Category Archives: Short vowels

A tongue-twister: How Much Wood?

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Here is a good tongue-twister to try:


How much wood would a woodchuck chuck,
if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

There are 3 keys to pronouncing this well:
1. “wood” and “would” sound the same. (Words that sound the same are called homonyms.)
2. Use the Short “oo” sound to say “wood”, “would”, and “could”.
3. The letter “L” in “would” and “could” is silent.

To pronounce Short “oo”:
1. Lips are rounded (but relaxed).
2. The tongue is in position for a Long “u” (like in the word “blue”) BUT
3. The tongue must be VERY relaxed while holding the Long “u” position.

A tongue-twister: Fuzzy Wuzzy

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Here is a good tongue-twister to try:


Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear.
Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair.
Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy, was he?

There are 2 keys to pronoucing this well:
1. “Wuzzy” and “was he” should sound the same.
This happens often in spoken English: the “H” of the word “he” gets lost in conversational speech due to the rhythm (or stress-timing) of the sentence. (This is also known as sentence stress: some words are pronounced more strongly than other words.)
2. Use the Short U sound to say “fuzzy”, “wuzzy”, “was”, “a”, and “wasn’t”.

To pronounce Short U:
1. Lips are NOT rounded.
2. The tongue is in the middle (not high, not low, not in front or in back)
3. The tongue should be very relaxed.
(If you are familiar with the “schwa” vowel sound, it sounds the same.)