hi there i'm christine dunbar from speechmodification.com and this is
my smart american accent training in this video we'll look at how to pronounce the word jewelry
this is part of our word of the day series if you have a request you'd like to see included
in the series please feel free to leave that in the comments for this video or any of my videos
this is a challenging word to pronounce and i know that many people may argue
about different ways of pronouncing it so i'm going to show you two different ways that you
can say this word correctly and then i'll let you know which one i prefer and why so
the word jewelry looks like it has three syllables jewellery and i can say it with three syllables
and that's probably a good way to practice to get all the sounds correct in this word so breaking
that down that way i would have the first syllable like joo um and the j sound it this is a symbol
for it this is the stressed syllable so either way i say this word the jew part is going to be long
i want to have a clear ooh vowel there you can build it from the u and then add in the j
ju and then if i make it three syllables i'm going to have an o syllable that's a dark l
so there's a little bit of a schwa sound like uh and then i lift to my tongue to make the l
all oh the difference between the dark l and the light l is that the light l starts a word
it sounds like light or like and my whole tongue can lift up when i'm doing jewel
or ball tall the back of my tongue stays down in the uh position and just the front lifts behind
the teeth to make the l so trying and then finally my last syllable has the tense e vowel and the
american r sound re re if you have challenges with the l or the r you may want to work on
those sounds separately in other simpler words before you try to put them in the word jewelry
you can see how when i just said that there i did say jewelry i did say all of those sounds
but i didn't really say it as jewelry i didn't have much of this w sound connecting when we have
vowels next to each other in words we often link them with a glide sound so going from an
oo to an uh my mouth is in the round w shape and so that's why we have that w spelling jew wool
going from the ooh to the o i end up with the glide w sound in there so i can say that jewelry
and it'll be correct but americans can say this sound native speakers fairly smoothly and quickly
and that's the place where it gets reduced a little bit so it might sound more like jewel
jewel they glide right through that jew wool more quickly and it sounds like jewel
and so when i get more comfortable with these sounds i'm probably going to say this word as
jewelry jewelry again i'm still making the same sounds but that those first two syllables are
very quick they function almost just as one syllable when i can say jewelry by itself
easily and fluently i want to start trying to practice it in some short phrases and sentences
you might find that if you go slowly you build up the word you can do the word by itself and
then when you go to speak you may still stumble over this word or find it challenging because it
is a challenging word with those combinations of sounds so practicing it at different levels
is going to help you be able to use it more effectively and correctly let's try a few phrases
i don't typically wear jewelry she keeps her jewelry in a jewelry box
jewelry is a difficult word to pronounce um i design and sell jewelry um he is meeting me at the
jewelry store so those are just some examples you can make up your own sentences as well to practice
i hope this helped you with this challenging word jewelry jewelry see i just had a little um
mispronunciation there it's it's hard to go from the all to the er because the oh
my tongue is in the front and the er my tongue is in the back and the sequencing
going through those sounds is challenging for native speakers and non-native speakers alike
thanks so much for watching this video and for the great suggestions you've had for our word of the
day series as i said in the beginning if you have a request or suggestion do feel free to leave that
in the comments and i'll make a video for you it will be a while before your video comes out
because we do have a nice long list of requests and suggestions so if you can't wait and you want
your word covered sooner you can attend our friday live question and answer classes where we talk
about pronunciation of words sentences intonation anything to help you improve your overall
personal and professional communication in american english i'll be back again tomorrow
with another word of the day series and i said as i said on friday with our live question and answer
class i hope to see you there i'm christine dunbar from speechmodification.com remember
if you want to sound american you can do it speechmodification.com bye guys see you tomorrow