Hey everyone! welcome back to my channel I hope you're doing well
in today's video I'm going to teach you all about the sound /æ/ it's a vowel in American English and
I want you to know that this video is one video in a series of pronunciation videos that I have
here on my channel so if you found this video helpful please subscribe so that you don't miss
any of those videos in this series before we get to that sound I want to let you know
that a lot of English learners will focus on the individual sounds of English but the individual
sounds is actually not the most important part of pronunciation what's more important is intonation
word stress and sentence stress those things will help you to be more understandable but learning
the individual sounds also can help you feel more confident and even improve your listening
I wanted to focus on this sound today because the sound add doesn't exist in many languages around
the world so what that means is that this vowel probably doesn't exist in your first language
and that means that many English learners will replace the a sound with another sound like maybe
/æ/ so for example when you say the word bad do you say it with the a vowel or are you replacing
that a sound with another sound that's easier for you to make but learning the a sound can help you
to feel more confident and help you sound more native if that's your goal so let's start with
how to make the a sound when you make this vowel you want to remember two important things low and
front so let me explain what that means the vowel at is what's called a front low vowel
that means that it's made with the tongue in the front of the mouth and with the jaw low so
in English we have five front vowels I want you to notice how my jaw drops when I make those vowels
so the first one /iy/ is in the word beat
/I/ is in the word bit /ey/ is in the word eight /Ɛ/ is in the word bed and /æ/ is in the word bad
so you can see how the jaw drops to make the /æ/ vowel low again if I go through those five vowels
also it's called a front vowel because the tip of my tongue is in the front of the mouth and
for the vowel /æ/ the tip of my tongue actually touches the lower teeth so behind my lower
teeth is where the tip of my tongue is sitting you want to make sure that your tongue stays
wide and that you allow the jaw to drop not too much your mouth doesn't need to open a lot
maybe an inch or so but the jaw does need to drop enough that the sound /æ/ is clear so
let's practice with some common words that have the vowel /æ/ and you can repeat after me act
bad
bat pack
path set
math fat hat laughs
back last bath pass have can't
now let's try with a few longer words these are words that have more than one syllable plastic
chapter
relax now this word has two related forms relaxed
and relaxing so you can say for example yesterday I relaxed all day or this music is relaxing
nasty
taxes happen
haven't
strategy now let's look at what happens when we have the a vowel before an n or an m and you'll
notice that the a vowel sounds a little longer and that there is a little change in the vowel
um that happens so what we do is we make the sound /æ/ and then we start to move up to make the
m or the m sound so listen to this one can you'll notice that instead of saying can we say can can
can so let's practice some examples fan
am
Andy sand land ham hand candy
and let's try the a sound in some short phrases or sentences the last chapter in our math book
I just finished our taxes and now it's time to relax
I bought a bag of candy and a pack of gum a plastic bag
Can you give me a hand?
notice that the modal verb can here is reduced to /kuhn/ and that's a rule that I'll talk about
in another video but usually the modal verb can is not pronounced clearly with an /æ/ vowel it's
usually pronounced like /uh/ because it's reduced can you give me a hand finally let's practice with
another vowel that's similar to the vowel /æ/ but it's an important one because we need to know the
difference between the vowel and the vowel because they are similar but they are completely different
for native speakers of English so the vowel /Ɛ/ as in bed is similar because it's also a front vowel
and it's like one step higher than /æ/ so look at the difference bed bad bet
bat so the sound /Ɛ/ is with the mouth just a little more closed and then the sound /æ/ you
have to lower your jaw a little bit more so let's practice the difference between those two bed bad
bet bat
lend land pen pan
head had x axe
pets pats left left
so I hope this overview of the vowel /æ/ was helpful for you
in the comments below I have a question for you that you can answer about this vowel
and if you found this video helpful please hit the notification bell so that you don't
miss any more upcoming videos thanks so much take care and see you soon!