Improve Your Accent: Introduction to the IPA and Vowel Sound Training

Hi, everyone. In this lesson I’m going to teach you four English vowels. Here are the

vowels: “e”, “ɜ:”, “ə”, “ɔ:”. The reason to learn these four English vowels

in IPA is that these are the actual sounds in English words; and if you know IPA, when

you’re learning words, you can get the right pronunciation. The thing about it is these

symbols are hard to learn. I know it took me a really, really long time to learn, and

that’s because I learn sounds in a practical way. So, me just trying to memorize these

sounds didn’t work for me, but doing practical exercises like this was how, after a lot…

not… no. It took me a long, long, long time before I did practical exercises to remember

these sounds. So I wish I did something like this at the beginning. So aren’t you lucky?

Because I’m going to teach you the shortcut to remembering these vowels.

What’s… What we should know about these vowels is that they are grouped together,

because they are central vowels. The position that our tongue takes when we make these four

vowels is central – it’s not high; it’s not low. And the difference between them is

we move from a more forward position with our tongue to a more backward position.

Now, another thing is that ɜ: and ə (schwa), the position is actually the same in the mouth;

nothing changes, except the ɜ: sound is stressed and we can hear it very clearly and notice

it; whereas the schwa sound: “uh”, “uh”, it’s hard to say by itself because it’s

an unstressed sound, but we do it in exactly the same position. We don’t have to move

our tongue for that one; it’s just a difference in the power of the sound.

Let’s look at the lip position now. We start with the lips lightly spread. Okay? It’s

not as much as “e” which is spread as wide as possible. “E” is not on here.

It’s not as wide as “e”; it’s lightly spread: “e”, so a little bit less. “e”.

And then the next two are the same position. This I would just call spread, so a little

bit wider. “ɜ:”, “ə”, “ɔ:”. You can see the big difference between here,

when I go to “ɔ:”. “ɜ:”, “ɔ:”. So, when I get to “ɔ:”, my lips are in

the most rounded position. All right, let’s look at some contrasting

words now so that we can get more used to these vowels in words. We’ll read like this,

starting with: “pet” for “e”; “bird” for “ɜ:”. The way I always remember this

symbol is to imagine a bird, flying, and that’s the most perfect word for me to remember that

sound. Imagine a bird: “bird”. “Red”, “wa-…” This is “word”, “word”.

“Word”. “Red”, “word”; “ten”, “murder”; “head”, “burden”; “said”,

“curse”; “many”, “burn”. Now, what can be confusing about this is when

we look at the spellings of these words and we think: “What’s going on here?” because

if I say… If I say: “head”, and that’s the vowel, “e”, why is it spelt with an

“a” in there? That’s just confusing, right? Well, that’s English spelling, unfortunately.

Trying to learn too many spelling rules for the IPA isn’t that helpful. It’s helpful

sometimes, but it only takes you so far. We can see a pattern in here, though. The “ɜ:”

sound is often spelt with “r”. Often “ur” in a lot of words; “murder”, “burden”,

“curse”, “burn”. Now let’s look at schwa. When I write schwa,

I can write: “uh”. That’s the closest I can get to pronouncing schwa as an unstressed

sound. Usually it’s resting in the middle of other sounds. And the way I remember it

myself is that in English, a dog goes: “Woof. Woof, woof.” But in Turkish, a dog goes,

like: “Uh, uh. Uh, uh.” That’s their sound for “woof”. But, basically, it’s

a schwa sound. So it helps me; I don’t know if it helps you. But we’re going to go side

to side, here. Schwa: “uh”, “aw”. “Uh”, “paw”; “problem”, “more”;

“freedom”, “boring”; “album”, “sword”; “again”, “sure”; “parrot”,

“lord”. Okay? What’s hard about schwa is that in these

words we’ve got two syllables, so we have to… Which ones got the schwa in it? I don’t

know which ones got the schwa in it. I’ve underlined where the schwa is in the word.

And the annoying thing about schwa as well is that it sounds slightly different, depending

on… We can pronounce it slightly different, depending on the vowel it’s closest to.

Okay? We’re getting a bit deep… We’re going a bit deep, there, but if you just were

listening to me and thinking: “That sounds different in every word”, that’s good

because you notice that the schwa changes sound.

And looking at the “ɔ:” words… We’ll just do the “ɔ:” words. “Paw”, “more”,

“boring”, “sword”, “sure”, “lord”. Notice they’re all spelt differently. So,

we don’t have helpful spelling rules for “ɔ:”. But the good thing about it is

that it’s a really… It’s one of the easiest ones to remember because it sounds

very distinctive and it takes us a long time to say it. “ɔ:”.

Now let’s practice going around in circles, saying the different sounds. And we do this

so that we practice moving between the sounds. You can say it with me at the same time. “Pet”,

“bird”, “again”, “paw”. “Uh”, “again”. Unstressed, here. “Pet”,

“bird”, “again”, “paw”. “Pet”, “bird”, “again”, “paw”. We can

say it backwards: “Pet”, “paw”, “again”, “bird”. “Pet”, “paw”, “again”,

“bird”. “Pet”, “paw”, “again”, “bird”.

Another one: “head”, “burden”, “free”… “Head”, “burden”, “freedom”, “sword”.

“Head”, “burden”, “freedom”, “sword”. “Head”, “burden”, “freedom”, “sword”.

“Sword”, “freedom”, “burden”, “head”. “Sword”, “freedom”, “burden”,

“head”. “Sword”, “freedom”, “burden”, “head”. You can say it a bit slower. You

can take your time. Take your time – that will help you say it clearly.

“Many”, “burn”, “parrot”, “lord”. “Many”, “burn”, “parrot”, “lord”.

“Many”, “burn”, “parrot”, “lord”. Okay? The other way: “Lord”, “parrot”,

“burn”, “many”. “Lord”, “parrot”, “burn”, “many”. “Lord”, “parrot”,

“burn”, “many”. You can make your own circle thingies, using your own words

from this list or any other words with the sounds in that you choose.

Now let’s practice the sounds with different consonant sounds. I’m going to start reading,

here, with the consonant “pe”, consonant “se”, consonant “te”, consonant “le”.

“Pe”, “pɜ:”… “Pe”, “pɜ:”, “pə”, “pɔ:”. “Se”, “sɜ:”,

“sə”, “sɔ:”. “Te”, “tɜ:”, “tə”, “tɔ:”. “Le”, “lɜ:”,

“lə”, “lɔ:”. You can read it this way; you can go backwards.

Another thing you can do is improvise the order. When you improvise the order, you have

to really read the sound. You can’t just rely on the rhyming; you have to really think

about it. So what I’m going to do is point to the sound, give you a little bit of time

to say it, then I’ll say it after. “lɔ:”, “tɜ:”, “sə”, “pɜ:”, “te”,

“sɔ:”, “pɔ:”, “lɜ:”, “tə”, “sɜ:”, “pe”.

Now we’re going to do the phoneme snake. In the phoneme snake, I… I have to read

the phoneme snake, pronouncing the different sounds. When the sound is small, I just make

a normal volume; but as it’s bigger, I have to say it louder. Let’s try. “ɜ:”,

“ə”, “ɔ:”, “ɜ:”, “ə”, “ə”, “e”, “e”, “ɜ:”, “e”,

“ɜ:”, “ɔ:”, “ə”, “ə”… It’s hard to do that one loud. “ɜ:”,

“ɜ:” “e”, “ɔ:”, “ɜ:”. I’m going to read it backwards. Let’s

do this. “ɜ:”, “ɔ:”, “e”, “ɜ:”, “ə”, “ə”, “ə”, “ɔ:”, “ɜ:”,

“e”, “e”, “ɜ:”, “e”, “e”, “ə”, “ə”, “ɜ:”, “ɔ:”,

“ə”, “ɜ:”. It’s hard. It’s especially hard when you try and do schwa loudly; it’s

not really possible, I’ve… I’ve since discovered, since doing this phoneme snake.

So, the reason we do these exercises – it’s not about: Oh, saying it perfectly; getting

it all right; not making any mistakes. We do it to make ourselves… Well, you can’t

think quicker than it comes to you. If you… If you saw me standing there, like this, and

waiting for the sound to come in my head… So, don’t worry if you get stuck sometimes;

just keep having a go. And the more you can practice it and the more it becomes unconscious;

without thinking about it – that’s when you know you really know.

So what I want to do now, for anyone who’s interested, is tell you about my accent course,

because I teach you all the sounds of English. I also teach you how to speak in a flowing

way that’s connected, and I teach you to speak clearly. Speaking clearly means knowing

the sounds, what they are, how to say them; but speaking clearly also means getting your

sentences to flow. And when you do that, you sound natural when you’re speaking English

and people can understand you more easily, and you can understand them more easily because

you understand how pronunciation works and how sentences flow together.

So, for anybody who’s interested to check out my course, here are the details now, at

https://www.engvid.com/out/jadeaccentcourse , and thank you for watching, and I’ll see

you again soon. Bye.