hi it's Jennifer from Tarle speech with your pronunciation question today's
words are how do I pronounce the words meadow a grassy area or medal and award
let's take a look at these words lots of letters here for the first word and keep
in mind we have a silent letter here we have a W at the end of the word we are
not going to say that letter at all and then typically when we see the e a we do
pronounce that as a long e with the first vowel doing the talking and the
second one being silent however in this case we are not going to pronounce it
with the long e we're going to pronounce it with a short e and then we have the
word medal which is very similar to how it's spelled
the problem that I hear from my students is that the endings really confuse them
and it's mainly because of that L sound so let's kind of dive in and fix this
pronunciation both words are going to start with med so to do this lips are
together for the M air is moving through your nose add that short E which is
relaxed and it's very short and then end with that D sound by touching the tip of
your tongue to the back of your front tooth top front teeth med easy-breezy
right here's the difference when we say medal you must pull your tongue down
away from the top teeth where you had it for the D and then quickly put it back
up there and hold it behind the back of your top front teeth this is the key
hold it there yes hold it a little bit longer than you think you should to make
sure that you get that really good L sound so let's try that medal medal
medal you might say you hear a little bit of a schwa sound in there you
probably do and that's okay I'm not going to teach
to add that in because often when I do people will say things like med all and
kind of make it a different syllable and it's not it's just kind of all together
medal medal medal okay so yes there are two syllables but I don't want them to
be super distinct they should be nice and connected okay medal medal medal now
the mistake that people make when they say medal is that they don't touch the
tip of their tongue to the back of their top front teeth and then it sounds like
meadow meadow meadow meadow so again if you don't touch your teeth for that L
medal it's going to sound like meadow so let's give those both a try meadow
meadow meadow medal medal medal meadow medal give it a try I know people are
going to notice the difference as always we'd love a like a share to subscribe if
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