Learn to Pronounce the ZH Sound /ʒ/ - American English Ultimate Pronunciation Challenge Master Class

Hi, everybody. Jennifer from Tarle speech. Welcome back to the American English pronunciation challenge. I will be posting a new lesson on an American English consonant and vowel sound this year. We will get through every single sound by the end of the year. This is to celebrate my 20th year in business. I will post the lesson today on how to pronounce the V H sound. And then for the rest of the week, I will publish some follow along daily practice. These are available on the iTunes store and they have been available there for years, but I'm giving them away for free to celebrate a little bit of a throwback as well, you can see me from many years ago. All right, let's jump right in. If you are listening to me on a podcast, you can head over to YouTube. To see me pronounce the sound and the words that we are practicing today. All right. Without further ado, the V H sound. This is two letters pronounced with one sound. And this is the phonetic symbol for the sound. How do we spell this sound? We are going to spell it with an S measure, a Z seizure, a G yes beige, a J Dijon and an S division. Okay. What do we do with our mouth? If you were here last week, the Z H sound is the same as the S H sound with one small difference. This sound has the voice on. Whereas the S H sound did not have the voice box on and moving. So we are going to round our lips into a pucker. The tongue is in the middle of the mouth. It is not touching the teeth. The airflow continues out of the mouth. It is a continuously moving sound here. The air continuously moves out of the mouth and the voice box is on and moving. All right. Let's take a look at this sound. You can see my lips are rounded. My voice box is on and moving. You can't see it, but my tongue is not touching and the air keeps moving out of the mouth. Okay. Let's give this sound a try. I am going to say the words. I just want you to listen. And then we are going to do some repeat after me. Okay. Just listen. Genre, casual, vision, measure, version, division, beige, sabotage, garage, massage, collage. All right. You can see this is a relatively uncommon sound, but we do use it in some common words. So let's start first with genre, casual, vision, measure, version, division, beige, sabotage, garage, massage, collage. All right. Let's try again. We'll do some more words together. First row, we only have one word. Genre. Okay. Row or column two, casual, vision, measure, version, division, beige, sabotage, garage, massage, collage. Okay. Awesome. I just want to make a few comments. I hear variations of this sound at the end of words a lot. I will hear people say garage with more of a J sound. This is regional and I do hear some differences. I will also hear some people say garage with more of a CH. Again, regional variation. So just know that the ZH at the end of the word oftentimes has some variations depending on where in the country you live. All right. And now for some sentences, just listen. Jacques made a beige and camouflage collage. The division manager wants to measure the garage. Okay. Repeat after me. Jacques made a beige and camouflage collage. The division manager wants to measure the garage. Okay everyone, I hope you enjoyed this lesson. Thank you for being here. Just to let you know, I do post a lot of lessons. If you have a difficult time keeping up, please sign up for my newsletter. I will send you every Friday a summary of all of the lessons that I posted the week before. It makes practicing a snap and easy-breezy. You can also follow me on all of the socials. I post the lessons on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn that I am posting every day on YouTube, so you can see the lessons and then head on over to YouTube to watch them. I'm posting a video every day this year for my 20th year in business, so please come back tomorrow and every day this year to celebrate with me. Thanks so much everyone for being here. Have a great day and I will see you tomorrow.