Hadar Shemesh breaks down the vowel sounds in bed versus bad. Drop your jaw lower for bad, push your tongue forward, and pull your lip sides back. Practice with word pairs like set/sat and left/laughed to lock in the difference.
Questions this episode answers
191
2022-01-28
Hadar Accentsway
Chapters
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 we're going to talk about the vowel pair bed, bad. Right. As you can hear, these are two different vowels, but they're often pronounced the same by non native speakers. So first, let's understand what the differences are between the two vowels. So the first sound is very close to a neutral sound that exists in many languages, as in the words red, bed, head, set. The other vowel is a more open vowel. It's a front vowel. The tongue is pushing forward, as in the word can't. All right, so it's quite different. The quality of the sound is different. The mouth is really open for this one. As you can see, the sides of the lips are pulling. Right? The lips are pulling through the sides a little bit. The tongue is pushing forward. The front part of the tongue is flat. Happy. Right? It's not hippy. It's not happy, happy. I'd say that phonetically speaking, this a sound is somewhere between the E and the neutral. And. Okay, so cat. Again, happy. That bad. Now, when we compare them, it's really easy to see the shift between E, E, and A. All right, so you gotta drop your jaw. Sometimes we have a tendency of speaking really quickly and not opening our mouths. And therefore. Therefore the ah sound may come across as eh. All right. And then words like bad, sat, and laughed may sound like bed, set and left, or all right, so that's what we're practicing now with this distinction. Left, laughed, head, had, set, sat, send, sand, bed, bad. All right, great job. So practice this distinction. Don't forget to drop your jaw. Pull the lips a little bit, make it a front forward sound, and 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.
