Comparing the 3 Uh Sounds American English Pronunciation
there are three sounds in American
English what is the difference between
these three sounds let’s start with the
UH as in butter ah as you can see there
is some drop in the jaw ah and the
tongue is resting on the bottom of the
mouth touching just behind these teeth
ah ah the schwa is similar the tongue
position is the same resting on the
bottom of the mouth touching just there
however there is not the drop in the jaw
uh uh uh the UH as in pull this has some
drop of the job with the lips do
something completely different they come
out a little bit because they person
here at the corners pull now there are
how-to videos for each of these three
sounds but I wanted to bring them
together so that we could compare let’s
look at some photos all of the photos
were taken as I said the word that
contains the sound not just the sound by
itself here you see the as the butter
and as in supply sounds compared on the
left the UH as in butter you can see
that the jaw is dropping more the teeth
are further apart and the chin is
further down here is butter versus pull
you can see the corners of the mouth in
pull are coming together just a little
bit
this brings the top and bottom lip away
from the face the top lip here is
covering the front teeth whereas with
the UH as in butter sound you can see
just a bit of the top teeth here are all
three again you can see that the jaw is
dropped more on butter leaving more
space between the top and bottom lips
here are butter and pull and profile it
is difficult to see but the corners of
the mouth in pull have come in a little
bit and the mouth looks slightly less
relaxed you can see a change in the top
lip as it has slightly pulled away from
the face here are all three in profile
now let’s look at a few sample words
first the schwa or as in supply sound
supply sofa condition condition has two
choise in the first and the last
syllable condition conduct compose the
UH as in pull sound pull good should
could the UH as in butter butter
mother brother because and because it is
the second syllable because one last
note the schwa sound only occurs in
unaccented syllables this means that the
length will most likely be shorter than
the other two vowel sounds when they
occur in accented syllables