How to Pronounce Should Would Could Reduce and Link American English
In this American English pronunciation video,
we’re going to talk about the pronunciation
of should, would, and could.
These words all rhyme. The pronunciation is
simpler than it looks; the L is silent. So
they all have their beginning consonant, the
UH as in BOOK vowel, and the D sound. Should,
would, could. They rhyme with ‘good’,
‘hood’, and ‘wood’. Yes, ‘would’
and ‘wood’ are pronounced the same. They
are homophones. So this is the pronunciation
of these words in full.
But, as you know, Americans like to reduce
less important words in a sentence to make
the important words stand out more. And these
are three words that can be reduced.
As with many reductions, we change the vowel
to the schwa and speed up the word: should,
should, would, would, could, could. You’ll
hear Americans go even further though, and drop
the D. I noticed I did this when I was doing
a Ben Franklin exercise on some of my speech.
Should we get dinner?
Yeah.
Should we get dinner? One of the things I
notice is that I’m dropping the D sound,
should we, should we.
Shu, shu. Just the SH sound and the schwa.
The lips are flared and the teeth are together,
sh. The tongue tip is pointing up to the roof
of the mouth, but it’s not touching it.
Shu-, shu-. Then for the schwa, everything
relaxes and you go into the next sound, shu-,
shu-, shu-we, should we call her? Shu-we [2x],
I should go. Shu-go, shu-go. I should go.
Now, if the next sound is a vowel or a diphthong,
I wouldn’t drop the D. It would be too unclear
to go from the schwa into another vowel. So
for ‘should I’, ‘should I’, for example,
I make a really quick flap of the tongue for
the D. Should I, should I, should I say that?
Should I try it? Should I call him?
If dropping the D feels like too extreme of
a reduction for you, you certainly don’t
have to do it. Just keep ‘should’ unstressed,
really quick, should, should, should.
Now let’s look at ‘could’. The K sound
is made when the back part of the tongue comes
up and touches the soft palate in the back,
kk, kk, ku-. Could we try later? Could we,
could we? Again, just dropping the D: k sound,
schwa, next word. Could we, could we? Saying
it with a D when the next word begins with
a vowel or diphthong: Could I come back later?
Could I, could I. So just a nice short ‘could’.
Finally, ‘would’. For the W sound, the
lips are in a tight circle, and the back part
of the tongue lifts, ww, ww. Wuh. Would we
want to do that? Would we? Would we? Would
we want to do that? Or, with a really quick
D sound: Where would I go? would I, would
I, would I.
So you can reduce these words by changing
the vowel to the schwa. You can reduce them
further by dropping the D, unless the next
sound is a vowel or a diphthong.
If there’s a word or phrase you’d like
help pronouncing, please put it in the comments
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That’s it, and thanks so much for using
Rachel’s English.