As a child I always used to be very confused every time I saw the letter “U” in any
English word. I somehow did not get the concept of U. I always use to curse the person, who
ever invented U. You see But is but, however Put is put, Unite is unite, however Untie
is untie, didn’t make sense to me. So I read, read, read, avoided, read and suddenly revelation happened.
Hi my name is Emmelda and today we will discover
how to pronounce “U” correctly in English. Let’s check out the sounds U can make. I’m
sorry, I’m not saying you can make, but the letter “U” can make. First sound is
“Uh” as in but, curl; this is pronounced as curl, duck… duck, lungs. When you say
the sound or when you bring out the sound “Uh”, feel your vocal cords, you will
feel a vibration, uh…, uh, your jaws are much relaxed. You don’t have to stress any
of your facial muscles, but you will feel a vibration here, uh, but, curl, duck, lungs,
church, umbrella, umbrella, untie, feel the vibration. So that’s the ‘uh’ sound,
but, curl, duck, lungs, church, umbrella, tummy, tuck as in tuck in. The next sound
that we have is the ‘u’ sound. It’s unlike the Oooo sound, it’s not the u sound,
but it is Ooh sound. It’s very small, doesn’t show they require your vocal cords much, your
jaw is slightly changed from a very relaxed position to u, look at my lips, it’s not
Oooo, but u, bush, could. Lot of people pronounce this word as Kud. “Kud have a glass of water
please “No its not Kud. Do not pronounce the “O”, but the “u” could, put or
push. Tuna, its Tuna and not toona. It’s not what you say as tune, aa, but it is tuna,
bush, could, put, tuna, cucumber. Then you have the next sound as the “You” sound.
It’s not u, its you. You need to focus on the Y here. You as in you or blue, blue, cute,
duke, united, uniform, unicorn, mute, flute. So these are the words which have you sound
and they are different than the u sound. When you say Pupil. This has the you sound, it
doesn’t have pupul. This word is push. It has Pu, this has Pu, however it has the you
sound, pupil, push. And there’s a reason why we have u verses U sound. We will explain
it later. So quick recap Uh, feel the vocal cord uh, but, curl, duck, lungs, church, dust,
tummy, tuck, u, push, bush, could, put, tuna, should, would. Concentrate on the u rather
than uh sound. The last is you, blue, cute, feel the you in it, feel the you sound in
it, blue as in U. Yeah that’s the sound, blue, cute, duke, united, mute. Let me explain
why there’s a difference between, Uh, u and you. You will have the sound you, when
there are few conditions met, first is U plus E becomes You, doesn’t really look quite
convincing, but I will tell you why? U is the most dependent vowel. In order for you
to bring that you sound, you will need to have another vowel attached to it. Possibly
it is the i sound; it is not ee, but i sound, short i sound or the short e sound. So it’s
u plus e is You, for example, blue, cute, duke, here it is that the sound y comes into
place. The second condition is, if you have a U, you have a consonant plus you have either
the E or the I alphabet, again the sound is very important. You’re focusing on the short
i sound. For example, the word uniform, united. Yes here’s an exception because you have
UN, the sound is I. The exceptional word will be unidentified. Then it becomes UN, however
most of the U and I becomes Uni or Unique. So U plus a consonant, plus the E sound or
the Ehh sound becomes or usually comes with as sound as uni. The second condition here
is that you need to have only two vowel sounds, uni as one and form as a second one, uniform.
Anything that is beyond it, for example, unidentified, so you have Uh sound, you have I sound, you
have Ehh sound, you have I sound again. Then it becomes the Uh sound. Otherwise most of
the times, if you have a word which has five or six letters, you have only two vowel sounds,
uni as one and second is the Uh sound. It becomes Uni, united, uniform. So that’s
about it. It’s a very simple straight forward U sound. We have just three sounds that you
can actually take as in Uh, but, curl, duck, lungs, mud, church, dust as in dusty shirt.
Then we have the Oooh sound. Please be very careful, my European friends tend to say this,
let me push it for you and do not push it for me or pull. Let me pool it for you, don’t
pull that word so much, just pull, pull. So it bush, could, put, tuna. Again notice this,
if you have words such as should, please concentrate on the U sound and not on the O sound. So
it’s could, but not cauld, could, should, would. The last sound that U actually has
is, blue, cute, duke, united. Reason why we have the U is either, U has to follow or U
has to come with E or U has to come with a consonant and a E sound moreover, the entire
word, should have less than two vowel sounds. So that’s about it. This is what we have
for you in this lesson. I come to end of this lesson. I hope you enjoyed learning with me.
Until I come back with a new lesson. Have fun, stay healthy and keep learning English.
Love you, see ya. Bye Bye.