Today I’m going to show you all the way into my throat, so you can understand American vowels.
The other day I was working with students in a live class and someone asked a question about
æ like in cat, bat, match. Do you have problems with this sound? And another
student asked about æ in the word hand. æ, hand. The æ sound isn’t actually there.
I’m Rachel and I’ve been teaching the American accent and English listening
skills to non-native speakers for over 15 years. Check out Rachelsenglish.com
to learn more about improving your spoken English
and to sign up for my free course ‘Top 3 Ways to Master the American Accent’.
First, let’s look at the question about æ. I want you to really see
what changes in the mouth to make that sound.
Veronica struggles with the tongue position in æ of the vowel æ like cat. Can you
explain the position in details? I find it difficult to lift the back of the tongue.
Okay, so I can definitely give it to you in detail. You can also watch
the video where you get to see I've drawn it in.
I can actually show you these images right now.
The mouth at rest is on the left. The æ vowel is on the right. Of course, we see the jaw
drop. Look at the corners of the lips. You're going to see how that really moves in a second.
The back of the tongue. It reaches up at the back.
Let's look at some words up close and in slow motion to study this position.
attic
Notice the jaw drop quite a bit. The corners of the lips are pulling back
just a little bit and the tongue tip is down, touching the backs of the bottom
front teeth. Now you see quite a bit of the tongue because it's lifted in the back.
attic
batter
Again, quite a bit of jaw drop. Corners of the lips pull back just a little bit
and the tongue tip is down behind the bottom front teeth lifted in the back.
Batter
Which is the hardest vowel sound for you in American English? Let me know in the comments.
But let's get back to that live class and see the æ as in bat vowel compared with a like in father.
Okay, but how do you make it? Tongue tip is down, it touches here, A,
A. Now if I just I'm going to tilt my chin a bit so you can see a little bit better. æ,
a. A is in father. You can see whoa, you can see way back into my mouth.
The tongue lowers. I'm going to go from a as in father to æ. You can see that lift.
a
æ
And I noticed, just when we were talking about æ versus ab plus n,
the corners of the lips pulled back a little bit and the tongue looked like it got wider too did,
didn't it? I'm going to go again from a as in father to æ as in bat.
Ooh, there's some saliva in there sorry.
a
ae
Now we're going to move in slow motion so you can really see what happens. Starting with æ,
you see the corners of the lips are pulled back a little bit the tongue is higher in the back
and now as we move slowly into a as in father, you'll see the tongue lowers in the back and
you see the corners of the lips relax in. Here they are again side by side. You see more into
the mouth more of the inside cheek of the mouth in the a as in father sound. That's because the
tongue is lower in the back. For the æ vowel the tongue is higher in the back so you see more of
the tongue. Also notice the little crease in the corner of my mouth for the ae vowel whereas for
the a vowel the corner of the mouth is relaxed. So for the a it's pulling back just a little bit.
a
ae
Wow, it definitely feels weird looking down my throat that much. But I hope that helps.
I made Rachel’s English Academy for students just like this. I saw how listening training
helped my students find really native sounds much better than me describing the sound or
showing them a photo. Rachel’s English Academy is the best place to improve your
accent and your listening comprehension of spoken American English. And I do have a free course,
the Top 3 Things to Master the American Accent. You can get it at RachelsEnglish.com/free.
After we watch more about the æ vowel, I’ll talk a bit more about
the listening training you can do to really transform your voice.
Now, here’s what’s really confusing about ae. It’s not always ae. It changes before
nasal consonants. A student asked about this in the same live class.
Okay, Sophia is asking about, what the heck is up with the æ as in bat vowel when it's followed by
m or n? Is the position the same? if so, why do they sound different? Great question. No,
the position is not quite the same. So, let's just take æ like cat followed by a t,
vowel is pure. Now let's take æ like in ham. It's not æ anymore, is it?
So, I'm going to go back and forth between cat and ham and then I'm going to go back and forth between
just the vowels with none of the consonants. And I will say for me it's kind of hard to isolate
the æ that's in ham because we never make that sound when it's not followed by m or n. Okay,
so here we go, cat, ham, cat, ham, I'm going to point my face towards the microphone. Cat, ham.
æ
So for æ, I would say there's more jaw drop, there's a little bit more room that's created
and some sometimes we do that a little bit we don't always have to. Ca, cat. For the a
followed by m or n like in hand or ham, there's a little less jaw drop initially so æ, that's pure.
ae
æ
So my lips relaxed a little bit, the jaw was less dropped a,
æ. These came forward didn't they? They pulled back a little bit for the pure ae.
ae
æ
So, this part of the mouth is more relaxed, the jaw is less dropped
the back of the tongue is still lifted but it kind of immediately starts put
coming back down which is how we kind of slide into the uh ending part of that so,
æ
ham
hand
I hope that clarifies.
Now I said I would talk a little about the training practice. I call this method the play it,
say it method, and my Academy is full of 40 or 50 thousand small training segments so my
students can start hearing English differently so they can start producing English differently.
So the thing that I love about the play it say it method is there's almost no way to
do it wrong. It's not like this is your fault because it's not working. There's nothing you
need to do other than relaxing and saying what you hear and you won't be perfect at
the beginning and that doesn't matter. That doesn't matter. It doesn't mean that you're
not going to get to sounding 100% the way you want to sound it's just the first step of it.
So if you're listening to a soundboard and you're playing it and you're hearing it and
you're repeating it back and you're feeling like I know I'm not repeating that back exactly the
way I'm hearing it, it doesn't matter. All you need to do is do it more. And you may
want to move to the slow motion if you're finding like there are too many syllables
here and these transitions are too hard for me right now. Do the slow motion. Do it like
10-20 times a day each piece, do that for a week, I guarantee your mouth is going to figure it out.
And the important thing is it figures it out without your brain telling it, do this,
now do that, now do this. It figures it out just through the method of playing it and
saying it. Your body and your mind is built to do this. This is how you already learned
a language. You already learned earned it by the immersion and hearing when you were a baby,
when you were learning your own language, you are built to be able to learn how to produce
these sounds, learn how to produce this music of English, it's just a matter of the time.
The exposure and the time and the repetition. The thing that's so important about the play it say
it method is, you don't, there is no stopping, evaluating, judging, criticizing. That is not
part of it. You're not asking yourself; did I do that right in the moment? You're just playing it,
saying it. It's a different state of mind that's always pointed forward. Now,
if you want to record yourself doing that and then go back and listen to it,
and say did that sound right? That didn't sound quite right. Why? Fine,
that's great. But don't do it in the moment that is not part of the method. The method is just
playing it and saying it over and over, maybe your eyes are closed and you're just letting
your body adjust into the next one. You're not judging what you just did. This is how it works.
If you’re curious about the Academy, join me as a student there at RachelsEnglishAcademy.com,
or try that free course at RachelsEnglish.com/free. Keep
your learning going now with this video, and don’t forget to subscribe with notifications on,
I love being your English teacher. That’s it and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.