Hello and welcome back in this lesson we're going to talk about another very high frequency sound in
English that you probably don't have in your native language and that's the short i
one of the particularly difficult things about spoken English is the large number of vowel sounds that
it has although there are only five written vowel letters.
There are approximately 16 different vowel sounds in Standard American English.
English has more vowel sounds than most languages.
And the spelling of those sounds is not always consistent.
So there are two things you need to do.
You need to learn the sounds that are not included in your native language and you need to learn the
common spellings for these new sounds.
Now the short eye is among the most common sounds in English because it is so common.
Mispronouncing this sound is very noticeable.
In fact if you ask an English speaker to imitate the accent of some non-native speakers this is often
one of the key sounds that's targeted along with mispronunciation of the R.
Now I want to give you some of the most common words that have the short i sound.
Now this short list of words all comes from the top 100 most spoken words in English since these words
are in the top 100 words.
This means they're coming up in almost every sentence that you will ever speak in English.
So it's really important to master this sound.
Now let's take a look at these common words.
It in is
Think thing with this did little.
So have you figured out how to spell this short I yet think about it a little bit.
And I'm going to give the answer in your next video you're probably asking what is a short.
I.
So let's talk a little bit about short vowels in English.
Each of the five are written vowels has a short and a long sound short vowels are not really short but
instead they are very relaxed which tends to make them sound shorter.
What you want to do when pronouncing a short vowel is to relax all your face jaw and tongue.
All of your muscles are just loose and soft.
And it requires very little effort to pronounce the short vowel sounds.
Let me just give you a word about spelling in English when you see a single vowel that has one vowel
in a short word it is usually pronounced with its short vowel sound.
When you see two vowels written inside one syllable it creates a long vowel sound.
Let me give you an example of this.
Take the word when w i n you see one vowel letter the I that is pronounced with a short vowel sound.
When you can take a very similar word and add an end to the end of it.
So now it has two vowels and I and an E.
And it's only one syllable.
So now we're going to pronounce that I with its long vowel sound which is I.
The pronunciation is wine.
So notice the difference when and wine.
That's a short eye and a long I.
So let's talk about how to pronounce the short i first I want you to relax everything in your mouth
all your muscles should be loose and soft including your jaw and your tongue.
Let your tongue just lay softly in the bottom of your mouth when you open your mouth slightly.
Not a lot.
Just a little
your tongue should be pressed against your lower teeth.
Like this but your mouth will be more closed your lips will be relaxed.
They are not rounded and you are not smiling.
You want to have very little attention and very little effort.
So let's just let it all hang loose and now say it with me.
Err.
You feel no tension no muscles OK.
Everything is relax your ear now your mouth should look just like mine.
So make sure you have a mirror handy and make sure your tongue is in the same place as mine that the
amount of mouth opening is the same for you as it is for me.
Now let's practice that.
Sure.
I'm a little bit.
Listen and repeat.
Kin.
Big different.
Notice this word has a dropped middle syllable.
It's only two syllables.
It's different.
Different six live Minet middle.
Now again all of these words are in the top five hundred most frequently spoken words.
So you hear these very often in speech going to give you a short quiz find this chart in your workbook
and go ahead and circle whether you're hearing a or b for each one then I read all of the words in column
A are short eyes sounds.
So all of them will have that sound the words in column B will have a different vowel sound.
So let's go ahead and get started.
The first one we've
second one Phil
lift
lever
sleep
pan
fail.
CH
OK I know I did that fast and I only read it once.
So listen to that as many times as you need to.
I know you will need to rewind and do it again and again.
So when you're confident that you hear the difference.
Check your answers in the workbook once you're ready go and resume the video.
Because we're going to do one more practice activity right now.
So I'm going to read you some quotes and I want you to circle the words that have the short i sound
again you'll find this in your workbook to encircle the short words if you want to lift yourself up
lift up someone else
if you want to lift yourself up lift up someone else.
All right.
I have the short words in red you'll find if and lift is in there two times let's go and pronounce this
together.
I want you to repeat exactly as I say it imitate me so repeat as if you a small child learning your
first language.
You're repeating everything you hear the people around you saying case I want you to link your words
where I link them.
I want you to emphasize the words that I emphasize.
I want you to go up where I go up and down where I go down.
Are you ready.
Here we go.
If you wanna lift yourself up lift up someone else
if you wanna lift yourself up lift up someone else.
You'll notice I have some written markers in here for you.
You'll find a slash mark in the middle of the word showing you where to pause.
I also have combined the words with a red underline the ones that naturally will link together and speaking
as well as one two will be pronounced as Juana.
So take a look at that and hopefully that will give you some visual cues for pronouncing the sentence
properly.
Let's do one more.
First Circle all the short words.
A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty.
Write your short I-word the inner and read Rich is children into.
And his twice
let's pronounce the whole sentence together.
A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty.
Now you'll notice something on here that you may not have heard before.
We have what's called the disappearing age in some pronouns.
He hears him for example.
We delete the h sound when it combines to other words.
So notice it's into is into it there's no h sound in there.
When is instead of when his when is.
So that's why you'll see the H with the little line through it.
So let's try it one final time.
A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty.
You'll find more sentences like this in your workbook.
Keep practicing and I'll see you soon and the next lesson.
Thanks for watching.