Hi Mandy!

I've been listening to your podcast for weeks now and I just wanna say how great and helpful it is especially for us, non-native english speakers.

I am in California right now but I was born in the Philippines. I am subscribed to a lot of English grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation podcasts to better myself and improve my english.

Well, since I am not a native english speaker, I find some pronunciation hard and you are right, oftentimes it is embarrasing when people would ask you to repeat what you're saying. Sometimes even the simplest of words can be difficult in terms of pronunciation.
(Some examples: beach/b**tch, for/four, their/there (this one I learned that they're pronounced the same. Hope I remembered it right.) peel/pill etc.) I know you have already discussed those in your english sounds but maybe perhaps in the future you can do a podcast about the difference in pronunciation for words that (may/may not) sound alike.

Also, I think some Filipinos have a hard time with the "TH", "F/P" and "V/B" sounds.

Thank you for doing the podcast, Mandy! This is amazing and so are you.

OH! Sorry I put it in the wrong thread. Hope you still get to read this though.
I just read this thread is for the WEBSITE. Sorry.

Hi Ollie22,

I'm glad you're enjoying the podcasts. Thanks for the suggestion; I really appreciate it. My in-class students are wonderful at telling me the words that cause them the most trouble. Or else we just come across them by accident and the student never knew he/she was saying it in a way that can sound like a completely different word. As I write this, I am thinking of a student who has trouble with the v sound. He often substitutes a w sound. If a person does that in the word "maneuver", it sounds like "manure". Oops. Maybe that will be next week's podcast!

Like you, I also love learning from all types of different podcasts. I feel very fortunate to live in a time where information is so abundant.

Thanks, also, for the tips into troublesome sounds for Filipino students. (As a side note, isn't it weird that the spelling changes from "ph" in Philipines, to "f" in Filipino? Wikipedia) Is Tagalog your first language?

Again, thanks for listening, and good luck with your Egnlish studies!

~Mandy

Hi Maksymilian,

This is a great question, so I'm going to start a new thread for it. That will make it easier for others to find your question and see the responses.

Your question will be reposted in the Sounds forum.

Thanks!
Mandy

Hi Mandy,

I've been listening to your podcasts and they are great! Thank you so much for offering them!
I am French and have been living for 10 years in the US. I am completely fluent and can be understood perfectly well 99% of the time. But I have been trying to produce a perfectly flat American accent for the past 6 month, because I am a film actor and would like to be able to get cast as all American characters. Of course I want to be able to switch back to my French accent whenever I need to play a French character! :)

So I want to sound more than fluent, I want to be able to fool native American speaker into thinking that I was born here! And I have been told that my vowel sounds still give away my accent and that I should try and talk more with the back of my throat. I would love to hear a podcast dedicated to native French speaker and the common mistakes they do, especially with vowel sounds.

Thanks!

Philippe

About this question made by ollie22, some days ago I found another difficult (and problematic) pair, the following one: sheet/sh*t I was laughing a lot with these, and trying to imagine how I could refer to excel sheets without offending anyone

I think that the difference could be that the long e sound it usually sounds a bit longer than the short i, but it's a really difficult difference for a non-native

I'm right, or there's another trick here?

Thanks again for your efforts!

Albertbe, you're right that beach/b**tch and sheet/sh*t are the same confusing pair of sounds (long e /i/ and short i /ɪ/ ), and believe me, these specific words come up very frequently in class. One of my former Brazilian students vowed she would never talk about the beautiful beaches of her home country among native English speakers again, she was so tormented by responses she'd gotten previously!

This pair of sounds is so difficult for ESL/ELL students, that there are many, many resources online, searchable by the commonly cited "ship/sheep" pair.

While the short i is usually a quicker sound than the long e, it is the placement of the tongue that makes the biggest difference. The front of the tongue blade is very close to the hard palate and back of the tooth ridge during the long e sound, and should be dropped slightly for the short i sound.

For practice comparing these sounds, you can go to either sound's word list, then click "minimal pairs," and then practice, practice, practice hearing and saying the difference between them (if you are a Pronuncian subscriber, you can reload the listening drill as many times as you want)! Many of my students have noted better sound perception, and subsequent sound production after some serious "ear training."

I hope that helps!
Mandy

Another suggestion for a future podcast: About slang and idioms, could be interesting

And, in my case, I would like to listen about canadian slang & idioms, maybe this is too much to ask but it will be really great