Hadar Shemesh breaks down the pronunciation differences between ear, year, and here. She shows where to place your tongue and lips for each vowel, explains how year adds a /j/ sound at the start, and gives you a sentence to practice with.
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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. Maria asked me to explain the difference between the two words and ear and year. So I decided to take on the challenge and throw in another word, the word hear. Alright, so the basic word here is ear, as in open your ears to pronounce this word. We begin with the E sound. To make the sound, push your tongue forward, pull the lips to the sides a bit and it's a long vowel. Then you relax the tongue down and bring the tip of the tongue up to make the R sound. Your lips a little bit at the end do not blend the two sounds together because then it's going to sound something like and then it's not clear. So make sure you pronounce a clear, clean E sound at the beginning. Also, it's a diphthong, so you hear it in the intonation, kind of like you're going down the steps in terms of pitch ear. Now, to say the word year, we say basically ear and add a J sound at the beginning, Y as in yes or yay yay Y. So bring the back of the tongue up and it's so close to the upper palate that you feel strong vibrations on the body of the tongue. And then you move it to the E sound. Basically it's not a big change from the to the. It's pretty close, but you need to make that distinction so it doesn't sound like ear yr, because then when you say I've been working there for the past three years, it just sounds weird. Now let's talk about the word here here as well. The basic word is ear, but we add a H sound, like an H sound here. Now, since the body of the tongue is already high, getting ready for the high E. Then it sounds like. Do you hear it here? It's like the ich sound in German. It's not a regular here, it's here. It's like tight, tense sound here. Alright, so we have ear year and here. That's it. Okay, that was your how to Pronounce Friday episode. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you like the podcast, then consider subscribing to the podcast. And if you feel really crazy, you can even rate and review the podcast. And you can find me at Hadar Accentsway on Instagram where you can DM me and ask for all the crazy, fancy, confusing words that you'd like to know how to pronounce. Have a beautiful day, and I'll see you next time.
