Short YouTube pronunciation lesson by Hadar Shemesh explaining how to pronounce the English word “luxury.” The speaker breaks the word into component sounds (L → vowel like cup → voiced /ʒ/ as in vision → schwa → r + vowel), contrasts voiced /ʒ/ vs voiceless /ʃ/ (vision vs shame), and gives articulatory tips (hand-on-throat to feel vocal-cord vibration) plus practice repetitions and closing CTAs.
Chapters
Hey, it's raar. And this is the accent's way, your way to finding clarity, confidence and freedom in English. Slavomir asked me to explain how to pronounce the word luxury. Luxury. Now here's a perfect example where spelling and pronunciation do not correspond because you're used to probably associating the letter X with X as in the word extra, right? You hear a K and a S sound. And here the X in the word luxury stands for. All right, what's the connection? I have no idea, but that's just how it is. So let's break down the different sounds in this word. So we begin with an L sound. The tongue goes up to pronounce the L, right? It's a bit of a longer sound l and then it's the as in cup. Just like the word love, right? The beginning is the same L, but then you shift to a G in the back lug and bring the tongue back up to as in vision. The sound, by the way, is the voiced pair of sh. Listen. Sh. Do you hear the difference? So if you find yourself saying luxury, luxury. I know that Spanish speakers may do that and some Hindi speakers may do that. Just devoice the sound and then it sounds like sh, as in the word shame. All right? It's not the same sound. So you want to activate your vocal cords. Luxury. Now, how do you activate your vocal cords? Put your hands here for a sec and do an F sound. And now a V. Do it again. All right, so you probably felt the vibrations here in your throat. That's the vocal cords vibrating. So for the F sound, you just release air. And for the V sound, you release air with sound F, V. And you haven't changed anything here. Same thing with the. And for the sound, the tongue is up and the air comes out and it's just air. And if you put your hands here and activate your vocal cords like you do for the V, you feel the vibrations and then what comes out is this sound, as in the word luxury or vision. All right, so let's try it again. Lug J. After the sound, there's a schwa. Then you bring the tongue up for the R round your lips and then it's the E as in C. Re. Luxury. Luxury. All right, so it shouldn't sound like luxury. Luxury with a K and a sh. It's voiced luxury. Alright, that's it. So that was a quick lesson on how to pronounce the word luxury and the difference between sh and that's it. Have a wonderful week. Come on over to my website and check it out for more great content and I will see you next week in the next video. And don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel. Alright, bye.
