My dear fry-end! Plis take a seat here. Bring down you sit and seat here. Let me geeve you
a shit of paper. Continue writing. Once you are done, you can peen it over here.... Some
of you may have guessed what I said and some of you may not. What do you think went wrong
in this? Any guesses? Right! I mixed up the E and I sound...
Hi, my name is Emmelda and today we’ll be exploring how the letter I is pronounced in
English. I is very different than any other vowel. A lot of people get confused with I,
especially, if you are European, because you pronounce this as E, which is true. Sometimes
I is pronounced as E, but English has many words and I takes many sounds. So let’s
explore few sounds. The first sound is of I. Its what we have on our face, like I. Remember,
I as your eye. Yeah! or when you say to the captain of the ship “ Aye aye sir!” SO
that’s the sound. I! Notice my mouth here. I go…I open my mouth very big then I come
back. I So this is I, Let’s see few words Blind. Its Bl..I or eye..nd. Blind.
The I is very very prominent in this sound. Blind. The next word is Child. Again. I am
gonna go very slow in the beginning and use my muscles, my facial muscles as much as I
can, so that you get a clearer understanding. But when I am gonna speak it again or gonna
call these words again I’ll go on a regular rate of speech so you how it sounds when people
are actually talking to you. Child; yes, its child. Ok. Its Ch-i-ld. Child. Dime. D-i-me.
Please don’t say it…pronounce this as da-eem. Its not da-eem but dime. Silent S..i..lent.
Silent. Blind, child, dime, silent. Now let’s see how many other words we can come up with.
For example with F; we say find and we don’t say feend. We say find. Or, hive like in bee-hive.
E..F..G as in I will not say G…as in few other words.. Hmm.. Sign or mine or the number
nine or a glass of wine. Europeans like wine. so its wine. So its wine, sign, shine, blind,
child, dime…Silent. Dime as in the ten cent coin in US. Dime and not da-eem. It’s not
daeem. Silent. So, I hope you are able to understand this sound. It’s the eye as in
your eye or ‘aye-aye captain’, if that helps you. Moving on to the next sound in
e. it’s not ee but e; make it shorter, e. For example, Finger, Fing..ger , finger. very
small! Ginger; gin-ger, ginger, whichever, ginger. Kindle, okay? Now I know K I N D becomes
kind, but again you have many words where I takes many roles. Kindle and not kind-el.
Kindle. The next is picture; Pic-chu, picture. Okay, Its Pik-chuh. Can you come up with some
name, which have the e sound, for example, Hollywood celebrities like Jennifer, Jennifer…Jennifer
lawrence or Brad Pitt. Pitt. So it’s the e sound and not the ee sound. So you never
call jeneefir or jane-fur, you say Jennifer . you say..you don’t say Brad Peet, but
you say Brad Pitt. So, the e sound will like finger, ginger, kindle, picture, Tim or king.
So it’s a e sound. Moving on to the third sound is the Uh sound. For example, yeah…some
people don’t really…the moment I say get me a word where I sound like uh, nobody can
guess it very quickly because you don’t really realize it where I can take the Uh
sound. Let’s see… firm, its not ferum, its not something, you wont say it…you wont
say it like film. Yes, FILM becomes film but FIRM becomes firm. Firm. Ok? Moving on is
a bird…b-uh..rd ok or b-ir-d. Mission. Notice we have both the I sounds here. We have mi-sh-ion
or rather I would say its mission, mi-ssion. Mission. Condition. A lot of European friends
of mine always mispronounce this as condicion, because lot of European language has this
word Condicion and it mean…it mean pretty much same of the word condition. I guess it
was taken from those languages. But this is condition; you don’t pronounce this is as
eeon. We do… If you go to Singapore, you will have this thing called ION Orchard. It’s
pronounced as ION Orchard, but this is noun. In other words, generally, ion comes as un.
So my dear European friend, please do not pronounce this word as condicion or con-dici-on
but as condition. I guess you must be thinking like why…how? How can I remember so much,
it’s so overwhelming. Yes I can help you with that as well. Now let’s know when I
takes the uh sound. I takes the Uh sound when there are two rules. First rule is when I
comes with R and a consonant. Notice this word, its I R and consonant. Or if its only
I and R. For example, Sir, bird. You have word such as girl, shirt. So I R and a consonant
sounds like uh. Then second rule would be when I and ON. The moment you see I and ON
together, automatically you will get the uh sound. For example, mission, condition. Look
at this mission, condition or another word would be fiction, if you like fiction books.
So two rules: I R or I ON gets the uh sound. I hope you can clear idea where I takes so
many roles. But, let me get you some examples where so many people actually mispronounce
them and they confuse it with the E sound. It’s Seat, as in your chair or a sofa, seat.
But when you sit on them, its sit. Seat has EE, sit has only it sound. Neat…knit. Feet…its
actually knit, when you try to knit something. So, it’s Neat and knit. You don’t neat
a sweater, you knit a sweater. Feet as in your legs, feet and fit. Your, you think your
body is quiet fit. Last is seeing. I am seeing but I am also singing. So it’s seeing and
singing. So that’s about it. It was a very short lesson, very straightforward. I know
it will be little difficult to understand or comprehend everything in the beginning.
I would recommend you to read as much as you can. We have come to the end of our lesson.
I really hope you enjoyed it. If so, please invite your friends to view this lesson. Until
I come back with a new lesson, stay healthy and have fun learning English. See yeah!