just saying this word. So for example, if I say the word wall, wall, wall, I am bringing my tongue up and putting it there, but I'm not taking it away. I don't say Walla. Walla. That sounds very strange. So this one is much less stressed. We really don't focus on the L sound at the end wall, wall, wall. It's almost like I just kind of put it there, but it doesn't make a very obvious sound. Reveal, reveal, reveal, right? You can't very easily here the L sound at the end. However, if I add something to it, then it becomes more clear, then I need to say this stronger revealing, revealing. So it's revealing when we add sounds after the L, that the L is there. But if the L is just at the end, it's not so obvious. Obvious means easy to see, it's not so clear to us. The next one, level, level, level, level in both cases, my tongue is doing this, but you hear it more clearly at the beginning level. Level. Level. Okay. The next one, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll now if I add to this like I did before Willow, now it's more clear, right? I gave you that word before Willow. So we can hear that when sounds come after it better than if it's just at the end by itself. We'll, we'll, we'll, we'll next one. Soil, soil, soil, soil, soil. Next one, real, real. Real. Okay, so remember, focus on making that action with your tongue against your teeth and get into the habit of doing that. Let's now go on to the r sound.
12. L R N Practice: Let's now go on to the r sound. The sound is actually not too tough to make. When you make the r sound, you do need to make sure that your tongue is curled up and back. That's a very, very important thing to do to make it correctly. So your tongue is this shape. Like this? Your tongue needs to do that if you want to do it. Well, okay. Her her her I bring my my tongue up like that and I relax my mouth but it's not wide or doesn't sound as good as her, her or so the basic R sound is a somewhat narrow mouth. Pretty relaxed. Okay. All right, so now let's go over some words that have R at the beginning. When we do our, especially at the beginning sound, we wants to bring the mouth together a little bit when we do it and a little bit forward, a little bit, a little bit out like this, a little bit, especially for beginning sounds. So let's go over some examples of that then. Inwards. Read, read, Rich, Rich, Rich, rotate, rotate, rotate. Roof, roof, roof. So notice that when I'm saying these at the beginning, I'm bringing my mouth a little bit forward, and of course, my tongue is curled backward like this. Now, middle sounds in the middle. We don't need to focus on the r sound so much Iris. Iris. Notice I didn't say iris risks like that. I don't need to focus on it so much, so I don't need to bring my mouth out so much, bring it forward so much and bring it together as much. Iris, iris, erase, Erase murder, murder, murder barrel, barrel, barrel, barrel, iris erase murder barrel. Okay. Okay. So when r is at the end, it's not as strong, usually as when R is at the beginning. Typically at the beginning, we need to focus on it's much more. So let's do a couple of examples. War, war. Now this is different than the other one that we did before with L, but it does have a similar sound. So I'll write it down. War, wall, War, this one. Wall, war, wall, war, wall, war wall. Okay, So remember, the r has to come up like this. At the end. The L has to go up behind the teeth at the end. Next one, fair. Fair. Fair. Fair. Next one, air, air, air. Next one, cure, cure, cure, cure, cure, cure. Next one, steer, steer, steer, steer. Okay. War, fair air. Steer, which again is different than if we write st EAL, that would be steel. All at the end, right? Oh, this one or steer steel. Steer steel. Steer steel. And here it's very important to remember what I said before that you need to have awareness. You need to be able to focus on the small differences between these things. Steer steel. All right, so next we're going to be going on to the end sound, to the n sound. So when we say the end sound, all of the error needs to be coming out from here. These two holes in your nose, which are called your nostrils. But anyway, and nothing coming out from your mouth, nothing coming out from your mouth. So your tongue your tongue. Your tongue needs to be wide. For the L It was like this. For the end. It's like this. And that's the basic difference between them. Actually, the n, your tongue is in the same place as the L, it should be against your teeth and the beginning of the roof of your mouth at the top of your teeth touching actually touching that. Right. And this time because it's wider. It's wider like this. It covers the entire top of your mouth so no air when it comes out can go through your mouth. Instead it goes and out through your nose there. And so when you say you can put your finger here and you can feel air coming out from your nose but not from your mouth? Yes, I can feel it. Okay. So Mm-hm, Mm-hm, Mm-hm is the correct end sound. Now, some examples as before, we can do the very simple, the very simple exercise as we did with El Nino, La Nina. And we can do it quickly to make it a habit, right? We want to make all of these sounds. Habits. Nan a NAN, a NAN a NAN a NAN a NAN a NAN. A NAN. A NAN or not? Not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not none in an Internet. So keep doing it until you can do it really, really fast, right? Needs to become a habit. Make sure that your tongue is wide. All right. So some examples of n sounds. And I, G, H, T, and U, T, S, and E de las ISE. K and E, G and O, me. Why? Well, when we have k, n and g n at the beginning of a word, it says the n sound. Okay, so don't be afraid. If you read GANs or cayenne, what? It is, just the n sound, you don't need to do anything else. Okay, So let's go through these really quickly. Night, night, night, nuts, Nuts, Nuts, needles, needles, needles. This one. We actually skip. The L sound. So we don't say needles. Needles is very difficult to say. So because it's so difficult, we usually skip it in this case and say needles, needle DO, DO. We don't actually touch the L where it usually is. Needles, noise, noise, Nee, Nee known known gnome. Gnome. And in every case, in every situation, I'm covering my mouth, the top of my mouth so that air is coming out. Known. Known. Okay. Night nuts, needles, noise need? No. Okay. So now let's just very quickly go over the middle and end sounds. The middle and end sounds for n, okay? Number one, winner, winner, winner, winner, finish, finish, finish, finish. Next one. Spender, spender, spender, spender, spender. Next one. The end sounds here, over here. None, none, none, none. Be careful not to add a sound. You don't want to say none, none, none, none. You don't want to add it. You have to end there. None. None. The next one is exactly the same different spelling. It's the same pronunciation. None. Also. None, not different at all. Okay. The next one, oven of n, Remember the v sound oven, oven, oven, next one. When, when, when, when, when different than this one, if we add a d sound, it's different, right? This would be wind, wind, wind, wind, wind. Okay, So now as we have done before, I want to give you a quick paragraph that you can use to practice the RL and end sounds. And I've tried to put them here all together to give you a way to make it a habit. Here we go. I'll read it slowly first and then quickly. None of us realize how lovely Loyola's legs are, because Loyola's lovely. Legs and knees live behind address under layers of red cotton. Now once more, this time, quicker and natural. None of us realize how lovely Loyola's legs are, because Loyola's lovely legs and knees live behind address under layers of red cotton. Okay, now, don't worry about the meaning. It's just nonsense. The point is to give you a way to practice these sounds and get them quick to get them to become habits. All right, so in the next video we're going to practice CH and SH. So I'll see you in the next lesson.
13. CH and S: All right, so we've covered LR and end. Now we need to go to another two sounds which are kind of similar, CH and SH. Okay, So I want to put these together again because it's possible to confuse them. And sometimes CH can make the same sound as SH, sometimes. Okay, So it's a pretty easy sound to make. You can bring your teeth together or just slightly apart, like that, or like that totally together, the sides of your tongue should come up and touch your teeth. Okay. And then you want to ssh, ssh, push air out without making any voice. Shh, shh, shh. Pretty easy to make. Okay, So let's just very quickly go over some examples of the SH sound in words, and we'll do beginning, middle, and end. So let's start with the beginning sounds one, ssh, shoulder, shoulder, shoulder. Here's an example where OU just makes a long o sound. Remember I said it can shoulder, shoulder. This one. Shrine. Shrine, shrines. Shrine, shrines. Shrine, shoulder, shrine. Okay, let's go to the middle sounds. The middle sounds fashion, fashion, fashion. This is not E on, this is just a simple sound. We don't say fascism. We say, Oh, just a simple, short u sound fashion, fashion, fashion. The next one. What's this? T I O N. Yes. T-i-o-n can say and does say ssh, shun. Okay. So caution, remember AU or caution? Caution. Caution. Caution. Okay. The next one, station station again, T-I-O-N makes that sound. Station station fashion. Caution station. Okay. Now, N sounds or final sounds. Wish, wish, flash, flash. Now, previously, we had said that n sounds are usually not as strong as the middle or the beginning sound, right? Like maybe n, for example, or L. Wall is not as strong as level, right? But in this case, it's not true shoulder and wish. It's the same. So you don't have to make wish lower or not as stressed. So it's the same stress for both of them. Shoulder and wish, for example, have the same SH sound. Exactly. So let's just quickly go over these shoulder. Shrine, fashion, caution, station, wish flash. All right, So we've done SH now we need to move on to CH, the CH sound. Alright, so CH sound is harder than the SH sound. Sh sound, very soft CH sound. Touch your teeth together. So when we make the CH sound, instead of keeping our tongue in the same place, we actually bring our tongue from the top of the mouth and then bring it down. So it's actually on the roof of the mouth like that and then down. And that makes the harder sound of the CH. Otherwise it's, it's kind of the same as the SH. We again, do not use the voice. We do not use any voice here. Okay. So this one. Notice the outside of my mouth, the shape of my mouth when I do the sound that actually changes. She doesn't change, but she does change. I opened my teeth a little bit. I bring my tongue down from the roof of my mouth and my mouth opens a little bit here as well. Ch, ch, ch, ch, ch. I push my lips a bit forward. Okay, So let's do a couple of examples of this one. Okay, so let's go over some words with CH in it. Church, church, okay. The next one, change, change, change, change. Okay. Now if this were SH here would be shirt. Shirt, it would be much softer. Write my tongue wouldn't move. My mouth would be more static. Sure. Church. So keep in mind, one is softer, one is harder. Okay. The next one, middle sounds watcher, watcher. Now notice it is a little bit harder because I have the t here. What, what watcher, watcher. Here. We have an example that I had mentioned earlier where sometimes CH makes the SH sound. So this one isn't machine. This one is machine. So this sound is the same as SH. Okay, So in the middle here we have a very hard sound. Watch, watcher, watcher, it's the same if it's at the end, watch. Okay, but here, because we have I and II, it's a soft sound machine. Machine, definitely the SH sound. Now, since we are talking about that, let's quickly go over a couple of other words that have CH as the SH sound. An example first, CAC, THE cash, cash, same pronunciation as CIA ASH, cache, cache, exactly the same cash, cash. The other one kind of a long word, c, h, a, and D. Ie, IE, our chandelier, Shen Lear, Shen, Lear, Shen to Lear. So this one is just like SHA AN. Same sound, Shen, chandelier, chandelier. Okay, so sometimes the CH does make the SH sound interesting. The end or the final sound for C, H, we have match, match. It's not less stressed, just like SH was the same. It's not less stressed because one reason is because we don't use the voice to make it, right. So we just make the simple sound. It should be the same, whether it's in the middle, end, the beginning shouldn't matter. Okay. Match and this one, bench, bench, ben, bench, bench. If there's no end sound, it will sound like this batch. Batch. Okay, So make sure you have a bench, bench, bench quickly, church, change, watcher, machine, cash, chandelier, match bench. Okay. All right, so now practice a short paragraph that we can use to practice the SH and the CH sound. I'm going to read it two times as usual. Onetime slowly, said very clearly, and then another time quickly and naturally. Here we go. She showed me what she had watched. It was a show about choosing and washing cherries for children whose wishes for Washed cherries had never been reached. I know it's weird. I know it makes no sense. Don't worry. Okay. Now I will read it naturally and quickly. Here we go. She showed me what she had watched. It was a show about choosing and washing cherries for children whose wishes for wash cherries had never been reached. Okay, so practice these a couple of times, many times, as many times as you need to get it right. And I know I've said it a thousand times to make it a habit. All right, so in the next video, we're going to be talking about endings, are going to be talking about PLE and BLE. And how to say these two endings correctly. I'll see you in the next lesson.
14. -ble and -ple: Okay, So we've gone over a lot of consonant sounds, a lot of vowel sounds. But now I want to move our attention for this lesson to end sounds, ending sounds. Ending sounds. Sounds that come at the end of words. And I want to focus particularly on PLE and BLE because it's very easy to miss pronounce these. And actually the rule for both of them is very much the same. So we're going to talk about them together. It's very easy to put a vowel between PAL or BL, right? For example, let's use an example as a word, e x a m p e. Okay? How should we say this word? Okay, 1 exam, That's easy. First syllable, so two syllable word, one syllable, and there's another syllable, the second syllable, remember, syllable is a beat and a word, right? So should we say exam, pole or example? Example. Which one is right? The second one is actually correct. You don't have to really, really focus on saying pull, pull, pull, like that. You can say it to pretty quickly. But two also should be careful about not saying pole. Pole, or in this case, bowl. You do not want to do that. You don't want to make a very big O sound. You don't want to add an o sound here or an o sound here that is bad. Bad. Okay? Now, again, like I said, it's not essential that you say coal like that and make sure you really hit the L sound is not that important either. For these two sounds, it's usually pretty quick. Okay? And the mouth is pretty flat, not very wide open. So example, example, example, example. In this case, my tongue actually does not touch my teeth. I didn't say exempt Paula. And that sounds a little bit forced. Like I'm trying too hard. Sounds to forest. So I'm actually not touching here, but I'm also not saying, Oh, like that. My mouth is pretty flat. Example, example, pull 0, 0, 0, c, pull example, example, example. All right, so I want to do some more examples to show you how this, these two sounds which are very similar, should sound correctly. So let's go over these examples quickly. Now. You could, if it's the end of the word, still touch your tongue to the back of your teeth. But again, sometimes it isn't necessary and if you don't do it, you can still make the sound pretty correctly and it's acceptable. Okay, so let's look at these examples. Ample, ample, ample, ample. At the end of the word I am resting. My teeth or excuse me, resting my tongue at the back of my teeth. Ample. That's the end. Ample. Am pull. Ample, ample. But I'm not saying ample like that. I'm not forcing myself to do it very quickly. It's pretty relaxed. I can say it kind of without as well, ample, ample, ample that I'm not touching anything ample. My tongue is not touching my teeth, but I'm able to still make the sound. Okay. So you can do either. Both are acceptable as long as it sounds. Right? Okay. Next one, maple or Maple. Maple or maple. Now notice I'm not saying maypole, maple or Maple, maple like that. It's pretty relaxed and not stressed. Maple, maple. The next one, grapple, grapple, grapple, grapple, grapple, pull. That syllable is a very fast syllable. Okay, the next one, it's basically the same. The only difference is we have the B cell instead of the p sound. So we have PUT or book or book, but otherwise same rules, stable, stable, stable, stable. Now at the end of this one I am bringing my tongue against my teeth, but I'm not doing it so quickly that it sounds like stable like that and it doesn't sound good. So be relaxed. Don't force it. Okay. The next one table, table, table, table, table. The next one. Shambles, shambles. Shambles, shambles, shambles, shambles. Ample, maple, grapple, stable, table shambles. Alright. So practice these. Again. You don't need to force that sound. It should be a natural sound at the end of a word. All right, So a paragraph to practice the ending sounds of PLE and BLE. I'm going to read it as usual. Slowly, clearly and then quickly, naturally. Okay, here we go. I was grappling with the shambles of the Maple table I had built. And whether I would be able to find an example of a case in which a maple table had ever been stable. I was grappling with the shambles of the Maple table I had built. And whether I would be able to find an example of a case in which a maple table had ever been stable. Okay? So practice both of these, try to go faster and faster and faster. And again, this ending doesn't need to be too stressed. All right, so in the next video we're going to move on and talk about words that sound similar, words that sound kind of the same. And we're going to try to resolve some general confusion or difficulty with those similar sounding words. Okay, so I'll see you in the next video.
15. Similar Words Pt. 1: All right, so we've covered a lot of the basics. We have a lot of the basics down. What do I mean when I say we have the basics down? That means we've learned a lot of the simple, basic points about pronunciation and we feel comfortable, at least, I hope you feel comfortable with a lot of those simple things. But now we need to practice a little bit, some of the more difficult things. So I want to work in this video and the next video in some similar words. That means words that sound basically the same, almost the same, but are not the same. And first, how to hear those small differences? Second, how to say those small differences. So that's what we will be working on in this and the next lesson. Okay, so next we'll go over sounds that end in N or ING, the end of sounds. And we need to be careful because these really can sound very, very much the same, but there again, they are not the same. So let's do a simple example here. Th, th IN and th I and G. This is a tough one to here. Let me just say them both. And I won't say which one is first and see if you can hear which one I'm saying, okay, here we go. Thing thin, thing thin. So actually I was saying THE ING first and then I said THE IN. So if you could hear that nice job. So now let me talk a little bit about the difference between the two sounds. When you say ING, the I-N-G sound here, the back of your tongue, way back there, comes up and touches the back of your mouth, the beginning of your throat. It must every time you say I and G. So no, no practice that the bank should say no, no. If you need to practice it, just do that many times. Young enough, practice it a lot. Okay, the other one, the n sound, we've learned, right? Remember when we make the end sound, or tongue is wide and against or around our teeth and all of the sound comes out from our nose. So thick, thin, thin, thin, and this one thing, thing, thing, it's not clear. Very clear because we don't make any sound after this one. It's the last sound thing and then we just stop. But actually for this one, the sound is way back here at the end. And this one, this one th ion is coming out through my nose. So if I say this one like this thing, that thing now you can hear that, you can hear that very easily, right thing, thing now. This one, thin, thin, thin, thin NA, now it's easy to tell. So it's the same thing, right? It's just that we have to cut those endings off. Thin thing. Also. When we say this one, th ING, it's a little bit more of a e sound instead of an a sound. And we say this one thing, we kind of have to smile, a little bit, easy thing, thing and this one fit the eye, the eye cell, the jaw out a little bit thin, thin. So let's do these thing. Thin thing, thin thing, thin. Okay, Let's do a couple of other words that are kind of the same. But not, not only ING RAN are a, N G, SUN, SUN G, B O, D, B, O and ged. Okay, so let's, let's practice these really quickly. Next one, Rang, Ren, ring RAN. Now the difference here is the same. When I say our a and G, I'm saying near the back of my mouth Neng up, happening the back of my tongue ring and ran this one again is coming out of my nose. Ran rang, Ran Rang. Also. When I say rang, I say more of an a sound, the long a sound, a Rang. This one. I say very clearly the short a sound at Ran, Rang, Ren Rang. Okay, the next one, the next two, SUN and SU N G. Okay, so listen carefully. Sun sung, sun sung. Very difficult to hear these two. But again, the difference is the same. I'm saying the sound the same. In this case, 0, 0, this one. Which is why it's more difficult to hear because envies, this is the short, long, short, little bit long a. In this one, both are short. Sun, again, the end is making the air go through my nose. This one sang, sung. And if I continue that, I'll say sang, sung. It's still going through my notes, but it's coming from the back. The sound is toward the back of my mouth. The next one, bond bond, this one bond, bond, bond, bond, bond, bond, this one. I'm again making the normal n sound, been coming through my nose to bond this one bong, back of the mouth. Bong, bong. So the D sound is the same, the o sound is the same. Ah, ah, the only difference here is this one is very clearly the Mennonite sound, and this one is very clearly the Neng sound, the sound. So let's go through these one more time. Thin thing ran. Rang, sun, sung, bond, bond. Okay, so practice those. If you can't hear them, then you need to improve your listening ability. So really, really try to focus on the sound. You should be able to hear a small difference and then focus on making that sound. You should feel it differently when you say both words. All right, Now let's really quickly go over some differences, some similar sounding words with differences for f and v, for f and v. Now, this is the f and v sound, not only the letters F and V, right? Because sometimes the letter F makes the sound v, The first one clearly an f sound. Now we haven't really gone over the f sound carefully. So it's similar to the V sound. Except you take out to the voice, right? But it's basically the same thing. So serve CRF. Which one did I say first? If you heard v first and then f? That's correct. Serve surf. Serve, surf. Serve surf. Okay. The difference is the end. When I say I'm using my voice, when I say I'm not using my voice, pretty simple. Okay. Let's go on of off oven. Of off oven. Which one was first? This one was first. This one was second. This one was third of, is actually the v sound, not the f sound. So I don't say up, I say of, it's almost like OVA of, of, of, okay. Off. Very clearly the sound, no voice, off, off, so of, off. And now these two OF and 0 V EN these two, It's the same sound. The only difference is we add M to the end, right? Of oven, of, oven, of oven, at the end of oven. Okay. So that's the only difference between these two. Actually, these two are more different than these two, even though it looks like they're more the same because this one only has one more f. The pronunciation is very different. Okay, The next one, starve staff stave. Which one did I say first? I said this 1 first, then this one, then this one. So let's go over them. Really quickly starve, starved, starved. So here we have an r sound and a V sub R, R, R starve. So one syllable starve, not starving, but clearly it's still one syllable, but we do have to make sure we continue the voice during this one, starve, starve, starve staff, staff. So actually the last voice sound is here. And then just the f sound staff, staff. The next one, stave, stave, stave. Actually, this is short. This is short. This is long. This is the long a sound, right? R, r. This is not stare of its star, star. So this is short and this is short. But this is the long a sound. Remember the long a sound is the name a. Stay, stay. Just like s, THY stave, stave, and then we just add the V sound stave. So let's quickly go over these. Surf, serve, surf serve, off of oven, staff, starve, stave. So practice these until you can easily get the differences both listening and speaking. And again, remember, it's really important to have awareness to be able to notice. Pay attention to these small things if you can't, you need to work on that before you can really, really master these. Okay, Now, the next one should be pretty easy for you because we have carefully gone over the z and th difference. Okay? So we'll just go over these very, very quickly. The first one is sometimes confusing because people want to say this as a syllable. Actually it's not. This is a one syllable word. This is a one syllable word. And actually, most native English speakers will say these two words exactly the same. Close, close, close, close. So you can, and it's okay. These words totally the same known will notice it's okay, it's better that you do that. Then if you try to say close this, close this is wrong, it's never right. So don't try to do that close and close. Now, actually, the correct pronunciation should have a very quick th, they're very, very fast and it's difficult to hear. But if you are able to do that, you can, you can try close, close, close, close, but that's pretty difficult to do. Okay. So the next three, I think you can you can handle pretty well, pretty easy for you. Probably. Breath, breathe and the breeze. Breath, breathe in and breathe. I did those out-of-order. It's okay. We'll figure it out. First one, don't make any voice here, no voice here. The next one you want to do voice here. Here is, here is, and here is the z sound, just the z sound. So not voice, voice, Z, breath, breath, breathe, breathe, Breeze, Breeze, breath, breathe, breeze. Let's go over all of these quickly. Close or close and close. Okay, you can do these the same or a little bit different with the clothes. A little bit, th, that's okay. Again, CLOSE-UP. You can use that pronunciation for both of them if you want to. The other one, breath, breathe, breathe, breath, breathe, breeze. Just remember that the difference really is in the ending sound. All right, so in the next video we are going to continue with similar sounding words.
16. Similar Words Pt. 2: So in this video, we're going to be continuing what we did in the last video. We're going to be looking at words that sound very similar and looking at the differences between them. So let's, let's just begin. The first one is another th sound which is quite difficult and I think we should really cover it. M O N th, th, S, M, O T H, and O THS. Okay, So this is a pretty tough one. So let's just quickly go over this, this one, month, month, make sure you say that sound. But when you say the sound, you can say it with the th, they're like This, month, month. Now, when you want to add the S, All you do is pull your tongue back a little bit. Okay, so MN, MN, months, months. Now you have to get used to that very quick action. Once you say the CH sound, you pull it back and make the, the s sound. So it takes some practice, but it should sound like that month and months, months and months. It can't be month is, or months. It can't be two syllables, it has to be only one syllable, months and months, okay? The next one, moth, moth and moths, it's the same skill you have to be able to take the tongue quickly, back and then into the S. That very fast sound. So once more, month, months, morph, months, practice that until you can get it right. Okay, let's continue. Now, some people learning English have a difficult time with the R and the L sound, right? They can be quite tough. So let's just quickly go over an example of one where the single sound is different. L are glass grass. Glass graphs. Remember the position for the L behind your teeth. Very narrow tongue and the are curled galactic black glass grass girl, girl, girl, grass. Very different sound actually, if you say it right, glass grass. Glass grass. Okay. Another one which is actually quite similar to the glass and grass is block and Brock, Brock is actually the name of a person. Block is a thing that is square that you can use to build things. So block Brock or LA, LA, block Brock. So you can practice these two as well and make sure that your sound matches my sound. Makes sure that your tongue is either like this for the R or like this, and against your teeth for the L block. Ok. All right, now let's go on to some difficulty with the o sound. The o sound can sound like other, other vowels. So we should go over some words that are quite tough. For that one. This one, the short a sound, the long o sound. What? Once, once, once, once. Now this one's weird because you can't hear the, a sound as clearly as the others. What once and won't, won't, won't want, won't want, won't. This one is not the long o sound, not TO. It's actually the short. Oh, sandwiches are tossed. Tall, are tossed, tossed, tossed. And this one is the long o sound. O a is another way to make the long o sound. Toast, toast, toast. Okay? And this one, the only thing that's different between these two is that you need to make, as we know, the W sound where your mouth actually moves a little bit on. Very simple straight sound on this one. Oh, oh, so first make the o sound with the W at the end, 0 plus one on own, ON, own, right? On. Very simple on, and then ONE, ONE. So you have to bring your mouth out to say the w sound for that one. So let's quickly go over these again. Once won't tossed toast ON ONE. Now these next ones are actually very easy. But because only the vowel is different, we do have to be careful when we say them, because again, only the vowel is difference, only one vowel that's different between the words. So we have to focus on making sure that vowel is clear in the word, otherwise, people won't be able to hear it very well. Okay, So this one simple e, short e sound. This one simple short a sound. Vet that vet, VAT, vet, VAT. Vat, VAT. An X1. Exactly the same. Short. E short, a short you, long, ie, long enough. Legs, legs. Legs, legs. Lags. At lags, lags 0, 0, short you love's, love's. Long enough. Leagues. Leagues, long, ie, long eat. Leagues, leagues. Okay, So again, it's the same. The only difference is the single vowel, which is different. So you have to really focus on making sure that's clear. Okay, the next one, once again, short e, short, a short you blender. Blender. Blender. Short a lander, a lander. The next one, lunder, LA, lunder, blender, lander, lunder. Okay, so let's quickly go through all of these. Again. The only difference, just the vowels, vet, VAT, legs, lags, lugs, leagues, blender, lander, blunder. Okay, so if you can't hear these differences, you really need to focus on the vowel sounds. Go back and watch the earlier lessons about vowel sounds. Really, really focus on it and practice it and listen to it until you can hear the differences. Okay? And if you are able to get to the differences, just make sure that when you are saying these, you say them very, very clearly. Okay, So let me just give you one more really quickly to practice for the vowel sounds. Okay. This one, dead. Dead. Did did did the deed? Deed. Dud, a dud, dud, Dad, dad, dad. And what you can do is you can quickly go through these and practice saying them fast to make them a habit more easily. Okay, So, so dead did, did, did that, did D dot, dot dead, did the dead, dead, dead, dead, dead. Say them very, very fast. And the faster you can do it, the deeper of a habit it will, it will become, okay. So again, practice those. It's simple thing. It's a simple thing, but this is, as I said at the beginning of the course, the foundation of your speaking ability. If you can't pronounce words clearly, then you won't be able to express yourself or be understood very well. So in the next video, we're going to actually look at very quickly how, whether something is a noun or a verb or an adjective can change the pronunciation.
17. Pronunciation and Form: Okay, So in this video, I just want to very, very quickly talk about how the pronunciation of a word can change with form. That means a different kind of word can make a word be pronounced this way or this way. And we'll just look at a couple of examples so that you can get a feeling about it. I don't want to talk about it too much. I just want you to get the idea, okay, Just, just the general idea. So let's start by talking about the difference between basic nouns and verbs. If you have a two syllable word and the two syllable word is a verb. You want to stress. The second syllable. If it's a noun or an adjective. You want to stress the first pretty simple, two syllable word, verb stress. The second. Now are additive stress the first, what does stress mean? Well, I'm sure you can probably remember because I've talked about it before. Stress is when we focus or say that part stronger, then the other part of the word. Okay, so let's look at a very simple example. P O D E P ROD. You see P R E S E and T, P E, S, E and T. Okay? Let's say this one is a noun, this one is a verb as a noun, this one is a verb, okay? If this, this one is a noun, we should say this one at the beginning stressed, right? Because nouns stress the first syllable, produce, produce, produce. This one is a verb, so we should stress the second, produce, produce. So the pronunciation is the same basically, but the stress is different. And so we can kind of say that the pronunciation is different because it sounds different. So produce, produce, produce, produce. And these have two different meanings as well. The next one, present, present, present, the X1. Present, present, present, present, present, produce, produce. So just remember that when you come across words like this, if you know it's a verb or a noun, you might be able to guess the pronunciation, or in this case, the stress of the word. Now there are a couple of, a couple of examples that aren't two syllable words that we can also talk about. I'll just give you a couple of simple examples, okay, So D O V E and a D O V E. And CLOSE-UP and see OSE. This one we'll say is a noun. This one we'll say is a verb. This one we'll say is a verb, and this one will say is an adjective. Okay, So as a noun, this is a kind of bird. It's a white bird. It's very beautiful. It means peace. So the pronunciation is dove. Just like the UV. Dove, dove, dove, dove. This one D over E means to jump forward into something like a swimming pool in the past. It says past tense. Okay, so it's the past of Dive. Dive. The IVE is the present past dove. So this one is DOF, this one is dove. This one follows our rule, right? Ove, this one should be long, right? And this one is silent, right? Remember our rule. We have a long consonant and then silent e, 00, 00, 00, 00, dove, okay. This one does not, this one is like a short you some dove. Dove. Okay. This one is also very interesting as a verb. It's a z sound as a verb, close, close, close. We've talked about that before. This one as an adjective is an S sound, which we also talked about. Close, close, close. So the spelling is the same, but the meaning will be different. And that determines or can tell you, what's the pronunciation or the stress will be. Dove, dove, close, close. Okay. So I don't want to focus on this too much because it is a big topic stress. I want to focus mostly on pronunciation. In this course, I mean basic, basic pronunciation, vowels and consonants and endings, what we've been talking about in this course. But I just want you to be aware to know about something related to stress and why stress might be this way or this way. All right, so in the next video, I just want to do a quick conclusion or summary video just to give you a few things to keep in mind for your further English and pronunciation studies. A couple of things that I really, really hope you can remember from this course, okay, so I'll see you in the next and last video.
18. Course Summary: Okay, So in this video, let's just quickly talk about what we covered in this course. It's been a long journey. It's been, it's been a voyage, it's been Epic, it's been crazy. So here we are at the end. I hope you've accomplished a lot. I hope you feel happy with what you've learned. I hope you're better. I hope you can hear words and the differences more clearly, and I hope you have awesome habits. All right, so let's just do a review of what we talked about first, we talked about vowels and we talked about the different sounds they make, long and short. And when those vowels are long, when they're short. And importantly, some rules about what makes vowel is long. What makes vowels short? We talked about vowels coming together, combining, right? They can make a new vowel sounds. They can make a long vowel sound. For example, EA bean can make a long e vowel sound, or they can make a totally different and weird sound like owl, right? Ou has the same sound as o, w. Remember we talked about words like sound and cow, okay, also we talked about consonants, syllables, of course, which are very important, and the relationship between syllables and consonants. We talked about some tough sounds like CH, SH, the differences between those, how to say them clearly, and situations where the sound is not always the same in different words, it has different stress. And in different words it also has a different sound or can sound like another word. For example, chandelier can have the SH sound. Then we went on and talked about endings. We talked about PLE BLE and how we should say endings without much stress sometimes. And then we continued and we talked a little bit about words that sound different, but only a little bit different. We talked about how to here and say some of those differences. Finally, we went into stress a little bit and we talked about how the form of a word, maybe if it's a, a noun or an adjective can actually chains the stress, change the stress of the word. And we didn't talk about that much. And maybe in a future course, we can talk more about that. So anyway, I hope you learned a lot. I hope you'll feel much more confident in your basic pronunciation. That's what this course is all about. And of course, do not forget to go back and practice the exercises, particularly the paragraphs that I wrote, which can help you really make your pronunciation a habit. And again, habits are the most important thing about this course. Making good habits. Habits allow you to speak naturally. If you're always thinking about what to say, you really can't speak naturally. So improve your awareness. Keep improving your habits, right? Keep improving your listening because listening is connected with pronunciation, and I think you will continue to improve as I hope you have during this course. Anyway, it's been very fun for me. I've really enjoyed it. I hope you will continue to take courses from me and I will hopefully, I will see you next time. Thanks again.
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