Word Comparisons for Chinese Students American English pronunciation

I recently received the following email

I found I still have some difficulty

pronouncing the following words when I

talked to American people they often ask

me to repeat I feel these words sound

very similar I asked other Chinese

people and they all agree it is hard for

them to differentiate I wonder if you

could demonstrate in your blog if it’s

possible so she has listed five word

pairs and I am happy to do it the first

one the words town and tongue these two

words are different not only in the

vowel but also in the final consonant

sound town ends with an N and tongue

with an NG so I’ve already done a blog

entry on the difference between those

town tongue but basically on the word

town it’s this part of the tongue that

touches and it touches more forward hmm

and on the ng in tongue it’s a further

back part of the tongue that touches and

it touches for the back town tongue the

vowel sound is different as well the

first is the ow as in now diphthong

ow you have to be careful to make both

of those sounds town ow

so your lips need to get smaller town

tongue is the UH as in butter which is

more open and more relaxed a tongue

tongue town so in general on the word

tongue the sound is a little for the

back first the vowel uh and then the

consonant mmm town ow ow

the sound is further in this part of the

face and the consonant sound is also

further up town tongue town the next set

of words were three words south source

and sauce now the first south again it

has the ow as in now diphthong

ow south-south so you have to make sure

that you get those two sounds in there

source is also written in IPA with a

diphthong the oh as in no diphthong but

it’s followed by an R and ours are

notorious for changing the colour of the

vowels that come before source I would

not say o or o er it’s more of a one

vowel sound I find I think the are kind

of takes over the second part of the

diphthong so or source source so rather

than having a very defined Oh as in no

source source oh it’s the first part of

that diphthong into an r source the last

sauce this one has no diphthong it’s a

single vowel the aw as in law so ah the

sides of the cheeks come in a bit all

the corners of the mouth come in just a

bit and this part comes away from the

face just a touch

ah sauce sauce an important thing to

note is that the first word South ends

with a th I have noticed that it can be

a mistake for people from China to

pronounce the th as an S in which case

it would be south I can see how that

sounds so much like sauce and source

sauce so that is going to be a major way

to differentiate and make sure that

you’re pronouncing it correctly is if

you say south and put the unvoiced th on

the end where your tongue comes through

the teeth South source sauce the next

pair of words down and done just like

the first pair town and tongue the vowel

sounds here are the hours and now and

the

and butter however with down and done

they both end simply in an end whereas

with town and tongue tongue ends in the

ng sound ow ah down done so the

important thing here to differentiate is

to make sure you get both of the sounds

of the diphthong ow ow down done the

next set of words pool and pour both of

these words can be difficult to

pronounce on their own and I know that

for people whose native language is

Chinese the L and the R can be

especially hard to differentiate the

word pool the vowel sound is the GU as

in boo but it is a dark L which means

you go through another vowel-like sound

before the L sound pool pool pour has a

diphthong sound it is the hua as in lure

diphthong sound and it’s so hard because

the diphthong almost has the R sound

itself in it because as I said in

previous entries the R sound is a vowel

sound and a consonant sound both it’s

the are ran and the her sound pour pool

pour so the important difference here is

what the tongue does at the end in the

word pool the tip of the tongue comes up

and touches here pool hole pour her when

it ends in the R sound the tip of the

tongue is not touching anything at the

end of the word and the tongue has

raised and the sides of the tongue are

pressing against the insides of the

teeth pool poor her so the vowel sounds

an IPA would not be written the same but

that is definitely not the most

important difference between these two

words the important difference

the final tongue position and therefore

the final consonant sound and the final

requests are for the words bike and back

bike has the AI as in buy diphthong and

I actually just did a pronunciation

evaluation with a Chinese student and I

noticed that this diphthong caused some

problems he often didn’t make the two

separate sounds I I bike bike Eike Eike

so that’s going to be the important

thing that really forms this word making

sure you pronounce both sounds of that

diphthong back back as simply the ad as

in bat sound ah where the jaw is going

to drop a little bit more ah then in I i

ah the corners of the mouth come up i

the corners of the mouth stay more

relaxed in the first sound of the

diphthong back bike