Three thin thieves thought a thousand thoughts. These
thieves thrive on farmers' grief. Sound difficult? Keep watching.
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening! Welcome to 'thmashing' English. Before we start
this video, be sure to subscribe because we make new videos all the time and I don't want you to
miss any! So with that said, let's get on with the video! Hello my name is Laura and I am an English
teacher and by far one of the biggest issues my students have with pronunciation is the TH sound,
so let me teach you how to do it! Okay so sorry to say but there are actually two different kinds of
TH sound, I'm really sorry, so let's start with the unvoiced TH because this one is slightly
easier, so unvoiced means no voice, so when you make this sound if you touch your throat you
shouldn't feel anything because if I make a sound like this AHH, oh I can feel a buzz in my throat,
it's buzzing, AHH, I feel a vibration, if I just breathe... I don't feel any vibration in
my throat, so when you're making this sound just check that there's no vibration in your throat
because when we make the unvoiced sound there shouldn't be any vibration, so keep checking.
So the first step to make the unvoiced TH sound is to stick that tongue out, don't be afraid to
look stupid, you might be thinking, 'when I look at native English speakers, when they make a TH,
sound I don't even see their tongue,' that's because native English speakers have been doing
this for a long time and therefore they don't really need to push their tongue as far forward to
make the sound but for you, this is practice, so I want you to practice it with the tongue quite far
forward and then as you get more confident with the sound you can reduce it a little bit but let's
just practice like this so that it's correct, so what I want you to do is take your tongue
and stick it out, now don't bite down like really hard but I do want you to bite your
tongue a little bit like this... like that, so it's a very light little bite but there should
still be some space for air to come through, so it's going to look a little bit like this...
can you hear air can still come through? So I just want you to breathe in,
get your tongue in between your teeth and you should be able to see it, look in the mirror,
you should see your tongue and I just want you to let the breath out so we're going
to breathe in and then let that breath out but it's going to pass over your tongue like this...
like that, really relaxed, really natural, it's not anything that should hurt or should
feel like a lot of effort, it's quite a relaxed sound so let's do it again...
That's it, so now let's practice it with some vowels because in the English language,
we never just say TH, there's always some other sounds attached to it,
so let's go through the five main vowels: AEIOU, obviously there are some other vowel sounds but
we're just going to look at those vowels for now and I want you to try to make the
unvoiced TH and then make the vowel sound after it, so it's going to go like this
THa, THe, THi, THo, THu, now you notice that I'm making that TH very long, I'm probably
doing it for about two seconds, so I want you to practice the TH longer than you normally would,
really take the time with it, so about two seconds, so let's try that together:
THa, THe, THi, THo,
THu, good job! Now let's try putting it at the end so we're going to do those vowels but we're going
to put the TH at the end of it, so it's going to sound like this aTH, eTH, iTH, oTH, uTH,
and that's just a good way to practice putting other sounds with the TH,
not just on its own. If you feel confident with this sound now, if you feel like you
can make it quite easily, we can practice some words together, so let's try the word,
think, again with a two second TH, think, lovely! Let's try thought, thought.
Good job, let's try Theory,
Theory. Good job. Now let's try some words with TH at the end of it, let's try bath.
Good job, let's try worth.
and let's try cloth, cloth. And when you feel completely confident, you can shorten that two
second TH to a one second TH but make sure that even when you do feel really confident,
don't shorten it so short that we can't hear it, we still want to hear that 'think,' that
tiny little TH that happens before the ink, think think, you can still hear that 0.2 second TH,
so don't cut it so short that you can't hear it. Okay let's move on to the voiced TH,
so if an unvoiced TH has no voice, a voiced TH has some voice, so with this one you should
feel a vibration, so put your hand on your throat and go AAHH, feel that buzz, that's what we want,
okay? So you're going to make the same shape as an unvoiced TH, same shape,
lovely, stick that tongue out a little bit more, I don't think you're sticking it out enough! So
we're going to go like that and then I want you to try to put that buzz on top of the TH sound,
so you can start unvoiced if you want, you can start with this, TH...
and then try to slowly put some sound on it, so it's going to be like this...
like that, okay, and if you really can't find
it you can try coming from an E sound so you can go EEEE...
and keep that E going but just close the teeth over the, over the tongue, like this: EEETTTHHHH,
and that might help you get it, so we're looking for this kind
of buzzing wasp sound, you know if you heard a little ttthhhhhh going around,
you'd probably want to swat it away, that's the sound we want.
Like a little buzzing wasp. Okay, let's do it with the vowels so AEIOU, but with a voiced TH
in front of it, so it's going to be like THa, THe, like that, okay you ready? Here we go. THa, THe,
THi, THo, THu. Now let's do it with it at the end,
so aTH, eTH. Ready? Here we go. aTH, eTH, iTH, oTH, uTH. Okay now let's try some words,
so let's try 'these', again with this two second TH, so let's go...
These, these. Let's try 'those,'
those, those. And let's try a pretty common one, let's try the, the, here we go,
the, the. Fantastic, look at that. Now if you really want a challenge,
see if you can jump between the two, so we're going to start voiced, then go unvoiced,
then go back to voiced, then unvoiced, we're going to go from side to side like this:
So if you can walk around your house doing, that you will sound like a little dying fly
but it will really get your mouth used to that position. Now another thing you can do is this,
so some of my students, they are so so familiar with seeing a TH and doing F
or doing a V that their bottom lip is so trained to do something when they see a TH, so they'll see
a word like 'this' and they want to go Vis, so what happens is they, they learn the TH sound,
they learn that they need to go like that, but their bottom lips still wants to come up,
so they do something like this, this, this, so we've got to get that lip out of the equation,
we do not need lips to make a TH, so you can be really crazy about this and do this...
oh you can go...
Because you shouldn't need your lips, you don't need them, and if it's just your bottom lip that's
the problem, just take that away, so just hold it away, move it, make sure that it's not getting
involved. Now another thing that is really hard is doing a TH right next to another sound like S, for
example. Let's say you have one path or two paths and you've got to do a TH to an S, it's really
tricky, so what I want you to imagine is your tongue is like a snake and your mouth is a cave
and your teeth are the doors of the cave and they open and close like Indiana Jones doors, you know
like when he runs to get out of the thing and, you you know this scene, so that's your teeth,
so sometimes the snake gets out of the cave like this
but sometimes the doors start to close so the snake needs to come back in because
the shape we need for an S is this SSS, so we need our doors, our teeth, to be closed,
so all I want you to do is just pull the snake in as you close your teeth so it's like this...
Did you see that snake just coming in, coming in, because it feels the doors are closing,
so it's like 'ah go back go back!' So it's like this: THs, THs.
And unfortunately, all that is left to do is practice, so now that you know how to make
the sound, you've got some exercises you can do to practice, it's all down to you,
you can choose how much you want to practice this, how little you want to practice this,
but if you are truly truly motivated and committed to this goal, to having this TH sound perfect,
then you should be practicing this every day, now that does not mean 10 minutes, 20 minutes,
it can literally just be 30 seconds of you going TTHHHHH, just something just to keep that muscle
moving. Thank you so much for watching, if you enjoyed this video please give it a like,
if you would like to follow us on Instagram, you can do so there,
and if you would like a online one-to-one English lesson with me or my partner Bez,
the link for that is down below, thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time,
tata!