A short American English pronunciation lesson by Hadar Shemesh explaining how to pronounce the words "ear," "year," and "here." The speaker gives step-by-step articulatory guidance (tongue position, lip shape, vocalic length) and contrasts the three words by adding the initial consonant sounds /j/ (Y) and /h/ to the base vowel sequence of "ear."
Chapters
Hi, it's hadar. And this is the accent's way, your way to finding clarity, confidence and freedom in English. Maria asked me to explain the difference between the two words 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 this 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. Ear. Do not blend the two sounds together because then it's going to sound something like ear, er, and then it's not clear. So make sure you pronounce a clear, clean E sound at the beginning. Ear. Also, it's a diphthong, so you hear it in the intonation. It's kind of like you're going down the steps in terms of pitch. Ear. Now, to make. To say the word year, we say basically ear, ear and add a Y 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. Y, Y, Y Year, year. And then you move it to the E sound. Basically it's not a big change from the year to the. It's pretty close, but you need to make that distinction. So it doesn't sound like year, year. Because then when you say I've been working there for the past three years, it just sounds weird. Son, get your hand in. Okay, we're done here. Thank you. Now let's talk about the word here, here as well. The basic word is ear, but we add a 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. Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please share it with your friends. And do not forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel and to my website. Come to my website and subscribe to get more great content every single week. Thank you for watching. I will see you next week in the next video. Bye.
