hey everybody Jennifer from Tarle Speech with your pronunciation question
today's question um the word is not very common it's how do I say the word
potluck which is when everyone makes a food at home and then they bring it to a
party and bad luck which means you're just not finding success so let's go
ahead and take a look at these words we have pot luck and bad luck so number one
we're going to start with compound nouns if you've watched some of my videos you
know that you stress word number one in a compound noun and the second word is
less stressed and then you're going to link those words together meaning there
is no pause between the words so we're going to have pot luck and bad luck so
pot luck bad luck the second point of confusion here is the vowel and the
voiceless T versus the vowel and the voiced D so for the word pot let's take
a look at that the middle sound here the oh is wide open in an oval oh hot and
then we're going to end that word by touching the tip of the tongue to the
back of the top front teeth pot pot yes we're not going to pull the tongue down
and a way we're not going to explode that sound so we have pot pot next we have
the word bad bad and to say this word we're going to have that short a sound
that ah and our mouth is gonna be more in a wide circle for both of these
sounds your tongue is going to be lower in your mouth with the back of your
tongue pulled up but for most people if you just focus on what your lips you're
doing that's so much easier than thinking about actually where your
tongue is so we're going to have bad and we're gonna end that again with the
D sound but we're not going to explode it so how do you know what the
difference is here the key is vowel length for word number one sound 1 the P
is not voiced and sound 3 that T the last sound is not voiced as well so this
vowel is going to sound much shorter shouldn't say much shorter most people
are going to put a comment in and say those sound exactly the same to me but
if you really listen this vowel is going to be shorter than the vowel in bad and
the reason is is because we have a voiced sound here and a voiced sound
here at the end when we have two voiced sounds sort of sandwiching that vowel in
the middle that vowel is going to sound longer because all vowels are voiced so
listen to these two words pot bad pot bad pot bad again let's listen one more
time and try to say them at normal speed pot bad so then we combine those
together we're going to say pot luck bad luck pot luck bad luck pot luck bad luck
I've had bad luck at potluck dinners because I always bring something people
don't like so I've had bad luck at potluck dinners because I always bring
something that people don't like give it a try I know people are going to notice
the difference if you found this helpful we'd love a like and a share don't
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our classes at tarle speech thanks so much I'll see you soon