The TH sound in English (made simple) | American English Pronunciation

Hey, it's hadar. And this is the accents way, your way to finding clarity, confidence and freedom in English. And today we're going to talk about th transitions. Now, the th sound is not a very common sound in most languages. In fact, most speakers work really hard not to stick their tongues out when they speak. And here you're required not only to take the tongue out, but also to keep it there as you pronounce the thickness. Now, I find that the most difficult thing about this sound is pronouncing it right after or right before a close consonant, especially tip of the tongue. Consonant. Tip of the tongue. Consonants are sounds that are produced with the tip of the tongue. For example, T, D, N and L. Alright, so the tongue goes up and touches right behind the teeth on that little bridge inside your mouth. T. Try it. D, N, L and also S and Z. Now, when these consonants, these six consonants appear right before or right after a th, the transition may be a bit challenging. So what I'm going to do today is give you a few tips on how to make these transitions smooth, smooth and clear. And also a practice that you can do daily to improve speech and clarity. All right, so let's begin with the transition from the N to the th, as in. In the. Or month. Alright, so basically, to produce the n sound, the tongue goes up and touches right behind the teeth, right in. And then you're supposed to push your tongue out for the thin. The. But you have to work hard to push the tongue out and to make sure that it comes out right in the. So here's a little tip cheat. And instead of placing the tongue behind the teeth, just place it on the teeth. In. Now the sound doesn't change right in. In. But then my tongue is already out there, ready for the th. In the. Alright, so you see, the tongue goes up, touches the teeth in. And then I'm relaxing the tongue, allowing the air to pass to create the th sound in the. On the. On this, on that. When things. All right, let's take another example. The T. If I say the T and right after the th. Alright, I have this space at the I break between the two words. I don't want that. So let's produce the T on the teeth at. You see, the tongue goes up at the. And then I relax it for the th. At the. Or ATH Ate. You don't have to pronounce it as ate. Right? We don't want to have that break. It's one sound eighth at this. Let's write the D. All right. So the tongue is already on the teeth for the d as in width or good thing. Good thing. All right, so we always connect words together. So whenever a word ends with a d and the next word begins with a th, then this transition is present. All right, so we have to work on these transitions not only in phrases, but separately. So my recommendation is to work on these transitions every day. Just the transitions like this. Or tth or nth. Nth. Nth. And then when you come across a phrase like good thing, your tongue is already going to be used to this transition. Now, another good reason why you should practice it is that if you tend to keep the tongue inside for the tip of the tongue consonants like good thing, then sometimes the tendency is to keep the tongue inside also for the th, and then it's going to sound like good thing or in the. Instead of in the. That's why we want to anticipate the th sound. Alright, below this video I'll post a bunch of practices and transitions. So you can actually do these practices daily, you know, even five minutes a day. And you will feel the improvement in your clarity, your diction, and definitely when you come across these transitions. All right, that's it. Have a wonderful week, full of practice and I will see you in the next video. By.