Hadar Shemesh breaks down three ways to pronounce "toward": with or without a schwa, and with or without the /w/ sound. She gives phonetic tips and an example sentence for each variant.
Welcome to the Influency podcast. I'm Hadar and this is how to Pronounce Friday, where we take a confusing word or word pair. We learn how to pronounce it and how to use it with confidence. Let's get started.
Today I want to talk to you about the word toward. Toward. There are actually three different ways to say this word. With a schwa and a w. Toward. Without a schwa, toward. Without a w, toward. And that's how I like to pronounce it because it's the easiest pronunciation. Alright, Tord. We begin with a T sound and since it's the beginning, it's a strong aspirated T. So it feels like there is a little h after t and then it's the or, as in for tor, toward. Now the or vowel is a diphthong. So you round your lips, drop your jaw and the back of the tongue rises up. And only then you start to close your jaw and lift the tongue up for the R. Toward. Toward. If you don't allow the vowel to be before raising the tongue up for the R to tore, then it's going to sound like tur. Turd. And you don't want it to sound like turd. All right, so tore. And then you bring the tongue up for the D to. Now you can also say towards and then you just add a little Z sound at the end, towards. But in American English, the word toward is more common. I walk towards the door. Alright, that's it. Come on over to my website to check it out and get more great content every single week.
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