What's up guys today we're gonna take another look at learning pronunciation.
Now this video is gonna benefit you whether you're learning English or whether you already
speak English and you're learning another language.
A few weeks ago we took a general view of the International Phonetic Alphabet, but now
I want to focus on the specific sounds of the IPA.
Now, I'm not gonna have time to go over all the sounds of the IPA in this video but we're
gonna cover all the main consonant sounds in the English language, and that's gonna
give you a great start.
If you don't know what you IPA is, you can check out my last video about the IPA to get
yourself caught up.
After learning the APA of English you're gonna be able to understand the key concepts that
you need to grasp in order to compare and contrast the sounds of your target language
with the sounds of English.
In this video we're gonna be focusing on consonant sounds, and you can see there are several
different types of consonant sounds for several different categories.
So let's take a look at these.
The first category we're gonna take a look at are the stops.
When you pronounce a stop sound the airflow that's gonna be moving through your vocal
tract is actually gonna be completely interrupted.
For example, when we pronounce the P sound you can see that your lips close completely.
When you pronounce a T sound your tongue is gonna be interrupting the airflow and when
you do a K or a G sound, the back of your tongue is gonna be blocking the airflow, and
that's what makes a stop consonant, and that's why they're called stops.
And these are different from other consonants because you can't hold them out for a long
time like /s/ or /n/ or /l/.
You just release them, and then they're done.
Now, every dialect of English uses its own sounds, but in standard American English we
just have /p,b,t,d,k/ and /g/.
And these sounds are all pretty self-explanatory because they all look like the letters that
make their respective sound.
So let's move on to the fricatives.
Now, with fricatives, the air doesn't completely stop but it is constricted so you can hear
a little bit of friction where the air is coming out.
And they tend to sound a little bit like hissing.
In English we have /f,v,θ,ð,s,z,ʃ ,ʒ/ and /h/.
Now, you probably recognize most of the sounds, but the ones you might not recognize in this
letter theta.
Now, this is the /θ/ sound as it think, and what you actually do is put your tongue in
between your teeth and that's where the hissing sound comes from.
This is a very similar sound.
It's the /ð/ as in "that".
This is /ʃ/ as an "show".
Then we have /ʒ/ as in Asia or treasure, and the rest of these should be self-explanatory.
There also affricates.
And affricates are a stop combined with a fricative.
We have two of those in English.
We have 'ch' and 'j' as in choose and jews.
Then we have nasals, which means that the airflow is actually going through your nasal
cavity and out your nose.
And you can't pronounce the sounds if your nose is plugged.
Go ahead and try it.
Here we have 'm', 'n', and 'ng'.
And these are the sounds at the end of the words seem, seen, in sing.
Notice that you don't pronounce the G at the end of the word sing.
You just pronounce the N a little differently, and that's the sound right here.
And it really is a different consonant sound than the regular N. After that we have the
liquid's.
Now, in my opinion, the liquids are the most difficult to learn if you're not a native
English speaker.
And fortunately, there's only two.
We have 'l' as in a low and 'r' as in a row.
With this 'l' sound, what's actually happening is that the airflow is going around the sides
of your tongue.
Then there are the glides, or the semivowels.
First we have /w/, which closely associated with the sound /u/, and then we have /j/,
which is closely associated with the silent /i/.
And in English we normally spell this with a Y but in the IPA we use the lowercase j
symbol.
So, now you are familiar with all the consonant sounds in the English IPA.
And you're also familiar with all the manners of articulation.
Now, we also have the place of articulation, and the voicing status of each given phoneme.
Now, we're not gonna cover those this video but I am gonna make future videos that cover
all of these subjects, so if you're not subscribed yet be sure to subscribe and then you're gonna
get all these videos.
My goal for this channel is to make language learning for you to be fun, fast, and easy.
So thanks for watching this video and we'll see you guys next time.