hi everyone and welcome back to my channel in today's video I'm going to give you a short but
important pronunciation lesson about two very common vowel sounds in English it's the sounds
/ʌ/ and /a/ so you probably know that English pronunciation is difficult in part
because English has about 14 or 15 vowel sounds the number of vowel sounds depends on the dialect
of English that people speak but usually it's between 14 and 15 different vowel sounds and
often the spelling doesn't really help you to know which vowel sound it is so for these really common
vowel sounds it is important to be able to hear the difference between them and then to practice
saying the difference between them so that you can pronounce words clearly that will help people
understand you this is especially important if you need to use your English for like important
situations such as for school or work where you need to pronounce words clearly and carefully
so first in today's video I'm going to show you the difference between these two vowel sounds I'll
explain how to make them we're going to practice with some example words and then at the end of
the video I'm going to give you a quiz so make sure you stay all the way until the end first of
all the sound /ʌ/ this is the most common vowel sound in English so this is a super important
one to know and it's also quite easy to make what you do is you just open your mouth a little bit
you don't have to do anything special with your tongue or your lips so you can practice
this by starting with your mouth closed and then open your mouth just a little bit /ʌ/
that's the sound you probably also know the schwa vowel and you know
in some dialects of English there is a bit of a difference between this one and the schwa in other
ones it's basically the same don't worry about that that will probably just confuse you more
but this one is used for the sound when the sound is stressed okay the other vowel
is the vowel /a/ and to make the sound /a/ you're gonna open your mouth more /a/ /a/
what happens when you open your mouth is that your tongue drops in your mouth you don't really have
to think about that but that's what happens when you open your mouth your tongue will automatically
drop you also want to make sure that your tongue is kind of leaning toward the back
not going to the front if you go to the front you're going to say the vowel a
we don't want to say a as in cat we want to say /a/ /a/ most languages have this /a/ sound so
this one is probably not hard for you okay let's check the difference between them /a/
Can you see that my mouth is more open for this one?
okay let's practice some example words first we have hut
hot I wanted to start with this one because a common mistake that English learners make is
that they see the o and they want to say but it's this is not an o sound it's the sound /a/ hot hot
next bucks this is the slang word that we use for dollars like five bucks bucks box
color
color this word collar is the top of your shirt collar
shut shot
luck lock
cup cop now cop is a informal word that means police officer
nut not I have two spellings here because we have two words that sound like not
police okay so this one notice that what happens here is that this vowel is not stressed so we're
not going to say police we're going to say police and this is an example where
this vowel is usually written as the schwa vowel but it sounds basically the same as /ʌ/
police and policy policy what happens here this is stressed so it's a clear /a/ sound police policy
okay let's go through them one more time quickly and then we'll do the quiz
so again for the sound /ʌ/ we have hut bucks color shut
luck cup nut police and for the /a/ vowel you're going to open your mouth bigger hot box
collar shot lock cop not policy okay now let's do a little quiz so you can get out
a piece of paper if you want to and I'm going to say some words and this is a dictation so
I want you to write down the word and then you're going to decide is it with the sound
or /a/ let's do the first one together honest honest so you're gonna write down the word honest
and you're to identify that it is the vowel /a/ honest let's try a few more and you can just press
pause between each word because you'll probably need more time to write down the words come
come
next one other
other
dollars
dollars next one one one
double
odd
next one cousin
cousin
the next one is college
college
and the last one office
office
okay let's check our answers the first word was honest and that sounds
like /a/ so I'm gonna put it here the next one was the word come come and that sounds like /ʌ/
come the next one was other other does it sound like /ʌ/ or /a/? other sounds like a
other next we have dollars dollars dollars sounds like /a/
next we have one one there are two different spellings for this but it is the sound
/ʌ/ it can be one like the past tense of win or the number one okay next we have double double
double sounds like a double next we have odd and this is like strange or unusual or weird
odd odd is the vowel /a/ odd okay next we have cousin cousin cousin sounds like /ʌ/
sorry that's a little messy it should be c-o okay the last two college college college sounds
like /a/ and finally office office also sounds like /a/ so I chose these words for two reasons
one is that they are all common words but the second reason is that I wanted you to notice
that the spelling doesn't always help you often words that have the vowel /ʌ/ are spelled with a u
but not always you can see that all of these words are spelled with o or o u but they sound like /ʌ/
and we can notice that often usually the sound /a/ is spelled with an o but notice that o can
also sound like /ʌ/ of course you know that spelling in English is tricky so that's not
surprising let me know in the comments below what other words with /ʌ/ and /a/ you can think of and
if you have questions please don't hesitate to ask take care and I'll see you again soon!