Tag Archive for: #englishpronunciation #english #speakenglish #AmericanEnglish

Let’s meet and learn together! 7 days to go!

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It’s the first day of summer and let’s celebrate! Let’s meet next week and learn a slew of American English techniques using words that end in “ATE”.

In one hour, you will learn

  • 10 new vocabulary words and use them 20 different ways.
  • how to use your voice to indicate which part of the word the listener should hear the most.
  • how to pronounce two different vowel sounds. Pam will help coach you personally!
  • that it’s fun to learn together!

The class is Thursday, July 1st. so hurry!

choose class time:   10 am (EST)  or   5 pm (EST)

Email Pam quickly!   Limit 10 people per class

Class fee $20 usd.  Once you sign-up you will receive a PayPal link (for payment) and a Zoom class link .

Practice these two words in this week’s show. I have 18 more words to share with you. I can’t wait to hear how you sound!

 

 

Practicing 3 Vowel Sounds in Head-Hat-Hot

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The English spelling system has 5 letters that represent the vowels  A-E-I-O-U (and sometimes Y), but when talking, these vowels have at least 20-different vowel sounds!

Pronouncing English vowels are defined by changes made with the tongue, the degree of muscle tension (tense or relaxed), and lip movements. These tiny little changes make a BIG difference successfully communicating your intended words.  For example, the comparisons below show that if  you try to pronounce a word with one vowel sound, ex: head,  but pronounce the word with a different sound, the desired word may sound more like ‘had’, ‘hat’, or ‘hot’.   This week’s podcast will help you hear the differences and give you words to practice saying the differences.

Listen to Ep. 26  Pronouncing English With Pam Podcast

 

/ɛ/ This is a relaxed sound. Our mouth is open slightly, lips are neutral.
pen, men, slept, head, better

/æ/ tense sound (mouth open). lips are back slightly.
fast, had, slap, clap, man, pan, Pam

/ɑ/ tense sound (mouth is open the most), lips are forward a little or neutral.
stop, daughter, fought

Can you say these two words differently?

/ɛ/ – /æ/
head -had
men -man
guess- gas
said- sad
slept -slapped
end- and
then- than

/ɑ/- /æ/
hot-hat
mop-map
rock-rack

How did you do? Do you have difficulty hearing the difference between words?  Tell me in the comments below!

 

Pronouncing OY- EnjOY!

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Pronouncing American English vowel sounds requires a good description and model for you to imitate. After all, when vowel sounds are not accurately pronounced- the word will sound totally different than the one you intended! There are other times that vowels are surrounded by sounds that also can be difficult to form correctly.  In this lesson, you will practice both:  a two-part vowel sound AND a difficult concept…the final L sound.

I love writing these lessons and enjoy teaching to you the sounds that many require help with. I guess it’s not a coincidence that this week you will practice the word enJOY.

 https://youtu.be/FBDXuFLgSpM

We Celebrated! How To Pronounce Past Tense

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Today we Celebrate Our Anniversary! And yesterday we “celebrated”!  Since we are always talking about past events, let’s learn how to pronounce the -ED using the American English Pronunciation.  With regular verbs, we add an -ed to the verb to change the word to mean something that has happenED in the past. There are a few different ways to pronounce the ED sound, so to simplify this for you, here are the 2 most important pronunciation changes:

  1. If the verb ends in a T or a D, you will add an extra syllable at the end.

That extra syllable will sound like “did”

pound + ed (pounded) will sound like “poun-did” and wait + ed (waited) will sound like “wai + did”

2.   All other verbs will have a small sound at the end of the word.

cook + ed = “cookt”

play + ed = “playd”

Listen to this lesson and practice repeating after me.

And by the way, Happy Anniversary. It’s been 4 years since I have been recording my podcast. And thank you for listening!

Please comment below about  verbs + ed that  you have questions about.

PODCAST INCLUDED: Pronouncing “Address” and Other Street Names

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There are a two ways to say the word “address.” How do you know if you are pronouncing it correctly? Listen to this podcast and while we are at it, let’s talk about how to say the number of the address and which words to stress in street names.

Read more

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST-Understanding How To Pronounce Past-Tense -ED

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Congratulations to Us! We recorded 52 Podcasts in our free newsletter series

PODCAST- Can You Say These Words Without Swearing?

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Practicing these 4 words will help you stay out of trouble!

Those darn vowel sounds. That’s the difference between saying something perfect to saying something embarrassing.