How to Pronounce ON TOP OF THE WORLD IDIOM American English
In this American English pronunciation video,
we’re going to go over the idiom on Top of
the World.
I’m on top of the world! What does it mean?
It doesn’t mean that I’m hanging out at the
North Pole. It means I’m really happy, I’m
overjoyed. Maybe I just got a new job, or
won the lottery! It feels like everything
is going my way.
This picture comes from an illustration that
shows many different idioms for expressing
happiness. Click here or in the description
box to see them all in my Kaplan International
Colleges sponsored blog post.
Let’s study the pronunciation of “on top of
the world”. First, let’s look at the rhythmic
pattern. Which are the content words in this
idiom? Content words are nouns, verbs, adjectives,
and adverbs. In this sentence fragment, that
would be TOP and WORLD. ON, OF, and THE are
function words, less important for understanding
the meaning. So TOP and WORLD will be longer,
and will have the shape of a stressed syllable:
top, world. ON and OF THE will be quite different,
flatter, lower in pitch. So we have short,
long, short, short, long. da-DA-da-da-DA.
On Top of the World. da-DA-da-da-DA.
ON begins with the AH as in FATHER vowel.
You need to drop your jaw for that. Then the
tongue goes to the roof of the mouth for the
N, on. Luckily that’s where it needs to be
for the T consonant. All we have to do is
close the teeth, stop the air, then release
it with the jaw, on to-, to-. Here again we
have the AH as in FATHER vowel. Here it’s
in a stressed syllable, so it will be longer
and come down in pitch, to-. Then we have
the P sound. It’s ending the word, and the
next word begins with a vowel, so we want
to link this ending consonant to the beginning
vowel. On to-pv. So we’re going to link it
to the schwa, almost as if it begins the next
word. With OF we have a choice. We can either
say the V sound, or drop it. If we drop it,
uh-the, we simply have the schwa, the voiced
TH, and the schwa. So to make that TH between
the two sounds, you just need to quickly and
lightly bring the tongue tip forward, of the,
of the, of the. Since it’s so fast in these
unstressed words, you may find that the tongue
tip doesn’t push through the teeth much. That’s
ok, just make sure it’s not lifted, at the
roof of the mouth like a D, or pressing down,
like for the Z sound. It should just be straight
forward, pressing against the teeth. Uh-the.
If you say the V, it’s a little more complicated.
The bottom lip comes up and touches the bottom
of the top front teeth before the TH. So,
in slow motion, we have of the, of the.
And finally we have ‘world’. This can be a
really tough word. It has an R sound, and
a dark L. Some people have a hard time making
WORLD sound different from WORD. Here’s a
trick. It’s a one-syllable word, but you can
try to make it feel like two syllables. It
begins with the W consonant sound, so your
lips need to make a tight circle for that.
Then we have the UR as in HER vowel and the
R consonant. The UR vowel isn’t separate from
the R consonant. It’s just one sound. It’s
basically the R consonant acting like a vowel.
So don’t try to make an extra vowel sound
here, wor-, wor-. The tongue should pull from
here, for the W, where the tongue tip is down and
forward, wor-, straight back to the R. The
tip shouldn’t be touching anything for the
R, and the jaw doesn’t need to drop much.
Wor-. Now we have the Dark L, which will feel
like another syllable. To make the dark sound,
we want to pull the back part of the tongue
back, here. So the tongue goes from this position,
where the middle was raised, to something
flatter as the back part pulls back. Then
lift your tongue in the front to the top,
so the flat part is touching the roof of the
mouth, dd, dd. This is to make the D sound.
World. The most important thing to practice,
to make this word different from WORD, is
pulling back the back part of the tongue for
the dark part of the Dark L. Also, don’t forget
the shape of a stressed syllable. World. It
should go up in pitch a little at the beginning,
and then down in pitch. World.
On top of the world. da-DA-da-da-DA
Practice your English. Make up a sentence
with this idiom and post it as a comment below.
Or, better yet, record it, and post it as
a video response to this video on YouTube!
I can’t wait to watch.
That’s it, and thanks so much for using Rachel’s
English.