This is the audio for the list the examples from my article on this topic on Medium. You can also find the full article with audio on my Patreon page.
Here are some common words with “AU”. (Remember, the “U” has no sound!)
| auction audio audit augment aunt author auto autumn caught cause | caution clause exhaust faucet fauna flaunt fraud gauze haul haunt | launch laundry naughty nausea pause sauce sausage taunt trauma vault |
This is the audio for the list of examples in my Medium article article on this topic.
The vowel pair “OU” is actually unpredictable. Here are the 8 different ways that it can be pronounced.
And just to keep it interesting, there is a word with two pronunciations! The word “route” can be said with Vowel /aw/ or Long-U.
Here is audio for some of the examples in my article on this topic on Medium.
Words with “N” are not predictable, so they need to be learned individually. When you see a new word that has “N” before Long-U, just remember to check how to say it.
Using the patterns explained above, you now can figure out how the Long-U should be pronounced in these words, even if some of the words are unfamiliar for you. (You can find the answers are at the bottom of this post.)
| astute deputy duplex elude fusion | humic intrude jute mule nebula | ocular sumac urine zucchini |
There is a supplementary lesson on this topic with more information and practice activities on my Patreon page! You can join my English pronunciation learning community on Patreon! Patreon tiers range from $2 to $100 USD per month and support the creation of a comprehensive English pronunciation learning platform!! Come and learn, get help, and interact — I hope to see you there!
ANSWERS to “Try It!”
| Long-U1 | Long-U2 |
| deputy / fusion humic / mule nebula / ocular / urine | astute / duplex elude / intrude jute / sumac / zucchini |
This is a follow up to my post “Sell or Sale?” There is also an extended version article on this topic on Medium, plus a longer version of these Practice Exercises on my Patreon page!!
Listening and speaking practice with word pairs.
Practice 1. Listen and imitate both words below.
Practice 2. Listen and guess: You will hear just one of the words – which one do you hear?
(The answers are at the bottom, below the image)
| 1. based/baste — best 2. braid – bread 3. fail — fell 4. gate — get 5. jail — gel 6. late — let | 7. lace — less 8. main/mane — men 9. pain — pen 10. raced — rest 11. rake — wreck 12. raid/rayed — red | 13. taste — test 14. take – tech 15. wait — wet 16. wane — when 17. waste/waist — west 18. whale/wail — well |
ANSWERS for Practice 2
| 1. based/baste 2. bread 3. fail 4. gate 5. gel 6. late | 7. less 8. men 9. pain 10. rest 11. wreck 12. raid/rayed | 13. taste 14. tech 15. wait 16. wane 17. waste/waist 18. well |
Exciting news! My most recent article on Medium covers the topic here titled “This or These?”
The Medium article has much more information, examples and practice ideas.
I have a free-access link to the article on Medium — if you are not a Medium member, there is a monthly reading limit, but with my link you can read the article even if you have already reached the limit! Here is the link: Pronouncing English Vowels. Some of the most difficult pairs: Long-E vs. Short-i
I hope it helps you learn even more! ENJOY!!
On the Vowel Test page, there are two types of vowel training activities.
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The activities cover the most commonly difficult vowel pairs, such as:
Enjoy!!
In Vowel Sequences part 1 and part 2, we learned that a vowel sequence is two vowels next to each other which belong to separate syllables and both of the vowels need to have their own sound.
Vowel sequences can be tricky to pronounce clearly, unless you know the secret trick of using the end part of the first vowel as a separator for the two sounds and as a bridge for your tongue.
Many linguists call the end part of the long vowels an “off-glide”. The off-glide for Long-A, Long-E, and Long-I is a /y/ sound, and the off-glide for Long-O and Long-U is a /w/ sound.
If you find it difficult to use the off-glide between two vowels, it might help to look at some examples of words that have a visible [y] or [w] between vowels. For your tongue, the process of pronouncing vowel sequences is similar to saying these kinds of words: layer / saying / growing / vowel
So, imagine a [y] between the vowel sequences in these words: chaos / being / ion
And imagine a [w] between the vowel sequences in these words: proactive / January
Once you know how to correctly pronounce vowel sequences, you can use the same strategy to speak more clearly when there are two words that have adjacent vowels.
Examples:
Listen for the /y/ or /w/ off-glide between the vowels as I say these phrases and sentences:
Learning to say vowel sequences well can make your English sound much nicer and easier to understand.
Vowel sequences are two vowels next to each other in a word, that belong to separate syllables, and each one makes its own sound. In Vowel Sequences 1, we learned that the first vowel of a sequence uses its Long-vowel sound, and we need to use the ending part of the first vowel to help establish a boundary between the two vowel sounds.
Examples:
science — The first vowel is Long-I (/ay/), so we need to use the /y/ part of that vowel as a link to the second vowel, so that it sounds like {sci-yence}.
coerces — The first vowel is Long-O (/ow/), so we use the /w/ part as the link to the second vowel, and it sounds like {co-wer-ces}.
Using the /y/ or /w/ part of the first vowel has two main advantages:
By the way, don’t be afraid to exaggerate the “bridge” a little bit!
In these words, the first vowel of the sequence is a Long-A, Long-E, or Long-I sound, so the bridge sound is /y/:
area / aorta / client / idea / diet / giant / medium / museum / period / piano
(They sound like: {A-re-ya}, {a-YOR-ta}, {CLI-yent}, {i-DE-ya}, {DI-yet}, {GI-yant}, {ME-di-yum}, {mu-SE-yum}, {PE-ri-yod}, {pi-YA-no}. The capitalized letters show the stressed syllable.)
In these words, the first vowel of the sequence is Long-O or Long-U, so the bridge sound is /w/:
cooperate / doing / fluid / fuel / oasis / ruin / situation / usual
(They sound like: {co-WO-per-ate}, {DO-wing}, {FLU-wid}, {o-WA-sis}, {RU-win}, {si-tu-WA-tion}, {U-su-wal}.)
Finally, here is an extra tricky word: “bioethics”. It has a sequence of three vowels! The first vowel is Long-I, so the /y/ part is used, and the second vowel is Long-O, so the /w/ part is used, and the word sounds like {bi-yo-WE-thics}.
When you find a new word that has two vowels next to each other, you need to check whether the two vowels make just one vowel sound together (a vowel pair), or whether they make two separate sounds (a vowel sequence).
Vowel Pair: This is when two vowels are together in a word, and together they make just one vowel sound and they belong to the same syllable. For example, in the words “rain” or “head”. (see more examples in Vowel Pairs)
Vowel Sequence: This is when two vowels are next to each other in a word, and they make two separate sounds, and belong to different syllables, as in the words “diet” or “eon”.
Vowel sequences can be tricky to pronounce, and there are many students of English who have trouble saying them clearly.
Sometimes, there are words that can be confused, if the vowel sequence is not clear. Here are some common examples:
science: The [i] and the [e] both need to be clear, otherwise this word is often confused with “signs”.
coerces: If the [o] and the [er] are not both clearly pronounced, this can be confused with “courses”.
create: This could sound like “crate”.
quiet: This could sound like “quite”.
Even when there is not a similar sounding word, an unclear vowel sequence could make the word unclear. Here is a funny example: I once had a student who told me that when she first arrived in the U.S., she went to the store to buy deodorant, but she couldn’t buy any, because she couldn’t pronounce the word “deodorant” right, and nobody at the store understood what she wanted. She told me this story the day we were learning about vowel sequences, because suddenly she realized that her trouble with pronouncing “deodorant” was mostly about not knowing that the “eo” sequence needed to be two different vowel sounds.
So then, how do native-speakers of English pronounce vowel sequences clearly? Here is the secret…
FIRST: The first thing to know is that in a vowel sequence, the first vowel almost always has a Long-vowel sound.
SECOND: The secret key is to use the end part of the first vowel. This is where the IPA symbols are useful. When we look at the IPA symbols for the Long-vowels, and look at the 2nd part of each one, we can see a little pattern…
These have a /y/ sound at the end:
Long-A (/ay/)
Long-E (/iy/)
Long-I (/ay/)
These have a /w/ sound at the end:
Long-O (/ow/)
Long-U (/yuw/ or /uw/)
The little /y/ and /w/ parts at the end of the Long-vowels are the secret tool that you need to use to clearly pronounce vowel sequences.
The way to use them is by making them a little bit stronger than usual, so that they make a little bridge between the two vowels of the sequence.
Let’s try this with a few words:
science: The first vowel is Long-I, so the /y/ part should be pronounced a little more strongly, so that it sounds like {sci-yence}.
coerces: The first vowel of the sequence is Long-O, so the /w/ part needs to be used, to make it sound like {co-werces}.
create: Emphasize the /y/ part of the Long-E, to make it sound like {cre-yate}
quiet: Use the /y/ ending of the Long-I to separate the two vowels, like {qui-yet}
Now you know how to more clearly say a word such as “deodorant”!
We will see more examples in Vowel Sequences 2.
Knowing the Long-vowel sounds and Short-vowel sounds of English can help you be better at pronouncing new words and deciphering spelling patterns, but it also helps to be aware of the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) symbols for the vowels. Some people learn IPA symbols when they first begin to learn English, but others have never seen these symbols before. Either way, it can be useful to refer to them for some aspects of English pronunciation.
One of the main differences between Long and Short-vowels is that Long-vowels have two parts to their sound and Short-vowels have one part. In the Long-vowel IPA symbols below you can see the two parts for each Long-vowel.
Here are two situations where it is helpful to take a look at the IPA symbols of Long-vowels.
A vowel sequence is when there are 2 vowels next to each other, and they both have a sound, and they belong to different syllables, as in the words “idea” (3 syllables), or “fluid” (2 syllables). (NOTE: This is different from vowel pairs that belong to the same syllable and make only one sound.)
In order to pronounce both of the vowels in a sequence clearly, so that they can both be heard clearly, we need to make special use of the second part of the first vowel. Let’s see how that works with the words “idea” and “fluid”.
Idea — In this word the first vowel of the sequence is a Long-E, and the IPA symbol (/iy/) shows a “y” at the end. The trick is to use that “y” part to separate the two vowels. This is done by pronouncing it a little bit stronger than usual. This makes the word sound like it could be spelled as “ideya”.
Fluid — In this word the first vowel is a Long-U. The IPA symbol (/uw/) shows a “w” at the end. This “w” is emphasized, to make a separation between the [u] and the [i], and it sounds like “fluwid”.
The consonants “T”, “D”, “C”, “S”, and “Z” sometimes change their sound. Here are some examples:
“virtue” — the “T” sounds like “CH”
“educate” — the “D” sounds like “J”
“sugar” — the “S” sounds like “SH”
“social” — the “C” sounds like “SH”
This kind of consonant change can happen when the consonant is followed by a high-front vowel sound — this is seen as either a “y” or “i” in IPA symbols. In words like these, there is (or once was) either a Long-I-2 /iy/ or a Long-U-1 /yuw/ right after the morphing consonant. The consonant combines with the high-front part of the vowel sound and changes.
In some of these words, the original vowel sound is lost. For example, in “social” the [i] is lost when it combines with the [c] (the [a] remains as schwa). However, in “educate” the [d] gets changed but the Long-U can still be heard.
SO, overall, it is most helpful to know the vowel system in terms of Long and Short-vowels, because many pronunciation patterns make use of them, but also keep your eye on the IPA symbols for extra clues.
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