Hi Its Jennifer from Tarle Speech with your question of the week
the question today is is there a difference between then and than
so technically yes there is but often times when we use these words in a sentence and
they are unstressed then they sound very very similar and they are almost exactly the same
so here are the two words then and than so lets talk about the technical differences
between the two vowels so this we have the short eh sound and you can see my mouth is
slighly open and you can see the tip of my tongue between my top and my bottom teeth
eh eh this is more closed than the ah sound and for that short a sound my mouth is very
open so the tip of my tongue is low and the back of my
tongue is pulled up ah as opposed to the eh where my tongue is more flat and you can see
it between my top and bottom teeth so that's the technical difference what do
we do with this TH th this sound is really hard for a lot of people because it is the
voiced TH sound here is the key you must keep space between your top teeth and the tip of
your tongue so that air can keep moving out of your mouth often times my students think
they are saying this sound because their tongue is out of their of their mouth but there is
no space for air to move over the tongue so it sounds like a da da da almost a d sound
so again tip of the tongue is out allow space between the top teeth and tongue for air to
move over th th th voice box is on for the n sound you're just going to touch the tip
of your tongue to the back of the top front teeth airs moving out of your nose so let's
try both of these then then then than than than then than then than so that's the difference
however when you hear these words in a sentence and if they are not stressed and they are
linked to other words so we might say something like other than that and other than that sounds
like then not other than that it sounds like then so again other than that you can hear
that they sound very very similar so again technically speaking then than but often times
when we use these in sentences we hear a shorter quicker vowel and they both sound a lot like
then OK so give it a try I know people are going to notice the difference
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