Hello everybody, welcome back to Pronunciation with Emma. In this video we're going to be
looking at that really horrible sound /ɜː/. Now I think this is the one sound that most
students have the most difficult time with and that's simply because they're being influenced
by the spelling. So let's go through how to pronounce the sound, how to pronounce it in
words, and then we'll look at some sentences together. So for this sound I want you to
completely relax your mouth. Relax your mouth, your jaw, your tongue does nothing, and just
produce a long sound. /ɜː/. That's pretty much the sound. For example, earn, earn. What
a lot of students tend to do is they get influenced by the spelling, and they try and pronounce
the r. There is no problem whatsoever if you pronounce that r, and if you say "earn" or
"earn", it's absolutely fine, it doesn't matter, people will understand you. However, what
people do have a problem with is the vowel so a word like earn, a lot of students just
take the vowel and they try and pronounce it something like "earn" or "earn" which I've
heard and it's really quite difficult so you're making more work for yourself. So, be careful.
So take the vowel, /ɜː/, and just stick an /n/ at the end of it for this word, earn,
earn. I'm not pronouncing the r, in British English we don't pronounce the r, in American
they do and in some other varieties of British English and other varieties of English as
well they do pronounce the r, however, what I'm showing you is RP, that stands for Received
Pronunciation. It is the variety of English that you will see written in the dictionary.
So that's the first one, earn, earn. Another one, early, early. Again, I'm not pronouncing
that r. I do hear students saying "early", that's fine, or "early", that's fine-ish be
careful with the vowel. Early, early. Another one, urgent, urgent, again, no r. Urgent.
Now, this is where it gets a little bit trickier. We're gonna look at this sound in medial position.
Girl, girl. Now this is a really common word and I know many people get frustrated by that
fact alone, actually. But it can be quite tricky. You've got that r sound and then you've
got what's called a "dark L". A dark L is not always present in other languages, but
it does happen quite a lot in English. It is that L sound that happens after a vowel.
However, notice that I don't say "girl". Okay, I don't release it like a "light L", which
you would find before a vowel, in words like "light", "lucky". Okay? I release it, L. While
a dark L, I don't, I hold it. Girl. I don't release it. Girl. No. Girl. I hold it. So
you've got that vowel /ɜː/, forget the r /gɜː/, girl. Hold that L, that dark L. Girl,
girl. Another one, world. Again, that dark L, /wɜːl/ and then you need to release that
for the D sound at the end. World. World. Forget the r and be careful with that O. A
lot of people say "world" or "world". I have heard this vowel pronounced pretty much every
single way, so be careful. World. And then another one, another tricky one. Word, word.
Now this one is a little bit easier than "girl" and "world" because you don't have that dark
L. Word. Word. Careful you're not pronouncing it "ward", and you're not getting influenced
by that O. If you say it like "ward" then you're saying a different word. Word. Now
in final position, per, per. Again, no r. Per. Fur, fur, fur, no r again. And the last
one, her, her. Again, no r. Not "her" or "her". Again, if you pronounce it with that r it's
fine, we will understand you, but if you want that accent and you want to soften your own
accent and sound a little bit more British then removing that r is what you can do to
f... well... not fix that cause nothing is broken, but what you can do is remove that
r and you can sound a little bit more native. Okay, now for some sentences. It's her purse,
it's her purse, it's her purse. World is a difficult word to say, world is a difficult
word to say, world is a difficult word to say. That's the end of this video, thank you
very much for watching, I hope you've learnt something new. If you have, then just press
the "like" button down below, that would be very kind of you. If you are interested in
improving your British pronunciation and accent then I do make videos every single week. They
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