A short spoken pronunciation lesson (YouTube) by Hadar Shemesh explaining how to pronounce the word "foreigner" in American English. The host credits a viewer (Abbott Rahim), identifies the central phonetic principle as the schwa (reduction of unstressed vowels), and gives step-by-step articulatory guidance for each syllable (for-ə-nər), plus example uses ("a foreign language", "she's a foreigner").
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Hey guys, it's Hadar. And this is the accents way. And today Abbott Rahim asked me to talk about the word foreigner. He says that he keeps saying it as foreigner. And in fact I've heard a lot of people saying it this way and I've heard foreigner as well, or foreigner. And you know what? I have one word for you. Schwa. Because it's all one big schwa. There is no e and there is no e. It's all reduced except for the first syllable. So let's start. You begin with the for, as in door, as in norm. Okay, four. You start with an F sound and then create an sound by dropping your jaw, raising the back of the tongue and rounding the lips just a bit. Make sure not to bring the tongue up for the R too quickly because then it's going to sound like ferner, Ferner. And that's a different sound and the whole word will sound just like one big R. Okay? So drop your jaw, keep your tongue down, fall, fall. And then bring the tongue up round your lips. Make sure that the sides of the tongue touch the insides of the upper teeth and release it to a schwa. R. R. That's it. That's the middle syllable. R. So simple, so short. Foreru. Ner. So that's an N sound. Another schwa blended with the R. So here you do want to bring the tongue up immediately after the N. It's not nair. There is no S sound here. Nur. Foreigner. Some people may pronounce it with a more open sound, but fa. Foreigner. Okay, but most people will reduce it and round the lips for an as in door. Foreigner, Foreigner. Or on the other hand, we have the word foreign. I'm speaking a foreign language or she's a foreigner or I'm no longer a foreigner. Okay, that's it. I think this word is relevant for all of us because we're all foreigners and we are proud of being a foreigner. So we need to know how to say it. Foreign. Okay, so that's it. Thank you for watching. Please share this video with your friends if you liked it and come over to my website to check it out and get more great stuff that is just sitting and waiting for you there. Okay, so go check it out. Have a great week and I will see you next week in the next video. Bye.
