Pronunciation Paul Gruber #4|JohnnyVo

The American dream does not come to those who fall asleep. Hi, welcome back. Again, my name is Paul Gruber, and this is the Pronunciation Workshop's fourth training session. I hope things have been going well. Today we will cover F and V sounds, as well as SH and voiced SH sounds. Just a reminder, all of the material covered in these videos are also printed in your training manual for practicing later on. Let's get started. In the last session, we talked about air friction with TH sounds, that the sound is made with air friction. Well, today we're going to talk about air friction again, but this time it is with F and V sounds. The F and V are paired consonants, and they are both produced exactly the same way, except the F sound is unvoiced and the V sound is voiced. They are both produced by contacting your upper teeth to your lower lip. It sort of feels like you're biting down on your lower lip. Vuh, vuh, vuh, vuh, like that. Now remember, all that voicing means is that your vocal cords here in your throat are vibrating and making a sound. So the F sound is unvoiced and sounds like this, ff, and the V sound is voiced and sounds like this, vv. Correctly pronouncing these sounds will make your speech much clearer and you more intelligible. Like the TH sounds from the last session, F's and V's are friction sounds and are not that loud. So we stretch these sounds out a little bit so they can be clearly heard. Let's start by looking at the F sound in the word foot. Now many foreign speakers may use the right positioning by biting down on their lower lip, but they still keep the F very short and they don't create air friction. Therefore you do not hear the F clearly and it sounds like foot. That's no good. Let me show you what you need to do. First, think of the word as having two beats, one, two. Hold the F sound for the first full beat, ff, foot, like that. Do it again. Ff, foot. Do you see how long I am holding that F? Now I know that's a little bit exaggerated, but you get the idea. You need to hear the air friction. When practicing, try to give the F one beat, ff, foot. Let's work with words beginning with the letter F. Here we go. Find, finally, family, freedom, with a strong R, freedom, laugh. Notice the GH combination in that word. Laugh. Telephone. Notice the PH combination in that word is also pronounced as an F. Telephone. It's the same thing in this next word, symphony. This is a tricky one because you've got the M sound followed by an F sound. Symphony. And the last word, rough. Notice the GH combination in that word, rough. Let's work on this paragraph. Do you feel like a physical wreck? Are you fed up with your feeling of fatigue? Have you had enough of feeling rough? Why don't you fight fever with Pharaoh's friend, a medicine that is tough on flu? Very good. OK, now let's talk about the V sound. First of all, like the F sound, don't make the V sound too short. Let's look at the word vote. You've got to stretch out the V, like this, vote, vote. Are you hearing that long V sound? That's what you should be doing. Now, depending on your native language, you may be replacing your V sounds for W sounds. Be careful not to do this. The word is not woat. It's vote. Every V that you will see in English is made with this lip biting position. V, V, V. When you see a V, it's never wo, wo, wo. It's never a W sound. It's always V, vote, like that. Let's practice some words with the V sound. Here we go. Vine, oven, evaluate, voice, travel, river. Notice the strong R. River, every. And now at the ends of words. Glove, alive, and leave. This last word, leave, is very different from the word leaf, like from a tree, which has an unvoiced F. The word is leave, with a voiced V. Keep the voicing going throughout the whole word and voiced V. Leave, like that. If you stop the voicing at the end of the vowel E, then you would be saying leaf, with an unvoiced F. And the word we're trying to say is leave, with that voiced V. Now let's look at paired words with F and V. You will see here that just by adding voicing, you can completely change the meaning of the word. Here we go. Feel, veal, safe, save, fat, that, fine, vine, face, vase, fan, van, foul, vowel, proof, prove, very good. OK, now we're going to work on listening exercises and ear training. I am going to display some words with V sounds. However, some words I'll be saying correctly, and then some others I'll purposely say incorrectly. I want you to listen carefully to my pronunciation and to the voicing of the V sounds, and see whether or not you can tell if I am saying the word correctly or incorrectly. Here we go. Here's the first word. Stove. I cooked dinner on a hot stove. Was that correct? No. I should have said stove, stove. I cooked dinner on a hot stove, with a voiced V. Next word. Five, three, four, five, correct? Yes. I said five, with a voiced V. Leaf. I'm in a hurry, and I need to leaf. Is that correct? No. It's not leaf, with an unvoiced F. I should have said leave, with a voiced V sound. Fisa. She just received her international FISA, correct? No. I said FISA, with an unvoiced F. I should have said visa, with a voiced V. Living. I am living in a house. Is that correct? Yes, the V is voiced. Living. That's correct. OK, now repeat these phrases. A famous athlete. A food vendor. The foreign service. Summer vacation. Vocabulary test. Over the rainbow. Our first victory. Harvard University. Husband and wife. Very well done. Good. OK, now repeat these sentences with me. Her promotion in the firm was well deserved. There was only one survivor on the island. Steve noticed that the olive juice must have stained his sleeve. The street vendor was selling souvenirs to tourists. Dave gave me his car so that I could drive on New Year's Eve. There were several dents in the rear fender. Tom placed several tomatoes from the vine into a basket. Very good. Now we are talking about English, so you know there is always an exception to everything. I would like to show you what I call the of exception. Many foreign speakers make this mistake. Even though the word of is spelled with an F, we pronounce the word of with a voiced V. I know this sounds crazy, but it's true. For example, statue of liberty. And notice how I connected the word of with the word liberty. Of liberty. You see of is voiced. Here's another example. It's made of glass, or it's made of wood. It's not a ff wood with an unvoiced F. It's all voiced, and it's all connected. It's made of wood, like that. Very good. OK, now let's go on to something new. Let's talk about SH sounds, shh, and voiced SH sounds, zh. First, to make the SH sound, you bring your lips forward, keep them open, and leave your teeth slightly apart. Blow air through your teeth and produce the sound, shh. It's an easy sound. What you may not know is that there are some words in English that are written with the letter S, but are pronounced with the SH sound. Words like sugar and sure. And to make things even more difficult, there are a couple of words that are spelled with CH and are also pronounced with the SH sound. Words like chef and the city of Chicago. OK, having said that, let's go over these words. She, sugar, sure, shadow, sheep, shirt, shoe, shape, Chicago, chef. Very good. OK, now let's do SH sounds in the middle of words. You will notice that there are many different spellings for this sound, but the sound is always the same. Here we go. Nation, motion, mission, special, reputation, official, machine, fishing, insurance, sunshine, ocean, tissue, addition, subtraction. And now at the end of words. Rush, dish, establish, splash, Irish, fresh, and finish. Very good. OK, let's do some sentences now. The fishing trip was planned, and we left to go to the ocean. Was the chef ashamed to use the precious sugar? Sharon gave a special performance. He will be stationed in Washington, DC, the nation's capital. She went to a fashion show after taking a shower. She sells seashells by the seashore. The social club was praised for their cooperation. Now try this. Joe's weather machine shows a sharp drop in air pressure, especially offshore. Ships in motion on the ocean should be sure to use caution. Very good. OK, now let's work on the voiced SH sound, zh. To produce this sound, first make a sh sound, and then you add voicing, sh, zh, like that, zh. Now for some people, this may take a little bit of practice. You should feel the vibrations right here in your throat, zh. Believe it or not, this is a very important sound in American English. Many non-native English speakers mispronounce words with this sound, especially the words usual and unusual, which are very, very common. If you are someone that pronounces the word usual as you-you-all, I'm telling you, you are not being understood. Let me show you how to pronounce the word usual correctly. Break it up into three syllables, you, zh, you, all. That second syllable, zh, the one with the underline, needs to be voiced. Put your hand on your throat and feel for the vibration in the second syllable, you, zh, you, all. Now put it together, you, zh, you, all, you, zh, you, all, like that. OK, now try unusual, on, you, zh, you, all, unusual, like that. Very good. Now let's practice some more words. It may help if you keep your hand right here on your throat to feel the vibrations. Here we go. Vision, visual, conclusion, Asia, version, division, casual, television. Very good. Now there are only a few words that have the voiced zh sound at the end. A few of these words are the color beige, the word massage, and the word prestige. OK, now that you are great at this, let's go over some sentences. It's not unusual for people to study division in Asia. I usually use a measuring cup to measure erosion. The beige walls were the usual color in the treasury building. Very good. You'll find in your manual that there is a worksheet where you could list things that you would consider usual and things that you would consider to be unusual. For practice, fill this in and then read your answers out loud in full sentences, like this. It's usually hot in the summer. And it's unusual for me to be late for an appointment. Great. Well, now it's time to go and practice. You may want to wait a day or two and then watch this training session again. You'll find that seeing this video again will probably be very helpful. OK, have fun practicing. I'm Paul Gruber for the Pronunciation Workshop, and I'll see you at our next session.