🗣Sounds | Core Training with Hadar

Hello everyone. Hello. Welcome to our English Pronunciation Made simple training. We are here for a five day training and I'm so happy and honored to guide you through this training. I am super thrilled, very excited. I'm going to wait for everyone to join. Say hi in the comments so I know that you're here. We are now broadcasting to people around the world who are super passionate about English and about or maybe they will be super passionate about pronunciation after these five days. So I'm super happy to have you here. I'm going to wait another minute for everyone to join. In the meantime, let me know in the chat where you are joining me from and you can also add what time it is for you. And if you want to get really fancy, put one word that describes how you're feeling right now as we're entering the training day. 1. Welcome, welcome, welcome everyone. Okay, so we have from Czechia and Miami and Colombia. Sorry, it goes by so quickly I cannot read your names. We have Sandra from Brazil and we have guests from Egypt and Haiti, Indonesia, Italy, Switzerland, Texas, China. 9:00pm in China. Amazing. Iran, Brazil. Okay, so welcome wherever you are connecting to us from. Welcome. I'm honored to have you here and I cannot wait to start sharing with you all the things that can help you speak English with clarity, confidence and freedom and that will help you simplify pronunciation and the way you think about it in how you organize it in your brain, but also in how you use it and practice it. So this is why we are here today. Day one. We are going to talk about sound and here is what we are going to do. We are going to talk about speech sounds. What are speech sounds? And let me just make sure that you can see me properly and see the slides. So what are speech sounds? We're also going to talk about ipa. What is ipa? The International Phonetic Alphabet. What are syllables? It's really important to understand what syllables are to be able to as you're learning pronunciation. And then we're going to get to the fun part that I highly recommend for all of you to stay until that part where we're going to talk about how to reverse engineer your accent and know what to focus on. This is probably the most important part of this training because in this part you are going to learn how to how to identify your own challenges. And then we're going to talk about five steps to mastering any sound in English. All right, so let's get started with what are speech sounds for now for all of you who are joining us live, let me know in the chat. What you think speech sounds are. Okay, what do you think speech sounds are? I'm going to give you the answer. In the meantime, you can type in your answer and how you think about it. But speech sounds are human sounds created with the articulation organs. Articulation organs are the tongue, the teeth, the jaw, the lips, and your breath and voice, to form words. So human sounds created with the articulation organs, breath and voice, to form words. There are two types of speech sounds. There are consonant sounds and vowel sounds. We'll talk about each one and the type of of consonant sounds and vowel sounds that we have in American English. But first, because we will use IPA to represent those sounds. I want to explain what IPA is for those who are new to this world of pronunciation. IPA is short for acronym for International Phonetic Alphabet. It's an alphabetic system of phonetic representation. And why do we need it? We need it because basically, when we think about pronunciation and specifically English, when we think about the English spelling, we know that we don't always know how to pronounce a word by simply looking at the spelling, right? Because think about it, when we think about the letter O, it could be A as in hot, could be O as in go, it could be A as in as in love, it could be oo as in do. So, for one vowel letter, there are many different possible sounds. And when you're learning pronunciation, it's hard to use simply the representation of the letters in the Alphabet because you don't know what sound you're actually working on. And how will you know how to identify it? Now, there are ways around it. And when I teach, I don't only use ipa. I. I also use loose transcription. But for that purpose and for people who need more clarity around it, there are specific symbols that represent specific sounds. And when I introduce you to the consonants and vowels in English, I will be using IPA to indicate that. Okay, so it's a system of phonetic representation, and one symbol usually represents one sound. Okay. Not like letters, where a letter can represent five, six, and even seven different vowels. Okay, good. Let's move on. What are consonants? Consonants are sounds in which the flow of air is either completely or partially blocked. Can you give me an example in the chat for a consonant, I'm sure that a lot of you have already done this work. You know what consonants are. Just show me in the comments that you understand what it means. When we talk about consonants, sounds that are blocked or partially blocked or interrupted. Great. So we have S, H, Y, L, V, P. Very Good, you guys. Great. So I see A, O, U, I, E. These are not consonants. These are vowel letters, and they usually represent vowels, not consonants. Okay. M, T, C, H. Right. That's two letters that usually represent the ch sound. Very good. Good. Now let's talk about consonants a little bit more. In American English. When we think about consonants, we want to think about three different elements that help that define the consonant we're talking about. So now I'm going to make it bigger because I think it's really hard for you guys to see it. Good. Okay, so I'm going to teach you the consonant chart so you can understand how it's organized and what affects the production of each consonant. Okay, so we want to think about three things. One is where the consonant is blocked or stopped. What part of the mouth is the consonant created? Is it the back of the mouth? Is it the front of the mouth? Is it the middle of the mouth? Is it blocked with the teeth? Is it blocked with the tongue? Is it blocked with the back of the tongue? So when we work on sounds, we need to map out our mouth and to understand where the sound is created. So that is one element. And as you can see, we organized the. It's not. We people organized the. This chart to help you understand how to organize the consonants in your mouth based on how it's organized in your mouth. So you can see there's the lips. The lips and teeth. Teeth. Alveolar ridge, which is that little bump right behind the teeth. You can feel it. If you bring the back of your tongue to touch the back of the teeth. And then you go up, you'll feel this little bump. It's called the alveolar ridge, and we actually pronounce quite a few consonants there. Then we have behind the ridge, if we go back, the hard palate that it's like a little tickly when you bring your tongue to touch the upper palate, the soft palate, and the vocal cords. Okay, so we have consonants that are partially stopped or interrupted throughout all these different places in the mouth. So that's one aspect of consonants that we need to think about when we are talking about sounds and specifically consonant sounds. So now let's move on to another element that we need to take into consideration, and that is the manner of articulation. How do we produce the sound? Do we produce it? Is it produced with a stop? Right. So that means that we would. Let me. I'm going to make myself a little bigger here for a sec. So do we completely stop and release it Like a P sound? Do we let it out slowly? Like that's another way of producing a sound. Do we release it through the nose? Is it created in the nose like m and n? So there are all these other elements that we need to take into consideration. So the place of articulation, but also the manner. And the last element that we talk about when we talk about consonants is voicing, whether or not the consonant is voiced or not voiced. What does that mean? Thank you for the background music. When we have. I don't know if you guys can hear it, but people are honking here like there is something really crazy going on on the street. Okay? So when. So we're talking about the placement, the manner, and this is how we push our air out. But also, it's not just air. It could be air with the vibration of the vocal cords. Okay? So air with sound. So when we produce a consonant, it could either be just air, like, but if we add the vibration of the vocal cords. So put your hands here and pronounce an S. And now let's vibrate our vocal cords. You can feel it here. We actually created a new sound, and that is the Z. The placement is the same. The manner is the same. The only thing that was different is that I added the vibration of the vocal cords. So let's go back to this, and let's talk about the different manners. And then inside, you will see how we distributed between voiced and voiceless consonants. So back here, the first thing I want to talk about is full block. And you guys, I want you to practice it with me and to really feel. Feel the difference between the different manner and the different placement you are now doing like this. I want you to observe your mouth and observe how you use the sounds that you produce. And by the way, it's not just in English. It's also in your first language. And it's always really good to know. Okay? So when we block. Now we're talking about sounds that are fully blocked. Air is blocked and released, okay? All at once. When we block sounds in the lips, we have the P sound, right? That is voiceless. To the left is the voiceless consonant. And if you add vibrations, you add. You get the next. Right, the sound right next to it, which is a B sound. Okay? We don't block anything between the lips and teeth. Not in English and also not in the teeth, but we do in the alveolar ridge. So bring the tongue up a little bit. T, T, T for a T. The tongue blocks the air in the mouth and Releases it T, T, T, and then D. That is the voiced version. And then if we go all the way to the back of the. The throat, we get to the K sound. We block the air. The back of the tongue goes up, pushes against the soft palate. We block it for a K sound and then for a G sound, which is the voiced version of the K. Okay, so if you struggle with. And as we're doing this, see what sounds are a little harder for you to pronounce. Because later we'll talk about how to prioritize your sounds and how to know what to focus on and how to practice it. But first, I want you to work with me and go through all of these sounds and take a piece of paper next to you and write down the sounds that are harder for you to pronounce. And if you have two sounds that are usually confusing, I want you to write both of them down. So, for example, if you're an Arabic speaker, then you might go to this little box and you might say, okay, wait, this is where it gets a little confusing. The picture. And B, right? Because there is no P sound in Arabic. So you can circle this or you can write down the letter, the P sound, so that you know that this is something you might need to work on. Moving on to nasal consonants, right? So the manner is a nasal stop. Sounds that are released through the nose. So if we block the air in the lips, block the air, and release the sound through the nose, then we get an M sound. Now, for most of you, this is not going to be a challenging sound to pronounce, but I want you to ask yourself, are they there places in the word where it's harder for you to pronounce the N sound? And maybe you're replacing it with another sound. So I want you to start thinking about this before we get to the part where we reverse engineer our accents. Okay? So do you replace the M sound with an N maybe, or an ng at the end of words? If the answer is yes, write this sound down on a piece of paper. Then alveolar ridge. You remember where that is. You bring the tip of the tongue. This is it. We're here. You bring the tip of the tongue behind the teeth, and you block the air. Air comes out through the nose. You get an N sound. For some speakers of Mandarin Chinese or some dialects, sometimes this sound is confused with an L sound. Okay? So if you find that this is a challenging sound or that you're using it more than you need to, write this sound down when it Comes to the back of the throat. The velar sound. It's called the velar sound. When you block it, the back of the tongue goes up as if you are about to go up for a G sound or K. But you release the air through the nose. You get an ng sound. If you don't have that sound in your language, you can write it down so we can understand if this is a challenging sound for you or not. Okay, Then we move into fricatives. We have a lot of fricatives in English. A fricative is a sound that we. Where the air is released slowly. It's kind of like when you think. Think about a balloon that is filled up with air. And then you're just pulling the top, letting air out really, really slowly. That's a fricative. Squeaky fricative, but that's the idea. Okay? The air is passing, or air with sound, and that creates sounds. Now, the first place where we can block this sound, partially block, actually, is the lips and teeth. And this is where we produce two different consonants. The F, the voiceless consonant. And if you add the vocal cords, try it. And again, if you feel that you are replacing the V sound or applying the V sound for sounds that. For other sounds, or if you're confusing the V sound with another sound, like a W sound, write the sound down on a piece of paper so you know that this is a sound that you want to focus on or analyze or see if it's important for you to work on. Okay, Moving on to sounds that are produced in the teeth. And here we have the glorious, wonderful painful th sound. And it's represented by two different characters. The first one is the voiceless th. So the tip of the tongue sticks out and air passes between the tongue and teeth. Remember that it's a fricative. So three things need to happen. One, the placement has to be right. The tongue has to be out. I'm going to make myself a little bigger for this one. So forgive me if it takes me a minute just to find all the keys. Okay? So the tip of the tongue goes up, goes out to touch the teeth. And the air is supposed to go between. To pass between the tongue and teeth, creating this friction sound. Right now, I'm just using air, no voice. So it needs to be out, and it needs to. If we block the air, think, think, think, then it's going to sound like a T. It's not going to be exactly a T, because the tongue is out, but it's going to sound very similar to a T. So we have to soften the tongue and allow air to pass softly. Think, think, think. If you struggle with this sound, write it down. You don't have to write those characters. You can just write the letters th. Okay, so we have the voiceless th, as in thought, think, theory, authentic path. And we have the voice th, which is everything is the same. Tongue goes out, tongue is soft to allow air to pass. And vocal cords are vibrating. They that another, breathe, bathe other. Okay, so voiceless th and voice th. And if you don't have that in your language, you can write it down on a piece of paper. And we're going to analyze it later. Moving on to the next section, which is alveolar sound, fricatives, sounds that are partially stopped that are created in the alveolar ridge or slightly behind it. And that is the S sound and the Z. Voiceless and voice. Let's do it together. Now, if you're a Spanish speaker, you might already know that this might be a challenge for you to distinguish between those two sounds, because the Z doesn't appear in the middle of words in Spanish. So usually what you might be doing is devoicing it and bringing it to the closest sound that does exist in your language, which is the S. And that's the thing we want to look at when we don't have a specific sound, a specific category. Right. Because the map of your language is going to look differently. And if there is a sound in American, in English, all different accents, if you have a sound and it doesn't exist, it's not in the map of your own language, you might find it challenging. It might be a challenge, right? Like the P that doesn't exist in Arabic. And you need to understand how you bypass that confusion. Or the Z that doesn't exist in the middle of words in Spanish. And then you again pronounce the closest sound that does exist in your language, which in this case, it's going to be the S. Okay. When we move on, Right, you can see I'm going to move here a little bit. I hope you can see it. Let me know if it's too small. Let me know in the chat if you can see the screen well. Or if it's too small. Okay, so moving on here, I'm just going to tell you what that is behind the alveolar ridge. And that is the. And okay, good. You can see it. So the sound. You can see that my lips are a bit rounded. Sh. That's the voiceless sound, and that's the voiced sound. Again, for Some people, these might be challenging sounds. Okay. Some say it's small. Okay. So I'm going to switch back and forth between the big screen and the small screen, okay. So you can both see my face, but also the chart, okay. It depends. I think if you're watching this on your phone, it might be a little small. Moving on to the vocal cords. Affricative. I'm sure you haven't thought about the fact that the h is produced with the vocal cords. Basically, what happens. Because it's a fricative, it's voiceless, not moist, and it's produced all the way here. And here's how we're going to talk about it. So basically what happens is that in the vocal cords, there are like these two. I'm trying to show you two muscles that kind of like open up and close. And what happens is that you kind of like tense the muscles and make it really, really tight. And the air that passes makes a sound. It's like when you're whispering, hi, hello ahead he huge. Okay? So that is created all the way in the throat. Now, for example, if you're a French speaker or a Hebrew speaker, you might be dropping the h often because it's not commonly used in your language. And even if it is, if it's okay to drop it in your first language, then you might also do that in English as well. And then the question is not necessarily just how to produce it, because I think we can all produce it. It's just simply whispering. Right. But also remembering to use it, which is a different thing that we're going to talk about later, how to remember how to use it. Moving on to shifts from full to partial. Here we have two fun consonants that we can talk about it. They're produced behind that alveolar ridge. Remember that I told you. And that is basically, you can see that it's very similar to the. And because it's a combination of two consonants in a way that turn into one consonant. And these four could be tricky for some. So pay close attention if for many different speakers, Spanish speakers, Brazil and Portuguese speakers. So this could be challenging for you. Here we have the T sound that is usually represented with a ch. So basically, you stop the air with a T sound and then you release it to a sh sound. That's the voiceless version. And a lot of times people actually confuse mixed up the SH sound with a ch sou sound. So sheep and cheap can get confused sometimes. If that's the case for you, then write down all those different syllables. You can Just write sh for sh and J. Like a J for J and ch for ch and DJ for J. I think I just confused you really bad right now. But just write down. Write it down. However, it is easy for you. Okay, so we have the ch sound as in chicken, and the J sound as in judge. Moving on to the next one. Here we have approximant. An approximant is an almost consonant. It's a consonant that doesn't know if it's a consonant or a vowel. It's somewhere in between. And we have three of those. The first one is the lovely, beautiful. Hold on. Wait, wait. Gotta organize that. This is it. The first one, you can see it is the R sound. This is how the R is represented for American English. And actually this is British English. And American English would have, like, this extra tail here, but you can see that it's behind the ridge, right behind the alveolar ridge. I'm going to make myself a little bigger here, so you can see me behind the ridge. But the tongue doesn't touch as it does for a fricative. It pulls back a bit. R and the lips round. And as you can see, the R is in the same category of a Y sound. So the Y is created further back and the W sound that is created with the lips and the back of the tongue. Okay, so. So three approximants which are the R sound, the Y further back, and W, which is. You would think that it's produced with the lips, but it's actually both with the lips and the back of the tongue. W. Think about it. Try it. W, W W W. Can you feel that? The. If the back of the tongue goes up like it almost does for a Y, move from Y to W. I want you to get comfortable with your tongue in particular and to understand how it works. This is the secret. Once you understand, once you can feel what it's doing, because right now it's moving subconsciously. Right. Usually, people are not aware of what the tongue is doing. And this is the main challenge, because the tongue produces all the sounds of any language. Now, in your first language, that's not an issue, but when it comes to another language or you produce sounds that don't exist in your first language, you have to understand what to do with your tongue. Sometimes you can hear it and apply it, but sometimes it's not enough. Sometimes you need instructions. And this is what we're doing here. Okay, good. So moving on. How are you feeling about consonants? We forgot one consonant. I mean, we didn't forget. I just pretended like, we're done, but we're not done. So when the last consonant is the L sound, that is produced on the alveolar ridge. So the tip of the tongue touches the alveolar ridge, and it's called a lateral sound. I think you need to see it like this, or maybe even. I'm going to show it without me. You can see here, you release it along the sides of the tongue. That's how the air comes out for the L sound. It's a voiced consonant. Okay, so it's a lateral sound. Lemon. Well, now, how many Ls do we have in English? Do you know how many L's? Okay, we have some questions. The sound of W is not a vowel. Great question. Technically, no. So the W is a consonant. It's an approximant or which is in between. It's like in between a consonant and a vowel. The interesting fact is that the oo, as in food, you, room to. Which we'll talk about in a second, is produced exactly the same way as a W sound. It's just the position in the word is what changes it from being a vowel to being a consonant. You also kind of like open it up to a vowel, and this is why it sounds a little different, kind of like W. That's what makes it a consonant versus oo. There's an open to a vowel, but technically the mouth is doing the same thing. Like, the mouth is very, very efficient. Okay, great. Barbara says hi, Barbara. Two Ls, one light and one dark. One light as in light and one dark as in girl. It's represented with this character. Right? The IP is the same, but for the dark L, there is a little wavy line that crosses the L off. And then we know it's a dark L, but usually you're not going to see it in most pronunciation dictionaries, unfortunately. So I can just tell you that when the L appears before a vowel, it is lighter. Lemon, listen. And don't worry if you can't see the entire chart. It's not that important right now. And you can also find this chart if you just Google it. Just click the the consonant chart in English. So, Lemon, the tip of the tongue goes up to touch the upper palate. Light, listen. Allow. Once the L opens up to a vowel, it's a light L. That means that just the tip of the tongue touches. There is a little bit of tension here. This is typical for American English, unlike under other languages, like Spanish, for example, or. Or French, where the L is ultralight. Lemon, Light. Listen, can you Hear the difference? Listen. Lemon. Light. Even though it feels darker for some people, that is the light L in English. But when it's at the end, it's actually a combination of an L and a W sound. Okay. The back of the tongue goes up as if it goes up for a W sound, but then there is a bit more tension. And this is how it sounds. The sound is created more in the back for the dark L. And that usually appears before a consonant or at the end of the word. Like the word well. Feel. Sail, girl, milk. Okay, good. What were the sounds behind the ridge for the partial block? Noisy. Okay, so we have the. And that's behind the ridge. Okay, let me show you again. That's behind the ridge. Fricatives. Partial block. Noisy. Sh. It's noisy. It's like you hear S even. Listen. Even the sounds that are just air, it's very noisy in comparison to T. Okay. I also made the T very soft to make a point. But anyway. And then right below it, it's the same sound, but we block the air first. Okay, good. How do you pronounce heel? So we start with an H sound, right? This one. Okay. Just did something bad. The H consonant. And then it's an E sound. We haven't talked about vowels just yet. But just so you know, it's very similar to the Y sound in terms of the position of the mouth. He. And then we have the dark L. Heel. Do you hear it? It's almost like I'm saying he. Y. Heel. Heel. Not heel. That's a light L, but heel. Alrighty, let's move on to. I don't know why I can't. Hold on. I did something. Exit full screen. Good. Now I can see your comments to heal. Is the L an approximant consonant? No, it's called the lateral consonant. And. And lateral. This because the air is coming out through the side. The air and sound are coming out through the sides. And there is a block. Okay. When it comes to approximate, then there is no contact really between the tongue and the rest of the articulation organs. It's kind of like an almost sound. Okay. How to pronounce leave and live. Well, you will have to wait until we talk about vowels. And now let's talk about vowels. So we talked about consonants, right? Sounds that are stopped, partially stop or interrupted. So now let's talk about vowels. Vowels are sounds in which the flow of air is not blocked. Okay, can you give an example of vowels in English that you know? Let's see. Vowels, not consonants. What do we have. Good. So we have the letter E. It's tricky because we have five vowel letters, right? A, O, U, I, E. How many vowel sounds do we have in English? And if you are a new sounder, which means that you have studied with me inside of newsam, please don't answer because you know the answer. How many vowel sounds do we have in American English? So right now, great. You're writing me like you're writing down all the different vowel letters. And remember, there are five. A, O, U, I, E. So we have 11, 14, 22, 16, 5, 6, 4. Okay, so we do have in American English because in British English, there are more vowels, 16 vowels. Now, it's sort of 16 because it depends if you're counting diphthongs as vowels or not. But for our purposes, we're going to talk about it as 16 vowels. And here is why it's confusing. You have five vowel letters, A, O, U, I, E. And you have 16 vowels. How do you represent 16 vowels with five vowel letters? This is why reading English for the first time without knowing how to pronounce a word is confusing, because you can't guess. There are patterns, but sometimes it's hard to know exactly how to pronounce a certain word simply by looking at it, mainly because of the vowels. With consonants, it's a lot better. So let's talk about the vowels in English. And I'm going to make myself smaller again so you guys can see it. Hello. Okay, so this is the vowel chart. I'm going to move between smaller and bigger because I feel you deserve it. This vowel chart. Let me explain. For those of you who are new to. This represents the placement of vowels inside your mouth. Okay. The placement of vowels inside your mouth. This is the front part of the mouth. This is the back part of the mouth. Front and back. Front. That means that the tongue rolls forward to produce them. Back means that the tongue rolls back to produce them. Okay. As you go down, when you go through, like down until you reach the low position, that means that the mouth opens up. So for the high vowels, the mouth is going to be closed, and for the low vowels, the mouth is going to be open. And when I say open, I mean really open. A lot more open than what most of you are used to in your first language. We're talking A and ah. Okay, try it with me. So we're actually starting from the bottom. So look at my tongue. I usually start from the top, and I like it that I just started at the bottom because it's easier for you to see, my tongue, ah is a front sound. So my tongue moves forward. It has a front quality as well as in cat. And if I move my tongue back, ah, ah. I'm moving towards this sound, which is the ah as in father, usually represented with the letter O. Honest job in American English. In British English, it's more rounded and a little less open. Honest job possible. Coffee. Sorry. Ah. Ah. Cap. Cop. Okay, so we're going to move up. We're going to stay in the front vowel section. Okay? That means all the. When the tongue rolls forward and we're. We're going to start from A to E. My tongue is a little higher. The jaw is not as open as in red head said. Now, we're only looking at single vowels, not diphthongs. Monophthongs, they're called. Okay, and then if we go up, we have E as in sit, kid, live. Someone asked about leave and live. And if we roll the tongue all the way forward, we get to the high E sound, as in C, E, C. We feel seat, sit, reach, rich, least, list, beat, bit, bet, bad. Do these four again. High E, E, E, E. And remember, write down on a piece of paper sounds that are challenging for you. You can actually write the symbol, the IPA of the sound that we're making. Tense E, beat, lax, I, bit, sit, rich, listen, E, bet a bat. Good. Now, if you have only one E sound in your first language, which is, I have to say most languages, then you might be confusing these two sounds. Pairs like beat, bit, reach, rich, least list are going to be more challenging for you, and this is something that you might want to focus on. Okay, now we're going to go to the back, and we're going to start again with the bottom back, as in father, that we've already practiced. Now, in some dialects, you can also find the more rounded version. But in other dialects, the sound merges with the sound below. But for now, we'll practice it. It's a bit more rounded. The mouth is less open. Daughter. Awesome. And then if we go all the way up, we see the pair of tense ooh, as in do food, you versus can you think of words with a sound? For those of you who are new to this, this might be very different from how you perceive it. You can't see the cursor. Thank you for telling me. It's like all this time I thought that you can see the cursor. The truth. Tamash is telling me the truth in front of my face, so you can't see the Cursor. So it's right. It's the one right below. So we have the top back on the right. And then right below it we have this omega sign. And that is the as in took. Very good cookie book. Good. Look Foot. Good. So we have Luke. And look. Kook. Someone who's a kook. And cook fool. Full. So these are the sounds on the right corner. And then. Okay, now you can see the cursor. Now you can see the cursor. This is like so, so inconsistent. Yes. Thank you, Christina. Christina's right here. She's talking, telling me that it's okay. The middle sound is a schwa sound. A schwa sound is a neutral sound. Probably the most important sound that you need to know about when it comes to American rhythm because it really changes the rhythm of a word. And this is how it. Okay, it's right there in the middle. It's the most neutral vowel sound in American English, and it is indeed in the middle. You don't close the mouth. You don't open the mouth. And right below it, we have the er, as in st first learn term. And it's called an R colored vowel. And as you can see, you can see that little tail that it has, it shows that the vowel blends with another with an r sound. So the R as an approximant, it's like you just need to create a little bit of tension. And the vowel is colored with the sound of r. And this is relevant for American English only. And then right below it, we have the cup sound. The cup sound is very similar to the schwa, only the mouth is a bit more open. And it's always stressed cup. Love. Fun, husband, run, country company. Okay, good point to the sound you are saying. Yes, I tried, but it didn't work earlier. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna show you again. Just because I messed up a little bit. Let's do this. I'm going to fix it differently tomorrow, but here we go. So wait, can you see it? There we go. Tense. E. E. Lacks. Beat. Lacks. I Bit. E. Bet. A bat. Oo. Pull. Uh, Pull. No. Oo Pool. Uh, pull. I'm gonna do it again. Oo Pool. Do you. U Pull. Book. Cook. U Cup. Buck. Love. Aw. Daughter. Awesome. But you can also pronounce it with an open. Ah. Daughter. Awesome. In my program, I usually just teach the ah sound because in most of the west coast and other dialect, other accents in American English, both are merged and pronounced as an ah sound. And then it's easier to learn one Sound than two. Okay, now I want to show you these. These are diphthongs. They weren't in the previous chart. Diphthongs are sounds that are changing. Here we have the A as in day. A way say A way say day. I my light. Hi. Right. So we're going from an A to an E. I lie. Why? We also have the ow. Now brown. Okay. We have the O as in go show, don't. And this is interesting because a lot of times people don't get to the last sound. Don't want home instead of don't, won't home along O sound. And we need to be aware of it, because then sometimes if we don't pronounce the full diphthong and we only pronounce the first sound, we might be pronouncing a different word. So, for example, if you want to say sale, there is a sale going on, right? Happening A. But you say there is a cell. It sounds grammatically incorrect. It's just because you dropped the second part of the diphthong. So if you don't have diphthongs in your language, you want to ask yourself, is this challenging for me? Because if it is, then maybe you are mispronouncing some words. And then you need to be aware of it and see is it going up on your high priority list, medium priority list, and low priority list, which we're going to talk about in a sec. Okay, moving on quickly. What are syllables? So we talked about vowels. We talked about consonants. But consonants and vowels form syllables. A syllable is the smallest unit in a word. It consists of one or more speech sounds. For example, before that, the number of syllables in a word is the same as the number of vowel sounds, not vowel letters. Vowel sounds. For example, if we take the word biological by or one vowel diphthong. I by ya. Right. We have an ah sound. Bay. Sorry, it's a schwa. La, Open ah. J, lax or schwa. And then kul. Biological. Biological. Biological. Five syllables. Okay, five syllables, five vowel sounds. And this is how we would write it in ipa. Articulate. Four syllables, four vowel sounds. Articulate. This word actually could be pronounced in two different ways. Articulate. Someone who is articulate or articulate, which is the verb. The ending is different. Here's another example. How many syllables do we have here? Management. We have three syllables, three vowel sounds. But don't get confused by the fact that we have four vowel sounds, because sometimes there are some vowel sounds that are not pronounced. So when you look for syllables, and it's important when you do work on primary stress, for example, then you need to recognize that it's about the vowels and not the vowel letters. All right? So now moving on. Hold on. Hello. We are going to talk about how to reverse engineer your accent and discover what will get you the fastest results. So we talked about all these different sounds, right? Like all these different consonants and different vowels and syllables and primary stress. What are you talking about? Hadar. And now it's like, what do I do with all of this? Do I need to learn and practice every single sound? And how do I practice it, and how do I even know if I need to practice it? So now I'm going to walk you through a system that I created to help you understand if this is something, which of the sounds that we talked about is something that you should be focusing on or working on, how to know if something is critical for you to work on. But before that, let's talk about some definitions. When we talk about things, what is a foreign accent? When a person speaks one language using some of the rules or sounds of another language. So basically it's speaking English, but using the sounds, intonation and rhythm of your first language. Now, people do it to a degree, like it depends. Some people may use all the sounds and intonation patterns of their first language, so some might use both. So we need to understand what is our challenge and what is preventing us from being clear. Now, what is the reverse engineer, which might be a new term for some of you, is the act of dismantling something to see how it works. So right now, we took your speech sounds and we categorized them so you know how to call them, how to treat them, how to find them, how to produce them. And now we're going to see if you need to work on all of them or maybe just one of them. So what is the real problem? The main thing, the main reason why we learn pronunciation is not necessarily to sound like natives, but to make sure you are clear. You say what you need to say, you understand perfectly, and you get what you want, right? That is the foundation of this work. You want to be able to sound clear, confident, and free when communicating, because pronunciation can help you with that. Now, when your pronunciation patterns prevent you from being understood, make you feel self conscious, and create too much effort in your mouth, this is where you know, I need to do something about it. So if you sometimes sound unclear, if you feel like you don't know how to pronounce certain words, if it's hard for you to understand other people, if you Feel like there is a lot of tension in your mouth when you speak and you feel exhausted after speaking, then it's time to work on the specific things that will solve and release that tension and release the lack of clarity that you might be experiencing. Now, here's something important to remember. Not all pronunciation mistakes are created equal. And this is why we always have to talk about priorities. What does that mean? And let me make this a little larger so you guys can see it if you're watching this on your cell phones. And this is how we do it, okay? When it comes to pronunciation, some. Some mistakes, some pronunciation challenges are more important and need your word, need your focus than others. How do we know what those are? First, we have high priorities, which are mistakes that prevent people from understanding you or make it hard to understand you. Okay? So if people struggle with understanding you, it might be because some of the mistakes or challenges that you're making because you are carrying over some habits from your first language onto English. Some speaking habits, some sounds, medium. Priorities are mistakes that make you feel self conscious, self aware, or that make you make you sound less clear and effective in your speaking. They might make you waste energy. You might feel exhausted when you are mispronouncing some of those sounds. But they're not critical, right? People would still understand, but there is going to be like a hiccup in how you communicate, but it's not critical. And then there are low, low challenges. Mistakes that are mainly noticeable to the trained ear. So if I were to listen to you, I would be like, I noticed that the T, the way you transition from the T to the L, you know, you could connect it together better, right? So I could do it, but someone else, even a native speaker, might hear and be like, maybe I noticed something different, but I don't know what that is. Usually these are low challenges. They don't affect your clarity. And usually I wouldn't focus on low priorities at all at the beginning, only at an advanced stage. Now you're probably asking yourself, okay, what does that mean? Can you give me an example? So, for example, high priority is when you're replacing sound, for example, an R and an L, right? You're saying light instead of right, or you're saying ma' am instead of man. These challenges will definitely create confusion and misunderstanding or misplacing the primary stress. For example, saying America instead of America, right? Taking usually in every word, there is one syllable that sticks out the most. And sometimes if we change the primary stress, that might affect our clarity. This is why we treat it as a high priority. Dropping sounds, saying tech instead of texts or saying. Live instead of lives. Right? That might be considered as the grammar mistake because clusters are hard because they don't exist in your first language. A lot of people do that, and we need to become aware of it to even notice that we're doing it. Medium priorities are not using connected speech, for example, which is what we're going to talk about tomorrow. It's not critical. You will still be understood, but it would be a lot easier for you to deliver a message. If you use connected speech. Not critical, but important monotone pitch, you will be understood, but a lot more understood and easier to like. It would be easier for you to communicate if you learn how to use your pitch to deliver a message. Mispronouncing key sounds like the R sound. If you pronounce the R as a R sound, right, reason, people will still understand you. They understand the substitution, but it will level up your clarity if you do shift from the sound or the sound to R. Low priorities are not pronouncing a health T. A health T is a T that appears at the end of word, like, wait, you don't really pop it, or whiteboard, where you don't release the t. But if you were to say whiteboard, everyone would understand you. And honestly, I know of a lot of Americans who might actually pronounce it this way. Not pronouncing the ng or pronouncing the ng with a G sound, sing. This might be something that you're doing because you were seeing a G and you're pronouncing it. Generally, it's just an NG sound sing. But if you do pronounce a G, sing, no problem. Everyone would still understand you. They won't confuse it with another word. This is why it's a low priority and not fully reducing function words. Reducing function words is important for rhythm and important for delivering a clear message. And you do need to create hierarchy between the more important and the less important. We'll talk about it in day three and four. But I have to say that it's not critical, okay? It's not critical if you're not reducing it. Okay, so what should be your number one focus? Of course? High priority first, mistakes that prevent people from understanding you or make it hard to understand you, and then medium priority to create versatility in your speech, reduce tension, and help you sound clearer. Okay? So these are your two priorities. So you're probably asking yourself, how do I know if a certain sound is high, medium, or low? So right Now, I'm going to walk you through a flowchart that I created with questions you can ask yourself. And to help you understand if something is important or not, I'm going to give you a minute to take a screenshot at the end so you have it. Okay? But let's get started. When you look at all the different sounds that we talked about at the beginning, right? The vowel chart and the consonant chart, I told you to write down some of the sounds that are tricky for you, right? So you know that this sound is tricky. And of course you can, by the way, watch the replay if you feel like you need to watch it again to do this properly. And then you're like, I know that there is something. This sound doesn't exist in my language, or it's a little different in my language, but is it important for me? Should I start working on it right away or not? So then you need to ask yourself the following questions. Do you substitute it with a different sound that exists in English, for example, M&N? Do you replace the M with an n sound? If the answer is yes, then it has to go on your high priority list, okay? Because if you replace one consonant with another consonant that exists in English, this is where it's going to get confusing for people. So if it's yes, it's a high priority. So this sound is something that you need to work on. If the answer is no, then the next question you can ask yourself, do people struggle with understanding you when you say a word with this sound? If the answer is yes, then obviously you want to add it to your high priority list. Because anything that creates friction, if you are super aware of it, then it's something that you want to work on it. If the answer is no, you can ask yourself, okay, people have no issue here understanding me. When I say, let's say ready, they don't understand you. They do understand you. Not a problem. Okay? So then you have to ask yourself, does this sound make you self aware? Does it bother you if you mispronounce it? Do you invest a lot of energy in pronouncing it right? So, for example, the R sound or the th sound? Let's take the th. You say think, and people understand you when you say that. But at the same time, you feel like you're investing a lot of energy into it and you are aware every time there is a th, you avoid words with a th. And if that's the case, even though people understand you and it doesn't affect your clarity, you want to Work on it so you don't have to deal with it, you don't have to feel self conscious about it. And then it's not high priority, it's not super critical, but you want to add it to your medium priority list. Now, if it doesn't make you self aware, if it doesn't bother you, it doesn't affect people from understanding you, doesn't affect people when they listen to you, then you're good. You don't need to do anything about the sound or you can just add it to your low priority list. You know that there is a difference. You know that there is something you can polish there, but it doesn't make you feel self conscious. People understand you perfectly fine. So just keep it on your low priority list or just don't worry about it as we say. Now if you don't know, if people struggle with understanding you, then here is where you need to put in a little bit of work and do a little bit of self analysis. So here I recommend to find resources online on how to pronounce this sound. For example, on my YouTube channel, I have a ton of videos teaching you practically all the different vowel sounds and consonant sounds in American English. If not my channel, there are other great channels out there like Rachel's English that teach, that map out all the different sounds so you can follow them. And then you want to compare it to how you pronounce it. This is called self analysis. It's a tool that we always teach our students in our programs, making sure that they know how to identify their challenges. So find resources online on how to pronounce the sound and check your pronunciation through self analysis. So you maybe record yourself, you listen to the person teaching it and you ask yourself, is it the same? Does it sound similar? Right, to how they pronounce it? If the answer is yes, right, it sounds similar or almost similar, then you're good. Or you can add it to your low priority to work on sometime in the future. But if you say, oh no, it's actually not similar. So for example, you can watch one of my videos teaching the th saying they and when you say it it sounds like day. And you can say to yourself, okay, wait, it doesn't sound the same. I don't know exactly what I'm doing, so maybe I need to work on it. And then you can add it to your medium priority or even low priority list if it's not that important. Okay. Because if you don't, people don't struggle with understanding you when it comes to this sound you're not self aware, then it's your choice if you want to make it low or medium. But the main point here, and I'm going to give you a minute to take a screenshot. So go ahead and take a screenshot before I switch to the next slide. The idea is to recognize a sound that doesn't exist in your language and then go through this process to check if it's something that you need to work on urgently. If it's high priority, nothing's urgent. I'm kidding. If it's medium priority, it's something that you need to work on, but it's not critical for your clarity or low priority, which is nice to have. When you have that clarity, what happens is that it doesn't feel as overwhelming, it feels more organized. It helps you prepare differently, it helps you know what to focus on and measure the progress. Because if you struggle with the th and it's on your high priority list or medium priority, then you do the work, you make sure that you improve there and then that's it, that's all you need. You feel the progress. But if you take the consonant chart or the vowel chart and you start practicing every single sound there, then it's going to feel extremely overwhelming and more importantly, it's going to be very, very ineffective because your brain cannot focus on so many things at a given time. Now, in the workbook, I'm assuming if not, it's going to be linked to the website. So you don't have a link in the workbook, but you have a link on the website. We'll also send it over email. You can get a link to the priority chart to help you understand how to the different priorities when it comes to the different sounds. So the flowchart is going to help you with that. But if you need extra help, we also have this resource for you. I have another resource for you which is pronunciation by language. I have different workbooks for different languages to help you understand what are the top priorities in each language based on the difference between the two languages. So I don't have it for all languages, but I have it for the languages for these languages. Korean, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, Brazilian, Portuguese, Japanese, Arabic and Hindi, Urdu. Okay, so all of it is going to be linked to your, to your workbook and it's going to be inside. I don't know if it's in the workbook, but it's going to be on the website. Okay, good. Finally. And now we're going to quickly go over the five steps to mastering Each sound. So let's say you did the work. You recognize that you confuse the ch and sh. Okay? You say sheep instead of cheap and vice versa. Then you say, okay, I gotta practice the ch sound. It's. I'm replacing two sounds that exist in American English. This is a high priority. I want to work on it. What do I do? Five steps to mastering any sound. And here I'm going to teach you my Pronunciation Confidence method. If you've been to any one of my trainings before, you already know this, but it is a technique designed to help you create a new speaking habit or new speaking habits. With the Pronunciation Confidence Method, you'll learn how to internalize a sound through using it in a systematic way and building muscle memory. Every sound is basically a speaking habit. A habit is something that you do automatically, without thinking about it, right? So when it comes to. Hold on, let me make myself a little bigger. When it comes to creating speaking habits, you have to make sure that you're repeating it enough times until it becomes a habit. Okay? So the pronunciation Confidence method. Hold on, I'm going to move. This goes like this. Five steps. Just a sec. I don't know where my cursor is. There it is moving here. The first one is prioritization, which is what we've already done. This is the act of reverse engineering your accent and understanding where you need to focus when you first get started with pronunciation work or when you revise your pronunciation work. And you, you know, you kind of like, check, okay, I've improved. Now I want to do new things. That's the time where you prioritize it using the flow chart and using the priority chart that I shared with you. Okay? So for example, if you say to yourself, okay, I, you know, like I say pay, I say pay and not pay. So maybe you're not aspirating your p. But also I pronounce cop and cup the same, but I also pronounce right and light the same. What should you focus on first? Probably not the pay, because it's low priority. It's less important. So we talked about high priority. The second thing is perception. Hearing and recognizing a sound or distinction you don't have in your first language. So let's say today is the first day that you discover that there is two. There are two different oo sounds. Oo and fool and full. And up until today, you used to pronounce them exactly the same, and you didn't even notice there is a difference because of the spelling, probably, and because you never really listened so first, we need to make sure that you hear the difference. For example, you have to hear the difference between sheep and ship before you're able to pronounce it. You have to hear the difference between well and well. Can you hear the difference well and well? It's the same word. And you have to hear the difference between pay and pay. Can you hear the difference? Pay and pay? If you want to be able to make it so, the first is the difference between tense e and lax I. The second is a light L versus a dark l. And lastly, we have a regular P versus an aspirated P. Okay. Carlo says there are at least four sounds. I caught this message for the T. There are actually more, about eight sounds for the. For the T. So, right, if you've never noticed it, that there is the T in time that is different than the T in cat, that is different than the T in kitten, different than Internet, different than bat. Right. All those different T sounds, different than better different sounds, but all represented with a letter T. And sometimes because we are basing our perception of English on the spelling, it's hard for us to hear it. Step number three, production. Learning how to produce a certain sound. So you want to learn the pronunciation of the sound. For example, if the R is your high priority or medium priority, you need to understand exactly what to do with the mouth. For this, you have a lot of free resources online. Then you want to repeat the sound again and again and again, creating strong speaking habits by repeating the challenging sound, escalating the difficulty level. So this is how I help my students implement a new sound. There is repetition, but it's also always escalating. First, you start just with a sound, then in words. Ready? Great reason. Phrases write as rain, rock and roll, raise the roof, Minimal pairs, Right. Light and then sentences. Ronnie read his script to his crew. So you start by just pronouncing the sound, and then gradually you're saying it in words. And then complicated phrases, and then confusing pairs, and then tongue twisters. And finally, once you drill the sound again and again, and you can wake up in the middle of the night and you can make the sound, we have intentional practice, which is intentionally using the sound in free speech. If you have practiced pronunciation in the past and you felt like, okay, I know how to do it in practice. But then when I go and speak, speak to other people, the sound like, out of my head and out of my mouth, I'm not using it right. Has that ever happened to you? Has that ever happened to you? If yes, put yes. In the comments you're like, fine, when I'm on my own, but then it's not there for me when I speak. So this step is going to help you with that, where you practice speaking consciously and intentionally by focusing on the specific sound. Okay, so for example, you can answer a question like, okay, what did I do today? Today, let's say I want to practice the R. Today I went to the grocery store, grocery store. And I really wanted to get some cucumbers, making sure that I'm nailing the R sound. Maybe I want to extend, expand it a little bit. Okay, so you're practicing speaking freely, but you're not really free because you're also thinking about it because the most important thing is that you don't want to think about it when you are speaking to other people. All right, today, my friends, we learned what speech sounds are, consonants and vowels, what IPA is, what syllables are. Look at how much we have accomplished. We talked about how to reverse engineer your accent and know what to focus on. We talked about the priority chart. We talked about high priority, medium priority. We low priority, and how to understand if the sound is high priority or low priority or medium. And then we talked about five steps to mastering any sound once you decide that it is important for you. Okay. Yes, I see people answering, saying that very often. Now you have a workbook. It's on the website. You got it over email. If you're watching this on. If you got to watch this video on YouTube, you have a link where you can join. You can officially join this pronunciation training, enjoy the live events and also get the workbook and get all the resources and the replays. It's going to be accessible right below this video. So if you are not subscribed and you're not getting our emails, make sure you do subscribe to this training. We have a lot of zoom events where you can join conversation groups, practice groups with coaches who are going to take what you learned right now and put it into practice and drill it. It's a lot of fun. If you know my sprints, then it's just like an hour long sprint. And I want you to download the workbook, write notes so that try to do it soon after the training, even if you're watching the replay so that you can maintain all the information, because we really did a lot. And by the way, I want to tell you that you guys are amazing. Thank you so much for all the participation and responding to my questions. And it seems like you're all very passionate and, and Excited about this and knowledgeable. Tomorrow, day two, we are going to talk about connected speech. I'm going to talk about what it is, why it's important, the benefits of practicing connected speech and five techniques to help you practice connected speech effectively and be able to use it effortlessly when speaking. It's going to help you deliver a message, clearly reduce tension in your mouth and understand people so much better. Before we wrap up, I wanted to ask you if you have any questions for me about the training, about the event, about the zoom calls, or about the content. I'm going to take about five minutes. Usually the trainings are an hour long. Today we went a little over, but tomorrow we'll try to keep it at around 60 minutes. Okay, good. All right. Do you have one app to practice? Well, it's on the website, so it's not an app. You can just get subscribed to the challenge if you're not subscribed. If you are, check your email and get a link to the portal, the portal of the training, where you'll watch the replays, where you can find the calendar. I highly recommend that you sync the calendar with your Google Calendar so you can see the events and if you click on the event, the zoom events, the conversation groups and the practice groups. This is where you'll find the zoom link. Okay. In the calendar, if you click on the event, you can find the zoom link. Okay. Thank you so, so much. I don't see a lot of questions. If you do have questions, then please write them in the Facebook group or on the website in the comment section. Okay, good. And yes, it's recorded and it's going to be uploaded as soon as we're done. So you can watch it again if you want or if you missed it and you only got here. I see one comment that I want to talk about. This feels overwhelming. I know we have five days and I really wanted to break down this big concept of pronunciation, so I know it could be overwhelming. And this is why I want you to still have access to this particular training so you can review all the sounds. All this content is also found here and there on my website, on my YouTube channel. So if after this training you feel like you need a little bit more, you can find it on my YouTube channel when it comes to sounds. And then the following days, we are going to talk about specific topics, just connected speech, just pitch and then rhythm, which would feel a little bit more organized, but definitely with sounds. We have a lot of sounds in English and also understanding what to focus on. Takes a little bit of time, but once you process it, go to the workbook. I'm sure it's going to be a lot easier. But the most important thing is that you take it step by step by step. And if it's too much, only focus on just understanding how your mouth works, which is always good. Even if you're not working on your pronunciation or even if you're not interested in that, it's good to understand how your mouth works, how you produce sounds in your first language. And of course, when you're learning another language, don't be afraid of, you know, like, if it feels overwhelming, just do the next step. That's the most important thing. And if you have any questions, feel free. You can join the practice groups. Coaches are going to answer questions and we have incredible support inside the Facebook group. Ask your questions there and I will be here for you tomorrow. Thank you so, so much for being here. Thank you for signing up for the pronunciation training. Pronunciation made simple. Thank you so much and I will see you tomorrow. Take care, my friends. Have a beautiful day. By.