A short instructional video by Hadar Shemesh explaining pronunciation differences among the words "except," "accept," and "expect" in American English. The speaker demonstrates syllable-by-syllable articulation, stress placement and common reductions in casual speech, and gives example sentences to show meaning and usage.
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Hello everyone. It's Hadar. And this is the accent's way, your way to finding clarity, confidence and freedom in English. Today I want to talk about the three words except accept, accept and expect. I know it may be complicated at first, but bear with me, I'll get you there. Let's begin with the two words except and accept. As you can hear, these are pretty similar. That's because the ending is actually absolutely the same. Sept. That's also the primary stress of the word. So the difference is in the beginning. In the word except, you begin with an as in sit vowel sound and then you move to a k sound ick ik the second syllable sept, an s sound and a p and a t. Sept Accept. In the word accept, you start with the a as in cat. Open mouth, pull your lips to the sides a bit, push your tongue forward. A and then again a k sound accept. Except accept, ick ack ick ack. Pretty different, right? However. And there is always a however hiding there somewhere. When you speak really quickly, the beginning of the two words may reduce to a schwa. And both words may sound the same. Except and accept. Alright, different meanings. You hear it in the context, but the pronunciation may be the same except to our purposes. Let's make the distinction between the two, accept and accept. Right? That way you are not mistaken. The difference between this word and the word expect is a bit more noticeable. Alright, listen to the difference. Except expect, expect. Here the difference is in the second syllable. So it begins the same. Except the second syllable is. And in the word expect, the second syllable is spect. So you have that p sound in the middle. So you compare sept versus spect. Right? That's pretty different. Sept. And then s. Close your lips for the p p, open it to the vowel and end it with sound and a t KT expect, Accept. Alright, so now let's look at all three words except. Except for me. Accept. Accept your offer and expect. I expect you to subscribe to my YouTube channel. Accept. Accept. Expect. Alright, I hope now it's a little clearer and the fog is dissolved from these three words. Alright, thank you for watching. Please share this video with your friends if you liked it. And do not forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel. You can also come on over and check out my website for more great content. And that's it. Thank you for watching and I will see you next week in the next video. Bye.
