OMG! I think I'm going to cry. I've been struggling with English for about 15 years. Most videos on RU-vid are helpful but this video is the holy grail. For the first time in my life I feel like I get it!!! Thank you thank you thank you.
This video is a true jewel! I had never seen such a thorough explanation of how the vowels sounds are performed. From the bottom of my heart, thank you!
Proud cot-caught distinguisher here lol I like the distinction for the sole fact that it sounds more pleasing to me, almost warmer than just /a/. Naught, ought, and wrought are so much fun to say!
Thank you! Regarding that extra vowel that some Americans don't use, I always think of the word call being pronounced by a valley girl and by a British posh lady haha
Hello Ramzy, We have been putting a lot of effort into developing our app. However, here are some resources that we are sure you will find helpful. To improve your English pronunciation, check out this article: blog.fluent-forever.com/learn-english/. For Swedish and Danish, you can check this other article: blog.fluent-forever.com/learn-everything-else/
This is pretty good, but there are a few mistakes. You write the /t/ with aspiration at the ends of words like "about" [ə'baʊt], transcribing it as /ə'baʊtʰ/, which is very misleading, because it most casual American's conversation, that [t] phoneme is not aspirated like it is usually at the beginning of words, but the [t] sound is unreleased at the ends of words, meaning you bring your tongue up to the ridge behind your teeth in the /t/ position and stop the airflow, but do not release the airflow, making a /t̚/ sound. So, the word "about", in a very phonetic transcription would be /ə'baʊt̚/. You do not to transcribe in such great phonetic detail though, you only have to give a phonemic transcription, writing all the sounds that have a meaningful difference between them in the language, used to differentiate words. You could write a phonemic transcription simply as [ə'baʊt], which does not show that the [t] sound is unreleased, because that is not a meaningful difference or in many native speakers minds a noticeable difference between the /tʰ/ in "top" /tʰɑp/ and the /t/ in "stop" /stɑp/ and the /t̚/ in "sit" /sɪt̚/, all being different phonetic realizations of the same underlying [t] sound mentally. And, although it does not happen in all dialects of American English, so you could argue it is not a feature of "General American", whatever the heck that is, there are other dialectal realizations of this same underlying phonemic [t] sound, for example, the flap t or d /ɾ/ in between vowels as in "water" /'wɑɾɚ/ or in "better" /'bɛɾɚ/. In dialects that have this "flap t" or "flap d" sound, this is also the realization of the [d] sound between vowels, and since the flap /ɾ/ is voiced, many English speakers associate the flap with the [d] sound most, so it is also used in words like "medal" /mɛɾ(ə)ɫ/ and "meddle" /mɛɾ(ə)ɫ/. Another common realization of the [t] sound is the glottal stop /before a syllabic [n], or /(ə)n/, as in "mountain" /maʊn.ʔ(ə)n/ or "button" /bʌ.ʔ(ə)n/. So the underlying phonetic realizations of the [t] phoneme are as follows: /tʰ/, /t/, /t̚/, /ɾ/, and /ʔ/, and the realizations of the [d] sound are /d/ and /ɾ/ between vowels, where the distinction between the [t] and [d] sounds is lost.
Yeah, final plosives have been pretty challenging to deal with, in part because it's not like Korean, where ALL final plosives are ALWAYS stopped; we sometimes aspirate them and we sometimes stop them. I decided to discuss both options, and in the trainer, generally I leave final [t] and [p] without an aspiration mark, and final [k] always aspirated. I felt it'd be confusing to introduce yet another symbol for stopped consonants in this context. Thanks for the comment and clarification!
I am starting to think that before we are taught any language ar school we should have 1 year subject of learning IPA. I really like IPA in dictionaries, however I must admit I have pretty hard time with some characters that sound similar and no one ever told me the real difference. Also I wish I had some books written in IPA especially for English where the way how you write things and how you pronounce them is totally disconnected these days (especially when it comes to vowels).
Very interesting video. There is a typo; though, at 4:59. You say bed, show picture of bed and transcribe it correctly, but the spelling should be bed not bet.
Learning the distinction between ɑ (cot) and ɔ (caught) is important if you want to be able to communicate with English speakers outside of the US. If you only want to learn/speak American English, you can probably just learn ɑ as it says in the video. But in Australia or other English speaking countries, these are often heard and spoken as two completely different vowels.
Dude, people in other English-speaking countries watch American movies all the time and have no trouble understanding an accent with the cot-caught merger. In fact, Scottish accents generally have the merger, so it's not just an American thing.
We're afraid that we can't recommend an app for typing IPA symbols however there are many Google Chrome extensions that may be of use to you. There are also websites such as www.lexilogos.com/keyboard/ipa.htm that may help too!
Hello Bety, You can adjust the playback speed of the video a little bit to make it easier for you, and you also have the option to add subtitles in Spanish. Use these two settings, and it will be easier for you to benefit from the video.
hi professor! I'm so sure that I didn't miss anything, but I can't spell a lot words like these two. like wear /wɛr/ w ɛ r board /bɔrd/ b ɔ r d. I don't know why.... can you help me. pls😭 for example: wood /wʊd/ the 'ʊ' in tour /tʊr/ and stoor /stɔɚ/ the 'ɔ' I konw how to pronounce, but I can't follow those phonetic sounds to spell
