Welcome Although I feel that this kind of lessons are difficult for me as an English learner But I get more benefit Thank you . Amtalslam Ali From yemen .
That's a great point, the stress of the syllable and the sound quality of the vowels make them different, but also it depends on the sound that comes after them, e.g. "kit/kid": if a person pronounces them both with a stop at the end, you can tell them apart due to fact that "kid" is gonna be longer because "d" is a voiced consonant, same goes for "beach/bitch". The latter example shows that the "e" vowel sound, although it's said to be the long one, it's not actually that long in "beach", especially when it's in a sentence and not over enunciated, right? Btw, this "rule" goes for any vowel, like "got/god" both of them have the "a as in father", but in "god" it's a little bit longer than in "got", just a tiny little bit...
No, no, no! This is a really good reason why I tell you to focus on your ears, not your eyes (especially if your eyes are on the IPA, which is a crutch at best). I addressed this in a short video a while back, but this is entirely an illusion! The IH in "kit/kid" is *NOT* longer or shorter in either word (because they're both stressed), not even a little bit. This is an illusion because of the nature of stop sounds and, more generally, voicing. When we stop them, the T is voiceless, so it makes it sound like the vowel cuts off, but the D is voiced, so it creates the illusion that the vowel is "longer" because all vowels are voiced and the boundary gets lost. This is a point that really bugs me because to say that the consonant after it makes it "longer" or "shorter" is just insane to me. It has nothing to do at all with how English works and is simply not a function of the language. Stress (and to a relative extent, speed) determines vowel length. Otherwise the underlying rhythm of language would probably be destroyed. And as for "beach/bitch", this actually doesn't apply at all to what we're talking about. The CH sound starts in the T position, but it does NOT contain a T sound (something that the IPA will falsely lead you to believe and one reason I don't recommend it for English). It's a blending of T and SH, so it seems to make sense for the IPA to transcribe it as such, but the resulting sound doesn't contain either of them. It becomes a new sound entirely. In addition, a common spelling for CH at the end of words is "tch". This doesn't contain a T either. It's just spelling. But this is different than the "kit/kid thing because the end sound is the same (I think maybe you bring it up because the CH is voiceless, but everything I've said shows that that doesn't matter). In "beach", we have B+EE+CH and in "bitch", we have B+IH+CH. Here we're actually comparing apples to oranges because the vowel sounds are different, but both are one syllable content words and are thus stressed, meaning that both of these are going to be relatively long (compared to if they were unstressed).
@@NativeEnglishHacks Yeah, but I agreed with you, the vowels or as I said "sound quality" are different and that's basically why they're different, but in addition I put that thing of length, and that wasn't from IPA, but from some videos from other teachers. And yeah, I pointed the beach/bitch cuz of the voice and voiceless counterpart character of them, but I know that they don't have a T, hahaha. You pointed out that the voiced consonant makes an illusion of the vowel being longer and that's super interesting, I never thought of that. Anyway, at the end of the day, the difference is in the sound itself, right? I just thought that the length, although it doesn't play a role in differentiating them, would be interesting to mention cuz people may found that there are actually some length in some syllables due to the illusion caused by the voiced consonants...
"The difference is in the sound itself, right?" Do you mean like the T vs D at the end of "kit/kid", for example? If so, yes. We can tell the difference by hearing the cut off (voiceless) or lack thereof (voiced) in the stop, or just the difference in voicing for non-stop consonants (which isn't as difficult, of course). I know that other teachers teach you that the length is different based on the voicing of the consonant after, but they're wrong. Plain and simple. That's not something I say lightly and I never intend to disrespect another teacher, but this is simply false information based on an illusion of perception, at least as far as my ears tell me. And I think that's the source of the problem. It seems to me that many teachers just teach what they were taught according to theory and/or what other teachers say rather than really tuning their ears to what's really happening. Because 1) I'm a native, 2) I have a natural talent for pronunciation, and 3) my experience playing with the pronunciation of English and several other languages (and developing an extremely high ability in one of them so far), my ears are perhaps a bit more perceptive than those of other teachers. That's the only thing I can think of to explain why this nonsense continues to be taught. When a student first asked me about this, I was absolutely shocked that other teachers would be saying such a thing. And if you take into consideration that some English learners are coming from native languages that actually make a difference between a long version and short version of the same vowel regardless of stress, teaching this seems misguided at best and simply negligent at worst. A big part of my channel is aimed at finding and fixing these kinds of things that are taught either wrong or confusingly and make everything easier to learn and understand :)
@@NativeEnglishHacks Yeah, in Kid/Kit the consonant, but in beach/bitch in the vowel. And I'll link the video (a really short one) where that length of the sound may be longer depending on the consonant that follows. But yeah, doesn't matter if it has length or not, cuz that doesn't play a role at all, like bitch and beach sound different cuz of the vowels, and may help to think of that for the "kit/kid" patter, even though it's s illusion, being the vowel sound the same it helps to tell them apart!
Aside from vowels' length there's another thing that may draw attention of the learners away from understanding where exactly the main quality of a certain phoneme lies. It is a thinking too much about a mouth shape. In your most recent stream you mentioned that you, native speakers, can produce AH sound with a kinda EH mouth shape. ua-cam.com/video/81EZ058MR5E/v-deo.html Before this time I've heard about a possibility produce the right sound with a "wrong" mouth shape only once: here ua-cam.com/video/38Eao9V25-I/v-deo.html So I've never heard about it except these two cases. But I think it is important thing for a learner to know that the right mouth shape, jaw and tongue position do not produce the right sound by itself. There is more to it than that. I as a learner feel that I should understand the very nature of each phoneme. Then mouth shape, jaw and tongue position will work effective.
Sorry, this was in the spam section and I just saw it. He's absolutely correct! "It's what happens inside the mouth that's the real secret." 100% agree! Why don't more teachers talk about this?! UGH! I'm a native-speaking teacher and I'M getting frustrated over other teachers not mentioning things like this, so I can only imagine how learners who find out about these things feel. But that's my job. I want to cut through the nonsense and give you the tips and tricks to make things easier. I really don't understand why other teachers do or don't do certain things, but oh well. I'm really glad to see that at least one other teacher has mentioned this specific point :) (And I'm so jealous that I didn't think of that pen trick first lol)
Welcome
Although I feel that this kind of lessons are difficult for me as an English learner
But I get more benefit
Thank you .
Amtalslam Ali
From yemen .
That's a great point, the stress of the syllable and the sound quality of the vowels make them different, but also it depends on the sound that comes after them, e.g. "kit/kid": if a person pronounces them both with a stop at the end, you can tell them apart due to fact that "kid" is gonna be longer because "d" is a voiced consonant, same goes for "beach/bitch". The latter example shows that the "e" vowel sound, although it's said to be the long one, it's not actually that long in "beach", especially when it's in a sentence and not over enunciated, right? Btw, this "rule" goes for any vowel, like "got/god" both of them have the "a as in father", but in "god" it's a little bit longer than in "got", just a tiny little bit...
No, no, no! This is a really good reason why I tell you to focus on your ears, not your eyes (especially if your eyes are on the IPA, which is a crutch at best). I addressed this in a short video a while back, but this is entirely an illusion! The IH in "kit/kid" is *NOT* longer or shorter in either word (because they're both stressed), not even a little bit. This is an illusion because of the nature of stop sounds and, more generally, voicing. When we stop them, the T is voiceless, so it makes it sound like the vowel cuts off, but the D is voiced, so it creates the illusion that the vowel is "longer" because all vowels are voiced and the boundary gets lost. This is a point that really bugs me because to say that the consonant after it makes it "longer" or "shorter" is just insane to me. It has nothing to do at all with how English works and is simply not a function of the language. Stress (and to a relative extent, speed) determines vowel length. Otherwise the underlying rhythm of language would probably be destroyed.
And as for "beach/bitch", this actually doesn't apply at all to what we're talking about. The CH sound starts in the T position, but it does NOT contain a T sound (something that the IPA will falsely lead you to believe and one reason I don't recommend it for English). It's a blending of T and SH, so it seems to make sense for the IPA to transcribe it as such, but the resulting sound doesn't contain either of them. It becomes a new sound entirely. In addition, a common spelling for CH at the end of words is "tch". This doesn't contain a T either. It's just spelling. But this is different than the "kit/kid thing because the end sound is the same (I think maybe you bring it up because the CH is voiceless, but everything I've said shows that that doesn't matter). In "beach", we have B+EE+CH and in "bitch", we have B+IH+CH. Here we're actually comparing apples to oranges because the vowel sounds are different, but both are one syllable content words and are thus stressed, meaning that both of these are going to be relatively long (compared to if they were unstressed).
@@NativeEnglishHacks Yeah, but I agreed with you, the vowels or as I said "sound quality" are different and that's basically why they're different, but in addition I put that thing of length, and that wasn't from IPA, but from some videos from other teachers. And yeah, I pointed the beach/bitch cuz of the voice and voiceless counterpart character of them, but I know that they don't have a T, hahaha. You pointed out that the voiced consonant makes an illusion of the vowel being longer and that's super interesting, I never thought of that. Anyway, at the end of the day, the difference is in the sound itself, right? I just thought that the length, although it doesn't play a role in differentiating them, would be interesting to mention cuz people may found that there are actually some length in some syllables due to the illusion caused by the voiced consonants...
"The difference is in the sound itself, right?" Do you mean like the T vs D at the end of "kit/kid", for example? If so, yes. We can tell the difference by hearing the cut off (voiceless) or lack thereof (voiced) in the stop, or just the difference in voicing for non-stop consonants (which isn't as difficult, of course).
I know that other teachers teach you that the length is different based on the voicing of the consonant after, but they're wrong. Plain and simple. That's not something I say lightly and I never intend to disrespect another teacher, but this is simply false information based on an illusion of perception, at least as far as my ears tell me. And I think that's the source of the problem. It seems to me that many teachers just teach what they were taught according to theory and/or what other teachers say rather than really tuning their ears to what's really happening. Because 1) I'm a native, 2) I have a natural talent for pronunciation, and 3) my experience playing with the pronunciation of English and several other languages (and developing an extremely high ability in one of them so far), my ears are perhaps a bit more perceptive than those of other teachers. That's the only thing I can think of to explain why this nonsense continues to be taught. When a student first asked me about this, I was absolutely shocked that other teachers would be saying such a thing. And if you take into consideration that some English learners are coming from native languages that actually make a difference between a long version and short version of the same vowel regardless of stress, teaching this seems misguided at best and simply negligent at worst.
A big part of my channel is aimed at finding and fixing these kinds of things that are taught either wrong or confusingly and make everything easier to learn and understand :)
@@NativeEnglishHacks Yeah, in Kid/Kit the consonant, but in beach/bitch in the vowel. And I'll link the video (a really short one) where that length of the sound may be longer depending on the consonant that follows.
But yeah, doesn't matter if it has length or not, cuz that doesn't play a role at all, like bitch and beach sound different cuz of the vowels, and may help to think of that for the "kit/kid" patter, even though it's s illusion, being the vowel sound the same it helps to tell them apart!
@@NativeEnglishHacks Well I thought the video was shorter, but it has 12 minutes:
ua-cam.com/video/GQa9w__GqLc/v-deo.html&ab_channel=SoundsAmerican
Aside from vowels' length there's another thing that may draw attention of the learners away from understanding where exactly the main quality of a certain phoneme lies. It is a thinking too much about a mouth shape. In your most recent stream you mentioned that you, native speakers, can produce AH sound with a kinda EH mouth shape. ua-cam.com/video/81EZ058MR5E/v-deo.html Before this time I've heard about a possibility produce the right sound with a "wrong" mouth shape only once: here ua-cam.com/video/38Eao9V25-I/v-deo.html So I've never heard about it except these two cases. But I think it is important thing for a learner to know that the right mouth shape, jaw and tongue position do not produce the right sound by itself. There is more to it than that. I as a learner feel that I should understand the very nature of each phoneme. Then mouth shape, jaw and tongue position will work effective.
Sorry, this was in the spam section and I just saw it. He's absolutely correct! "It's what happens inside the mouth that's the real secret." 100% agree! Why don't more teachers talk about this?! UGH! I'm a native-speaking teacher and I'M getting frustrated over other teachers not mentioning things like this, so I can only imagine how learners who find out about these things feel. But that's my job. I want to cut through the nonsense and give you the tips and tricks to make things easier. I really don't understand why other teachers do or don't do certain things, but oh well. I'm really glad to see that at least one other teacher has mentioned this specific point :) (And I'm so jealous that I didn't think of that pen trick first lol)
This has been a very confusing concept for me .