In this American English pronunciation video,
we’re going to learn how to make the
UR as in BIRD sound.
I sometimes say this is the vowel version
of the R consonant. It's always followed by R,
and there's no distinction between the
sounds in American English. This sound
will always be written with two different
International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA,
symbols, but will be pronounced
rrrrrr, just one sound, bird.
To make this sound, the corners of the
lips come in, pushing the lips away
from the face. The middle part of the
tongue lifts towards the roof of the mouth
in the middle. The front of the tongue hangs
down, but it's drawn back a bit. So, it's not
touching anything.
As the tongue lifts in the middle, it may be
close to the roof of the mouth without
touching it, or it may touch the sides of
the roof of the mouth, or the insides or
bottom of the top teeth, here, ur, ur.
This, along with the R consonant, is one
of the hardest sounds to make in American
English. It’s especially hard because the
lip position hides the tongue position.
Let’s take a look.
From the side, we can’t even see the
tongue. The front view doesn’t help
much either. This is because the
tongue goes back, but the lips flare
forward.
Here’s the word ‘hurt’. Watch the
tongue pull back and up
before coming forward for the T.
In a stressed syllable, the UR vowel curves
up then down. Hurt, ur. In an unstressed
syllable, it’s lower in pitch, as well as
quieter and quicker, ur, ur. The vowel
is unstressed in the word ‘research’, ur.
Let’s look at this word up close
and in slow motion.
The lips flare, but the jaw doesn’t
drop as much.
Let’s compare the stressed UR in
‘hurt’, on the top, with the unstressed
vowel in ‘research’, on the bottom.
The lips flare for both, but in this case,
there was much more jaw drop for the
stressed version of this vowel.
This is typical. Unstressed vowels are
shorter, so there isn’t as much time to
make the full mouth position.
The UR vowel, stressed: hurt, UR
Unstressed: research, ur
UR, ur, UR, ur
Example words. Repeat with me:
Earth, search, circle, thirteen, return, outburst.
I hope this video helps you understand
this sound. That’s it, and thanks so much
for using Rachel’s English.