American English Pronunciation: Learn from a Native Speaker!

Hi everyone, welcome or welcome back to my channel. I'm English teacher Claire, and today I'm going to be going over some American English pronunciation with you. As many of you know, I am a native speaker from the U.S., so of course my focus is on the American English pronunciation. And in this video, we will be learning the short and long vowel sounds. The good news is that in American English, we have less vowel sounds than in British English, for example. But I'm not even going to cover all of them in this video. I'll just take you through the short vowel sounds and long vowel sounds. If you want to get access to my full pronunciation course, check out the details to join my community English Made Easy in the description below. Once you join my community, not only will you get access to my full complete pronunciation course, which will cover all the sounds in American English, but you will also get a little cheat sheet to help you with the IPA symbols. Also, you get access to my full complete course on learning English, and you get to be a part of a community. So if you want to learn more about that, check out the link in my description below. Okay, so if we look at the different vowel and consonant sounds we have in American English, you'll notice that these symbols are different to the English letters we use. And these symbols are part of the IPA, which stands for the International Phonetic Alphabet, which is different to the English alphabet. Now, it's especially important for you to learn the IPA symbols as English learners specifically because English is not a phonetic language. That means that you won't necessarily know how a word is pronounced just by looking at it. However, if you are able to look up that word in a dictionary or online tool and see the IPA symbols written for that word, after studying IPA, you will know how to pronounce every word, well, in any language because it's an international alphabet. But if you want to learn just the specific ones for American English, I got you. So first, we're going to learn the short vowel sounds and then the long vowel sounds in American English. First up, we have short a. Ah. As in the word cat. Ah. Cat. Or sand. Ah. Sand. Now, because we've already established that English is not phonetic, so short a, ah, does not always take the form of the letter a. Take the word laugh. Ah. Laugh. So here, the vowels are a and u, and these two vowels together make the short a sound. Ah. So, that's why IPA is so important in American English or English. Next up, we have short e. Ah. As in the word ten. Ah. Ten. Or best. Ah. Best. Again, it's not always going to be represented by letter e, as in the word friend. Eh. Friend. Again, the vowel combination here is ie, but we have the short e sound. Eh. Short i. Ih. As in the word sit. Ih. Sit. Now, when you see a word formed similar to the word sit, so consonant, vowel, consonant, you can pretty accurately assume that the vowel takes the short form that matches that letter. So, in this case, we have an i in between two consonants, and it is pronounced as a short i. So, that's why it's a little easier to learn these vowels in this way, because all of the words like bin, pig, pit, consonant, i, consonant, will take the short i sound. Now, of course, it's not always represented by the letter i. By the way, we know this like in the word pretty. Ih. Pretty. Here, the short i sound is the letter e. Or in the word women. Ih. Women. In this case, the vowel is an o, but it is short i sound. Okay, next up, short o. Aw. Now, sometimes you'll see this sound represented by these IPA symbols. And that means you're looking at the British English pronunciation of that word. So, British English does have more vowel sounds than American English. So, lucky you, you're learning American English. You don't have to learn as many vowel sounds. But if you do see these, know that in American English, we would pronounce it as this short o sound. Aw. Like in the word dog. Aw. Dog. Now, even though it's short o, so in words with consonant, o, consonant, it takes this sound. This sound is often used with the letter a, actually. Like in the word call. Aw. Call. Or father. Aw. Father. Okay, our last short vowel sound is short u. Uh. As in the word cup. Uh. Cup. Or like in the word sun. Or butt. Or uh. Right? Consonant u. Consonant will take this sound. Now, here are some other words that have completely different vowels that will also take this sound. Money. Uh. Money. Blood. Uh. Blood. These are the long vowel sounds. First up, we have long a. A. As in the word cake. So, as you may have already noticed, this a sound sounds like the letter name a. But, it's not always just represented by letter a. We also have this sound often when the ending of a word is a y. Like day. A. Day. Or, we have ai can make this sound. A. Train. A. Train. Okay, so again, long a is not always just represented by the letter a. But, it does sound like the letter name a. Okay, then we have long e. Maybe you guessed it. This sounds like e. E. Which is often represented by double e. When you see two e's in a word, it will have this long e sound. Like the word see. E. See. Or, feel. E. Feel. Of course, there's always exceptions. We have, in this case, ea. Makes the e sound. As in the word please. E. Please. Next up, long I. I. Again, it sounds like the letter name I. As in the word bike. I. Bike. Or, night. Often, we have IGH in the middle of a word. Makes the long I sound. I. Night. Also, it could be represented by the letter Y. When Y is the vowel. As in the word my. I. My. Long O sounds like O. O. Like in the word bone. O. Bone. Here, it's represented by the letter O. That's fairly easy to remember. Often, when we see a vowel with a silent e at the end. We know the vowel takes the long vowel sound. For example, this word. Bone. Has consonant O, consonant E. Of course, we don't say the E. But, it does tell us. This silent E tells us that the O is long. Bone. Another word with this sound. Know. O. Know. Or, slow. O. Slow. So, sometimes this O sound is represented by O. W. But, not always. As you'll see later. Then, we have long U. Which sounds like OO. OO. Like in the word two. Now, careful. Because of that rule I said before. Consonant, then vowel. Consonant with silent E at the end. Makes that vowel long. And, in this case, that's true. Or, tube. Right? But, in the word cube. We have that extra sound at the beginning. Kya. This sort of glide. Which we'll learn later. Before the OO sound. Cube. Often, if you see a word that looks like tube. It could be pronounced like tube. Or, it could sound like cube. But, don't worry. You will learn also the IPA symbol for that glide sound. And, you'll be able to see the difference. If you look up these words. Okay. Another word with the long U sound. OO is blue. OO. Blue. Or, school. OO. School. Often, when two O's are together. Like in this word. We have the long U sound. OO. Alright. So, now you know the short and long vowel sound in American English. As I said, there are even more vowel sounds. And, of course, all the consonant sounds. To master the pronunciation of a language. It's also important to learn word stress. Which I cover in my complete course in my community. As well as tips to sound like a native speaker. So, again. If you would like to get the full access. Check out my community link below. And, as always, you can ask me any questions you have in the comments. Happy learning, guys. See you next time. Bye.