Hey, everyone. Today we are going to talk about pronunciation.
We're going to give you some rules to help you figure out how to pronounce a word based on its spelling.
So in English there are five vowel letters, maybe six.
We're going to talk about five vowel letters.
The first one is A.
Each of these vowel letters has two main sounds. One is the long sound and it has a short sound.
The long sound is its name. So for A the long sound is AAAAAA,
and the short sound is Ah. AAAA, AH.
The next one is E, so the long sound for E, like A, is its name EEEE,
and the short sound is Eh, Eh.
I. The long sound of I is AYE, and the short sound is Ih.
Next: O. So the long sound is OH, and the short sounds is Aw.
Finally, we have U, and the long sound, like all the others, is its name: YUUUUU, but sometimes we say OOO.
And the short sound is UH.
Now we're going to explain some rules for you. The first one is about short vowels.
When a syllable or a one syllable word only contains one vowel, that vowel sound is short.
You might have learned this as CVC -- consonant vowel consonant.
The vowel in there is going to be short, so for example a word like SET.
S E T, there's only one vowel, and it's EH-EH, short, not EEE the long sound of E.
So it's not sEEEt, it's sEt. It's the short sound. Another example?
Another example.. bin, which has an I in the middle, but that's the only vowel,
with a consonant on either side, so it's pronounced it's short way,
which is Ih, not AYE. So Ih -- bIn
Yeah, and a third example: cap. The word cap like a baseball cap...
.. has one vowel in it, an A, and the other two letters are consonants.
So that A is going to sound like AH -- a short sound, not A the long AAAA.
Okay, our next rule.. we're calling it the Magic E Rule. Yes, we are.
So in this case, you also have consonant-vowel-consonant,
but at the end of the syllable or the end of the word, there's an E.
In this .. in this situation, when there's an E there,
it makes the vowel in the middle sound long or sound like it's vowel name.
Yeah, so for example, we just have the word CAP.
If we add an E on the end of this word, it will change the A into its long sound -- CAPE.
Still a piece of clothing, instead of a cap, it's a cape. Like Superman.
Let's look at some more examples. Here, I have the word hat, hat.
This is a short A sound -- Ah. Because there's one vowel with the two consonants,
but if I add a Magic E, it becomes hate. You see that? Hat - hate.
So the same rules apply. Here we have pet. It's the only vowel, so it's the short E - Eh. Pet.
And then we add the Magic E.. it becomes the long sound which is EEE -- Pete, Pete. Pet, Pete.
This word is bit, bit. It's a short I sound, bit and this one, with the E. Bite, bit, bite.
Next, here we have hop. Short vowel sound, because it's the only vowel.
Hop, and then the long sound ohhhh. Hope, hop, hope.
Can you guess this sound? Short U. Cut, cut, and with the E -- cute. Cut, cute.
I want to do a little activity now that shows off Misha's crazy talent.... that we just discovered today.
She's abnormally good at coming up with quick rhymes, so I'm going to give her four rhyming words.
First, four that have a short sound, and then four that have a long sound,
and we'll see if she can come up with a nice little poem, on the spot, using those sounds.
[laughter] I'm not a good poet, but I'm a quick poet, even better. You're a quick poet, yes.
Here are your words, ready? Mm-hmm. Hat, mat, rat, fat.
...I saw a rat, he wore a hat, and he sat on a mat, he was so fat.
Crazy talent! Crazy!
So that was with the short AHs, can you do it with the AAA's? Let's try it. Hate, rate, mate, fate.
Hmm..it's my fate, to find a mate, at a quick rate, who I might hate.
It's a sad story, but amazing. [laughter] Bam!
Alright, let's try anouther. Yep. Pill, mill, fill, will.
Okay....
I'm almost there....
I work at a mill, I have a strong will, sometimes I take a pill, when I've had my fill.
Wow! Such a marketable skill. Skill!
Alright let's try the long I. Pile, mile, file, while.
It might take a while, but if you look in my file, you'll see that I can run a mile, and be at the top of the pile.
I am so impressed by this! That one didn't make too much sense.
Doesn't matter. It rhymes, it's snappy, I love it! That's it.
So if you notice, the first .. the first sounds all had the Ih. Pill, mill, fill, will, because there's only one vowel in there.
CVCC. That's right. It doesn't matter how many consonants are in the syllable,
it matters how many vowels. If there's only one, it's usually short. The rule is.. it's short.
And then with a Magic E on the end -- pile, mile, file, while -- all of Ih sounds change to AYE sounds.
Let's move on to our third rule. This one is sometimes called the two vowel rule or CVVC,
but the way we teach it to our native speaker children is,
"When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking."
[laughter] I had never heard that, and I think it's so cute!
So the idea is when you have two vowels together in one syllable, the first one says its alphabet name.
So: A E I O U. And the second one is silent.
For example, stain - S T A I N. AI says A only, the I is silent.
Or tree. We have two Es, we just hear the first one as its name - EEE, tree.
And another example -- soap, S O A P. The O says OH, and the A is silent.
So when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking. Love it!
Okay, so we're gonna play a little game here. We're going to give you three words,
and you tell us which is the odd one out, so which one has the different sound.
So maybe we'll give you three words; two will be long, one will be short. You find the short one.
Or two will be short, one is long, you find the long one.
Yeah, so just pause the video here and take some time and find which vowel from each group is different.
When you're done, press play, and we'll explain.
So number one: man, main, main. Man, main, main.
That's short, long, long. Man is the odd one out.
The next one: meat, meet, met. Meat, meet, met.
Met is a short one, and the other two are long. So met is the odd one out.
Number three: rod, road, road. Rod, rode rode.
Number one is short; the other two are long.
Number four: pin, pine, pinch. Pin, pine, pinch.
This one's a little tricky, so a pine is a long sound,
and the other two are short, even though pinch is kind of a longer word,
but the sound, the vowel sound is short -- pinch, so pine is the odd one out.
Next, lamb, lame, lamp. Lamb, lame, lamp.
The one in the middle, lame, is a long vowel. The other two are short.
Next, bran, brain, brand. Bran, brain, brand. So, again, the one in the middle, brain,
this is the long vowel sound, and the other two are short. So brain is the odd one out.
Ben, bean, been. Ben, bean, been.
The first one is short, the other two are long. Ben, bean, been.
Plane, plain, plan. Plain, plane, plan.
So plan is a short one. It's the odd one out.
So how did you do? if you were having trouble finding the one that was different,
go back and watch the rules again, and then look at the spelling.
If there's one vowel, it's a short sound.
If there's a Magic E, it's a long sound.
And if there are two vowels together, it makes the sound of the first ..the first one. And it's long. Yeah.
Okay, we're going to play another game. Woo!
So this one is a maze. You're going to start at the "in", and you have to make your way to the "out".
And you're going to follow only short vowel sounds.
So you look at your options and decide which one, which square can you move to that has a short vowel sound.
You can move to the square beside either of the squares on the side, or the square above or below,
but not on a diagonal. You can't move in a... angle.
This time you're going to follow the long vowel sound.
So again you'll start at "in", and you want to get to "out",
but you can only go on squares that have a word with a long vowel sound. Good luck.
Okay, so those are our vowel rules for today. Remember they are rules,
but there are always exceptions to rules, especially in English.
So you might find words that don't follow these rules, but they should help you most of the time.
AAAAA, AAAA, AAAA, [laughter]
AH! no, it doesn't work the same way! nope!
Super Misha! Super Larissa! Yes!