Learn to Pronounce the Z Sound /z/ - American English Ultimate Pronunciation Challenge Master Class

It's Jennifer from Tarle Speech. Welcome back. Today we are going to be talking about the Z sound in our year-long American English Pronunciation Masterclass Series. If you are new here, welcome. What this is, is a lesson once a week on Wednesdays and then the rest of the week, Thursday through Sunday, I post follow-along practice lessons. They are a little older. I made them years ago and I was selling them and now they are available free to you. If you do want them all together in one place, they are available in book form on the iTunes store. You can check the description below for details on that. And if you want to stay up to date, please sign up for my newsletter where I post everything that you may have missed the week before. So let's go ahead and jump right in and talk about the Z sound. Many people want to know what is the phonetic transcription. Here you go. It is the letter Z. How do we spell that? We can spell it with a letter Z like in zoo. The letter X in xylophone. Two Zs like in the word buzz. And this is where it gets really tricky. We can spell this with a letter S which we pronounce as a Z in visit. This happens a lot in English where we spell the Z sound with the letter S. Okay. How do we make this sound? This sound is made like an S sound that we practiced last week. Our mouth does the same thing. The difference is the voicing. Our voice is going to be on and moving and vibrating for the Z sound. So let's talk about what the mouth does. Then I'll make myself bigger so that you can see me pronouncing the Z sound. If you are listening to this as a podcast, you can head over to YouTube to see me practicing this sound and also to see the word that we are going to be practicing as well. Okay. So your lips are relaxed, open, pulled back, no puckering. The tip of the tongue is behind the top teeth or pointing down. Do not touch the teeth. Do not touch the teeth for this sound or it is going to sound like a J sound just. We want this to have airflow that continuously moves out of the mouth. When you hear that nice buzzing sound quality and the voice box is on and moving. Okay. So let's practice some of these sounds. Okay. So let's practice. First of all, let's start with what does the Z sound look like? My voice box is on and moving. My mouth, the lips are pulled back. My teeth are slightly open so that the air can move out. The tip of my tongue is pointed slightly down. Some people make this with the tongue a little bit higher in the mouth. Either is fine. Again, just do not touch the teeth. Okay. Now I am going to have you listen as I say the word. Then you are going to repeat after me. Okay. So just listen. Zip, zebra, zoo, zap, zipper, frozen, Thursday, busy, noisy, exist. These, lies, girls, rose, hers. exist. These, lies, girls, rose, hers. Okay. Now let's try each row at a time. I will say the words and then you take a turn. Zip, zebra, zoo, zap, zipper, frozen, Thursday, busy, noisy, exist. These, lies, girls, rose, hers. Okay. Let's try some sentences. The noisy neighbors are also nosy. Zoe said that these days work for her visit. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Okay. Repeat after me. The noisy neighbors are also nosy. The noisy neighbors are also nosy. The noisy neighbors are also nosy. The noisy neighbors are also nosy. Sentence number two. Zoe said that these days work for her visit. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Zoe said that these days work for her visit. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Zoe said that these days work for her visit. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Zoe said that these days work for her visit. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Zoe said that these days work for her visit. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Okay, everyone, I hope that you found this class helpful. If you would like to practice more, again, please join me for the rest of the week. I will be posting follow-along daily practice on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for the Z sounds this week. Posted as last week, so if you missed that, the sounds are the same except for the voicing, so you can always look back to last week and practice those as well. Again, if you feel like you're missing something, please sign up for my newsletter. I will send all the lessons from the previous week in a nice, neat, and tidy email so that you can just watch those easily all at one time. I do get some questions on how do I know when the letter S is pronounced as a Z. I have several classes on that, and I will link those in the description below. Thank you, everyone, for being here. I hope you are enjoying this master class series, and I will see you tomorrow to practice together.