Hello there!
This is the "Sounds American" channel.
In this video we'll compare two vowel sounds:
/ɛ/ and /æ/
as in the words "bed" and "bad."
In our previous videos we learned how to make them.
Remember the videos for the /ɛ/ sound, as in "bed"
and the /æ/ sound, as in "cat"?
This time we'll focus on the differences between these two sounds.
Many non-native English speakers can't always hear the difference between /ɛ/ and /æ/.
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,
"b*d."
Can you guess what word you heard?
Let's try a few more word pairs.
If you didn't get all the words right, don't worry.
We've prepared useful exercises to help you improve.
The words in those pairs may sound similar but they differ by their vowel sound.
Here are the two key distinctions between the /ɛ/ and the /æ/:
First, look at the position of the lower jaw.
For the /ɛ/ sound, the mouth is half open.
For the /æ/ sound, the mouth is open very wide.
Second.
Look at the tongue:
For the /ɛ/ sound, the tongue is relaxed
and in the middle of your mouth.
For the /æ/ sound, the tongue is tensed,
flat
and very low in your mouth.
Let's pronounce these sounds one after the other:
/ɛ/ - /æ/
Now that you know how to make these vowels, let's do some exercises.
This is the most important part of your training
as you can't improve your pronunciation without practice.
The best way to practice the /ɛ/ and the /æ/ sounds is to pronounce them in word pairs.
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 relaxed /ɛ/ sound,
and the second will have the tense /æ/ 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 vowel sounds /ɛ/ and /æ/ together make up about ~20%
of all the vowels in American English?
Thanks for watching!
Hope you find it useful!
Stay tuned on our Sounds American channel!