How to pronounce THANKS | American English

12 Jul 2016 · 2 min

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1:46

A short YouTube tutorial by Hadar Shemesh teaching how to pronounce the common English word "thanks." The video gives a step-by-step articulatory guide: begin with the voiced dental fricative (th) by sticking the tongue out and releasing air; produce a modified A (more e-like/diphthong) before the -ng; form the nasal -ng with the back of the tongue and nasal airflow; release to a quick k and finish with s — combining to pronounced "thanks." The speaker also contrasts common mispronunciations ("tanks", "fangs") and ends with a brief call-to-action (share/subscribe).

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Hi. It's hadar. And this is the accent's way. Your way to finding clarity, confidence and freedom in English. Let's talk about the word thanks. Very common word, right? So let's learn how to pronounce it. We begin with a th sound. To make this sound, stick the tongue out and release air. The tongue has to be very soft in the sound. Otherwise if it's too tight against the teeth, it's going to sound like T. Tanks. Tanks. And then it's a different word. Also, make sure that the tongue is out. Otherwise you may be pronouncing it as an S. And that's also different. You want to stick the tongue out and release air. Thanks. Then we shift to an A, as in cat. But when the A appears before an ng, that is the following sound. The A is modified to an e vowel. It is different. It's more rounded. It's a longer diphthong. Fay. Fay. All right. It's not fangs. Then we move on to an ng sound. So the back of the tongue is high up and we release air through the nose. Then we quickly release it to a K sound. And then immediately the S. Thanks. Nx that's the ending. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you. Alright, that's it. That was short. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please share it with your friends. And do not forget to subscribe if you haven't yet. Have a wonderful week and I will see you next week in the next video. Bye.