Do you want to improve your pronunciation
and sound more like a native English speaker?
In this short grammar lesson, Jackie
explains the rules for how to pronounce
English vowels including diphthongs and the schwa sound, so stay tuned.
Before you go, click the link below to
try our free online English classes.
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Improving your English pronunciation helps you
actually be able to speak better with other people.
By speaking better, I mean communicate better.
It is very important to be able to speak well
so that we can clearly communicate what we
need, what we're requesting or what we just
simply want to discuss with another person.
For example, let's talk about numbers, and we're talking
about the number of people that we've invited to a party.
We've invited 15 people, but when we're talking to our roommate
and we say 15 but it sounds like 50, this is a very clear
way to not communicate clearly and it can be very confusing
to the other person when our pronunciation isn't clear.
Vowels are sounds that are made with the mouth open.
There are five vowels.
A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y.
Many vowel sounds can be broken into long sounds and short sounds.
The long sounds include A as in cake,
E as in feed, I as in ice,
and sometimes Y as in kayak,
O as in open and U as in cute.
The short vowel sounds include A as in cat, E as
in bed, I as in tin, O as in top,
U as in fun.
The other vowel sounds include the other U
as in U, other, the aw sound as in dog,
the oi sound as in join, the ow sound as
in loud, the schwa sound, u, as in algebra.
With short vowel sounds, the way that you know that the vowel that you
see makes a short vowel sound is that it follows a simple pattern.
Consonant, vowel, consonant.
Let's look at the word hat, H-A-T.
The A as a vowel is a short vowel sound, ah.
With long vowel sounds, there's typically
a silent E at the end of the word.
So, let's look at the word again, hat.
If we add an E to the end of the word, we have hate.
H-A-T-E, hate.
Hat, short vowel sound.
Hate, long vowel sound.
Let's look at another example.
Sit, S-I-T, has a short vowel sound.
I, sit.
Add an E to the end of sit, and we have
site, with the long vowel sound, I, site.
Diphthongs are sounds with two vowels.
For example, let's look at the word kayak.
The A and the Y make the I sound, kayak.
Let's look at the word for the number eight.
E-I-G-H-T.
The E and the I make the A sound.
Oi is another diphthong.
Let's look at the word Join.
The O and the I make the diphthong sound, oi.
The schwa sound is actually an important
sound in American English pronunciation.
It's not the most beautiful sound that you'll ever hear in your
life, but it is a very important part of our English language.
The schwa sound is, "uh."
The schwa sound can be made
of any vowel or a combination or diphthong of vowels.
Let's take a look at a couple of examples.
Let's look at the word Generous.
In the third syllable, the O-U diphthong makes a, "uh," sound.
Ge-ne-rous.
Let's look at the word photography.
Photography actually has two schwa
sounds in the first and third syllables.
Pho-tog-ra-phy photography.
In the word about the vowel "A" forms a schwa sound, a-bout.
In some words, American English speakers tend to cut out the schwa
sound if the schwa sound is a middle syllable in a word.
For example, let's look at the word chocolate.
We could say cho-co-late the way that it's spelled
or as we Americans normally do, we say chocolate.
We cut out the schwa sounds in the middle
and now it's only two syllables, chocolate.
Let's take a look at another example.
Camera.
Well, just like I just said we make it often into two
syllables instead of how it's spelled as three syllables.
We could say cam-er-a but we tend to take out
that middle schwa sound and just say camera.
Let's look at another example.
Separate.
We tend to make it two syllables instead
of the proper three syllables, sep-a-rate.
Instead, we say separate.
Common mistakes that English learners make with pronunciation include
getting confused between the vowel
sounds for the long vowel sound E and I.
For example, instead of saying private they say
prevate but the correct pronunciation is private.
Also, many English learners tend to get confused
with the numbers 15 and 50 because they have the I
there in the first syllable that "A" sound many English
learners tend to say fifti instead of fifteen.
When they say fiftii, it tends to sound like the number fifty which
is 50 hence a lot of confusion between the numbers 15 and 50.
English learners also mispronounce the word children.
I hear a lot of times children, children instead of the proper way
to pronounce it as children with a short "i" vowel sound, children.
Many English learners know
the difference of how to pronounce man
and men but they often get confused between woman and women.
Woman has a schwa sound in the second syllable
wom-an women does not have a schwa sound, women.
Man, men, wom-an, women.
Speaker 1: Hey guys thanks for watching.
Which of the English vowel sounds is the trickiest for you to pronounce?
Leave a comment and let us know.
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