Hello there!
This is the "Sounds American" channel.
In this video we'll compare two vowel sounds:
/ʌ/ and /ɑ/
as in the words "bus" and "boss."
In our past videos we already learned how to make them.
Remember the videos for the /ʌ/ sound, as in the word "us" and the /ɑ/ sound, as in the word "got"?
This time we'll focus on the differences between these two sounds.
The /ʌ/ and /ɑ/ vowels can be very tricky for non-native English speakers.
Most people confuse these two sounds or distort them in speech.
What about you? Let's check with a quick test.
You'll see a pair of words on the screen and hear only one of them pronounced.
For example,
"***."
Can you guess what word you heard?
Let's try a few more word pairs.
What's your score?
Don't worry if you couldn't recognize some of the words.
You'll improve after doing the following pronunciation exercises.
Here are the 2 key distinctions between the /ʌ/ and the /ɑ/:
First, look at the position of the jaw:
For the /ʌ/ sound, the mouth is slightly open.
For the /ɑ/ sound, the mouth is open very wide.
Second.
Look at the tongue:
For the /ʌ/ sound, the tongue is in the middle of the mouth.
For the /ɑ/ sound, the tongue is flat and very low in the mouth.
Now let's pronounce these sounds one after the other:
/ʌ/ - /ɑ/
Okay, you've reached the most important part of this video - the practice!
In the next exercise the /ʌ/ and the /ɑ/ will be contrasted in word pairs.
This way you'll not only practice pronunciation of these sounds,
but at the same time you'll teach yourself to hear the differences between them.
So, let's do this exercise.
You'll see a word on the screen and hear its pronunciation.
After that you'll have a few seconds to pronounce the word.
♪
Repeat each word after the speaker,
The first word will have the /ʌ/ vowel sound,
and the second will have the /ɑ/ vowel sound.
Let's begin!
You're done!
Congratulations!
To check how much you've improved, you can do the word pairs test again.
Click this link to go back and compare the results.
By the way, did you know that the /ʌ/ and the /ɑ/ sounds are relatively rare in American English?
The /ɑ/ occurs in 5% of words and the /ʌ/ in only 4%.
No wonder these two vowels can be so tricky to pronounce :).
Thanks for watching!
Hope you find it useful!
Stay tuned on our Sounds American channel!