A Look Back - Top 10 @TarleSpeech YouTube Videos of ALL Time

We have a look back top 10 videos on YouTube of all time. Number 10, I'm gonna go backwards here. We have the words there, there, and there. So if you're listening, it's T-H-E-R-E, T-H-E-I-R, and T-H-E-Y apostrophe R-E. You can pronounce all of these words exactly the same way as there, there, there. Super easy. Of course, you can say these words differently if you have the they are. I do hear some people say they're as two syllables. Anything, it's fine. It's all about being clear while you are communicating. And pronunciation changes. It varies from area to area in the U.S. and across the world where English is spoken. So for here in the U.S., you can pronounce all of these the same. Next, a fan favorite. So this was a question from a student that I had years ago. How do you pronounce the word Coke? In American English, we use the very long O. Coke, Coke, Coke. And you can see I am moving my mouth for that long O. And so when I move my mouth, that makes the vowel sound a lot longer. Okay, so there is a video on the internet that was sort of viral back in the day. And it is a woman from a different country, and she is teaching an English class. And she is teaching how to pronounce the word Coke. And she says cock. So in English, that is a chicken, but it can also refer to a part of the male genitalia. And so it's very funny that she said this. I feel bad for this woman because she is giving her all and she is doing good in the world. She's teaching English. So if you know this woman, please send my video so she knows how to pronounce this word in American English if she ever comes here and wants to order a Coke. And yes, Coke Zero is still my favorite Coca-Cola product of all time. All right, moving on to number eight. This is a little controversial with some of you out there. The word is close. Technically, you can pronounce a T-H in this word if you want, but so many people drop it and just say the word close, C-L-O-Z. Like you are going to close the door. Those words are pronounced the same by me, many other American English speakers. So again, it's all about being clear and with a good strong context, you will be fine most of the time in many, many situations. But especially with this word, you just say close. I'm wearing new clothes today. Then everyone is going to understand you. So just end this word with a V sound, close. Okay, number seven. Also quite the topic of discussion is, are these words pronounced the same, ant and ant? Or are they pronounced different, ant and aunt? You can actually do either. I say them the same most of the time. I say my aunt are the best, I love my aunt. But some of the time I will say auntie. So that is fine too. It just depends. Yes, I am here live. This is live video coming to you with my morning coffee. So welcome everyone again, live here this morning. Okay, so for this word, aunt or aunt, A-U-N-T. Depending on the region of the country, some people have very strong feelings about which one is correct. And also I will hear different cultural groups in the US pronounce this word differently. So it just kind of depends. But if you want to say them the same way, like I do, that is perfect. And I say aunt. Okay, number six. The sixth most popular video of all time, flour and lore. So the spelling on these really confuses people. So lore is F-L-O-O-R and flour, that white powder that we use to cook with, especially to make bread, that is F-L-O-U-R. So flour has the ow sound and lore has the or sound. So for flour, we're going to open and move our mouth a lot. So these words are pronounced differently in American English, flour and lore. Okay, this is one of the videos that kind of got me started back in the day. It's one of my first videos. And I do just have to comment because this does crack me up. I've been doing this so long that I had to hire someone to produce and edit my videos for me. So Ryan Maneri with Oyster Hatcher Media, giving you a big shout out. He is amazing. He's still in business. If you are looking for video production work, definitely reach out to him. But he made these videos. He did such a great job because for those of you who are younger out here, this is going to be hard to imagine, but it was really difficult to make your own videos. It was cost prohibitive because you had to buy so much equipment and you had to buy some video editing software. And it just is not like it is today where you can just do anything from your phone. So you kids out there, you're living in the best time. Okay, so the word world and word. So word is pronounced W-E-R-D, like er, just the short E-R sound. Word, word, word. Now, excuse me, world is or. So we're going to really move our mouth for that one. World, you can see how much I'm moving. World. This word world, I came up with a video later on world the earth and world to spin, W-H-I-R-L-D. And that really helps a lot of my students. So look for that video. I will actually link all of these in the description after class. But if you think about pronouncing the word world, like something spins around and it's spelled differently, most of my students can't pronounce that. So that's a little bit of a trick for you. Okay, now this is when I started making videos for myself. So don't judge. I got a lot of comments from people about how terrible my sound was. You were all not wrong out there. Then some nice people of all of you out there messaged me and said, here's what you need to do. Here's how to fix your sound. So thank you, everyone. You have all been so kind. Again, you are why I am here today and I'm doing much better with my sound and video quality. So the words here are dessert and desert. First of all, let's give a shout out to my first grade teacher and my second grade teacher. I went to a Catholic school, Sister Asumpta and Sister Benigna. I still remember how to spell these words because of them. Dessert, it is delicious like strawberry shortcake. So we have two S's in dessert. And then we have dessert, which means to leave and that is D-E-S-E-R-T and desert, which is sand. So that is one S. So very confusing because you have some different pronunciations and the same spellings. So let's talk about dessert, the delicious treat and desert, the sand. This is really about word stress. So we have dessert and we are going to stress syllable number two because we eat dessert at the end of a meal. And then we have desert and that is sand and that has one syllable. And so that is going to be stressed on syllable number one. That's just kind of the way that I remember it. So again, we have dessert, which I love to eat and desert, which is the place with a lot of sand that is very dry. Okay, moving right along. Number three, we have taught and taught. So one of the things that I'm planning on doing this year is doing more live classes. I've had a lot of requests for more live classes and more podcasts. I've been posting all of my older classes as rebroadcast on all of the podcast platforms. So if you're a podcast person, you can check out my Tarle speech podcast, which is basically the classes I'm posting here on YouTube. But if you want those for on the go, also YouTube now has podcasting. You do need to download their app, their music app, and they are on there. And then you can listen to those as well. So, okay, back to this. I'm redoing all of my classes and I have a class on AUGH and OUGH pronunciation. These spellings are very, very old and pronunciations change. So oftentimes the reason English pronunciation gets to be so confusing is because the spelling doesn't match what we say. So I know some Spanish and I'm now taking Japanese and it's so easy to read in these languages because it is very phonetic. Now in English, that is not always the case, but there are rules. So if you go and check out my class on AUGH and OUGH, that will be very, very helpful. So in these cases, hot, think of it as being spelled T-O-T with that open O. Hot, hot. For that short O, think open oval shaped mouth and that will help you get your tongue where it needs to be, which is low in the front, high in the back. We're going to use that same vowel for thought, even though it's spelled differently. And we are going to have the TH here. So for taught, we start by touching the back of the top front T for that T, taught, and we end there with the T. And then for thought, we're going to start with the tongue out of the mouth. Air is moving over the mouth. If you are a native speaker listening to this, you kind of touch your teeth with your tongue. Okay, but if you are a new English learner, think about not touching the front teeth at all with your tongue, and then you're going to probably do this correctly, okay? So thought, thought, thought. You can see there's air moving over my tongue because I have this like little bowl in my tongue and the air is moving over and it is not stopping. So that's how those words sound different. Taught and, okay, moving on. We're on to number two. Okay, so you know that we had flower and floor. I got a lot of questions on the video about then are flower and flower pronounced the same? They are, they are homophones. If you love a homophone like I do, join me every Tuesday. I have been posting homophone lessons for years and years and years every Tuesday. I have playlists of all of those homophones. These are a great way to work on two things at once. You're going to work, actually three. You're going to work on your pronunciation, of course. Also, your listening, because so many times my students are listening for differences, but there are so many words that are pronounced the same. And then you are also going to learn some different spelling patterns, which is really going to help you when you are reading because then you will understand what you are reading a lot better. So, flower and flower. Flower, the beautiful things that grow on plants. And flower, what we use to cook. These are pronounced the same, and it is with the ow-er, ow-er. So we're saying ow and then wer, ow-er, flower. Flower and flower. Okay, last, number one, we have or, our, and our. And before I get into this one, I do want to say that I've made a follow-up video to this because there are some variations with these words. So, or is pronounced or, and you're going to pucker and move your mouth back. Or, or. Our, like this is our last, and our, the time. We are going to pronounce those the same, ow-er, ow-er. We don't say the H on the time, our. Now, there is a variation in American English where our, O-U-R, is sometimes pronounced like ar. If you were, I'm Catholic, and so at church, oftentimes when we're saying the our father, everyone says our father, our father. So I got this question from actually a Spanish speaker who was at church and said, okay, you say this word is pronounced our, but I hear ar. Both are fine, and so I have a video lesson on that too. So there you have it, your top 10 videos. Let's do them all quickly one more time. We have their, their, and their, and these words are all pronounced exactly the same way, their. We have the word poke. Don't forget to use your long O sound. For close, you can skip that T-H and just say a Z. And an ant, you have a choice. Pronounce them the same, ant and ant, or pronounce them differently, ant and aunt, whichever you prefer. Flower and floor, these words are pronounced differently. They get to be very confusing because of spelling, and I've had many questions from Indian students on these two words. And if my memory serves me, it is because these words actually are pronounced similarly in many Indian English dialects. Then we have world and word. And if the word world is difficult for you, check out my video on world and world, world to spin. Sometimes just seeing that spelling helps people. And then we have dessert that we eat at the end of the meal, stress syllable two, and then desert, sand, stress syllable one, because sand only has one syllable. Taught and thought. Don't get messed up and confused with that A-U-G-H, O-U-G-H. In this situation, they are both pronounced as the short aw, so open that mouth wide in an oval shape. And then because of the flower and floor video, we have the video flower and flower. These are homophones and pronounced exactly the same way. And then number one, or hour and hour. And because I learn as I go, and I'm going to share with you all of my learnings, I am not perfect. I did redo this video to add in the pronunciation of R and hour, A-R-E-O-U-R, those words can actually be pronounced the same way. So thank you everyone for being here. Bye everybody, have an amazing day.