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