Pronunciation Of Clothes in English

A short YouTube tutorial (Hadar Shemesh) explaining how to pronounce the English word "clothes". The speaker breaks the word into sounds (clo- with K→L, long O, and final th), demonstrates common articulatory difficulties, and gives a practical reduction: many speakers pronounce "clothes" as "close."
Chapters
Hi, it's Hadar. And this is the accent's way, your way to finding clarity, confidence, and freedom in English. Demi asked me to make a video for her students on the word clothes. It's a great word because I have a fantastic tip for you guys that will make the pronunciation of this word really simple. The beginning of the word starts with clo. Clo. It's a K sound. Shifting to an L. The tongue goes up to touch the upper palate. Cool. The tongue is heavy here. It's a heavy L. Cool. And then a long O, O, O as in go clo. Clothes. All right? So you start with your mouth open and you close it to an oo, Clothes. So it's not clause, all right? You don't want to pronounce it just like a sound. It's clothes. Think like you're adding a little w at the end. The end of the word is a th sound. Clothes. Now, if you tried making it with me now, you probably feel that it's a little challenging, right? The tongue gets stuck, and then it's hard to shift from the tongue being out to the Z sound. True. It is a difficult transition. That's why you can drop the th, and instead of saying clothes, you can say close. Close. Just like close the door. Close. So even Americans reduce this word to close because it's definitely easier and quicker to pronounce close. Now, let me say one word about this. The word close. Make sure that you don't confuse that with the word close. All right? You have two words here with the same spelling pattern. Close the door, the verb. And also the way to say the word clothes when it's reduced. Close. And then you have close, the adverb. I'm sitting close to you. Close. I'm sitting close. Close. Close the door, or close. I'm wearing new clothes. Clothes. All right, that's it. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please share it with your friends. And don't forget to subscribe if you haven't yet. That's it. Thank you for watching. I'll see you next week in the next video. Bye.
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