Hadar Shemesh breaks down why non-native speakers blur the A sound in "staff" into the neutral vowel in "stuff." Drop your jaw, spread your lips, push your tongue forward and flat. The difference matters in a sentence like "Her staff brought her personal stuff to the meeting."
Hi, it's Hadar. And this is the accent's way, your way to finding clarity, confidence and freedom in English. I want to talk to you today about the two words staff versus stuff. Staff and stuff. Now these two words are very similar except for one, the middle vowel. You have the A as in cat, staff and the as in cup, stuff, A versus staff and stuff. Now here's the thing. Most non native speakers don't have the a sound in their language. However, they do have this really small neutral sound in their language that is closer to the as in cup. So it's very easy to pronounce the word stuff, but the word staff is a little harder to say. This is why a lot of non native speakers reduce this a sound into this very familiar neutral sound. But then the word staff turns into stuff and then they both sound the same. Stuff and stuff. Okay, so what I think you should do is focus on pronouncing the word staff, focusing on the A as in cat. So to make this vowel, you drop your jaw a lot and pull the lips to the sides a bit. As you can see, my tongue pushes forward. The tip of the tongue touches the bottom teeth, right, right behind the bottom teeth. And the tongue is flat and forward. Alright, now we have the S, T, S. And then you open it to the as in cat. Staff versus stuff. For this one, you just relax your jaw, relax your tongue, relax your lips, release a short quick sound. It's like a stress chua. Stuff. Staff versus stuff. Let's write a sentence. Her staff brought her personal stuff to the meeting. Alright, so make sure these two words sound differently. Her staff, not her stuff, brought her stuff. But her staff brought her personal stuff to the meeting. Staff versus stuff. If you need more help, go check out my video cap, cup and cop where I cover the three sounds in American English. The front A as in cap, the central as in cup and the back ah as in cop. Cap. Cop. Staff stuff. Alright, that's it. Please share this video with your friends if you liked it. And don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel. You can also come and check out my website for more content and subscribe to my newsletter to get it to your inbox every single week. Have a great week and I will see you next week in the next video. Bye.
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