In this American English pronunciation video, we're going to go over pronunciation of the
word 'yesterday'.
This week's Word of the Week is 'yesterday'. This is a three-syllable word with stress
on the first syllable. Yesterday, yesterday. It begins with the Y consonant sound, yy,
yy, where the front part of the tongue raises and touches the roof of the mouth here, yy.
The tongue tip stays down. Many Spanish speakers will want to say jj, jj, and make a jj sound
instead, with the tip of the tongue up. We want to keep the tip of the tongue down. Ye-,
ye-, ye-. Then we have the EH as in BED vowel. So, the jaw does need to drop for that. Ye-,
ye-. The syllable ends with the ST consonant cluster. Yest-, st, st, and then we have the
schwa/R sound. Yester-, yester-, er, er, er. It's unstressed, so it's going to be lower
in pitch, a little quieter, yester-, er. A lot of people will want to make this just
an 'uh' sound. Yest-uh, yest-uh. That's not right. To get the R sound, make sure your
tongue pulls back and up into that position. Yester-, yester-. And finally, -day. The D
consonant sound, and the AY as in SAY diphthong. Make sure you drop your jaw for the first
half of that diphthong. Da-, day, day. Yesterday. I got it yesterday.
That's it, your Word of the Week. Try it out yourself. Make up a sentence with the
word, record it, and post it as a video response to this video on YouTube. I can't wait to
watch it.
That's it, and thanks so much for using Rachel's English.