English can be difficult, but it can be understood through tough thorough thought though
Difficult sentence, isn't it? Today we're going to look at these five words, how to pronounce them, and how to remember them.
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Okay. Now let's get started, let's start with that first word
Through through
So what we have here are essentially three sounds, we have that th, this is a voiceless th,
so what we need to do here is put our tongue in between our teeth,
but we don't bite, I see a lot of students trying to bite and it sounds like thh and
that's not a good sound. It's not healthy. You might hurt yourself.
So what you need to do to avoid any injury is put your tongue in between your teeth,
and what should happen is the air shouldn't be flowing around the sides.
This is something that a lot of people forget to explain, is where the air should be flowing.
Essentially, the air should be flowing between your top teeth and your tongue.
So if I'm doing this thhh
sound, the air is coming here. Not from the sides.
So you need to make sure that you're not pressing too hard. It's very gentle.
Okay, I feel like a snake when I do that but
that's the sound we're aiming for. The next one we have is this R sound, be very careful. Don't roll the R,
this is not trilled in English. So it's not a R like through, but
through
thr thr thr
so you see I'm very quickly transitioning to that R, R, and my tongue is
kind of in this shape.
I'm gonna do a video about how to do the R in the future in more detail,
but for now, I'll just keep that explanation like that.
The key though is making sure that the tip of your tongue here is not touching the top of your mouth.
Okay, that's the main thing.
Otherwise, you're going to get a trill and that sounds like through, through, and that's not what we're going for today
Then that final sound is uuu.
uuu
So my lips are rounded. Uuu.
It's a long sound.
Altogether,
through, through.
The next one is a little bit easier because we don't have that th sound, it's just a T.
Now notice I don't pronounce this T in English whilst touching the back of my top teeth.
What a lot of students do is they say tough tough,
and they're kind of touching here behind their top teeth, instead, in English,
what we do is we pronounce the T a little bit further back
So it's more towards the alveolar ridge as opposed to
where your teeth are. Make sure as well that you're pronouncing this T
with a lot of air. A lot of students try and really push hard
so it sounds like T, T.
Okay, something like this, but there's a lot more air in English. It's a lot softer,
imagine your like a beatbox, okay, it's like this tss tss tss sound
The next one we have is the vowel now
what a lot of students do is they pronounce this really open and they say something like A.
So it's more like an A sound, but it's not an A that we're going for. It's more of an uh
sound. So your jaw here. This is your jaw. Your jaw just drops down for this sound
uh uh A A, it's too open, uh uh.
Then the last sound is very simple. It's just a F
Normal F, nothing special here. So altogether we have tough
tough
Careful that you don't pronounce any vowel sounds at the end. I hear a lot of my Italian students saying things like tough-uh.
Okay, be very careful with that. Tough,
tough.
Now, this next one looks really long and quite intimidating, actually, but it's not that difficult.
So essentially, it's just four sounds. We've already looked at the first one, that voiceless th, so we've got th
We know this one, and the second one we looked at in tough
So I've got thuh thuh not thah, but thuh.
So the next one we have is a R sound, we looked at that in the first word as well. So we have thur
thur and then of course, we need to release that R into a vowel sound. Here
it's weak and we have the schwa, so it's very relaxed
thorough
thuh
ruh, ruh
thorough
the fourth one is thought. Now what a lot of students do is they get
influenced by the spelling here and they say something like thOUght and they pronounce it as a diphthong with an ou sound.
But actually it's just an ohh
sound. So notice the difference here. I don't say thOU. Ou.
but I say thOH. Ohh. Thought.
So again, the sounds are quite simple here. We've looked at some of them already. We have that voiceless th.
Then that vowel sound, careful that you're not making it into a diphthong like an ou
it's just an ohh sound and also don't be scared to make it long. Okay, a lot of students get a little bit
scared of these longer vowels, but if you say thOght, it doesn't mean anything in English.
So you need to make sure it's a long vowel
thought
And make sure you get that T at the end, careful, again, like I explained earlier
I'm not touching the back of my teeth, not thought,
thought, but thought. It's a little bit further back towards your alveolar ridge and there's more air.
It's a lot softer in English. Now this th is a little bit different. It's pronounced in the same way
but this time it's voiced, meaning that there's vibration
here. So a voiceless sound would have no vibration, just in case you're not sure. But anyway a
voiceless one would be something like
through
Think, okay? There's just air. With this one, we have a voiced sound.
Now that vowel is a diphthong, so we do say though
though
Okay, and there's no sound after this. It's simply just those two sounds the voiced th, th,
and then that diphthong ou.
Though. So altogether we have
through
tough
thorough
thought
though
So that's it for today's video
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Then we have this R sound, be very careful. I know bleh.