CONCEPTMind Your FutureInteractive pronunciation book
Enter once with the email you registered, and every book in the series opens on this device.
A link and a six-digit code come to your email. One tap, and this device is signed in for a year: every book, the lessons, and the Coach.
CONCEPTMind Your FutureThese are the symbols you will see in a dictionary. Click any one to hear it. You do not need to memorize them.
Four vowels, and in most languages they are covered by one or two. This is the largest single collapse in the English vowel space, and it produces confusions in both directions: cat and cut, man and men, bad and bed, hat and heart.
If your language has one a, all four of these will pull toward it. Cat, cut and cart become versions of the same sound, and the differences you produce will be too small for an American to categorize.
The cat vowel does not exist in most languages. It is the flat, wide, slightly harsh vowel in cat, bad, man, black. Speakers usually replace it either with the bet vowel, so bad becomes bed and man becomes men, or with the cart vowel, so cat drifts toward cart.
The cut vowel is also often missing. It is short and central and relaxed, made with no lip rounding and no effort at all.
The cart vowel is the one Brazilian students most often never meet. It is the vowel in father, park, hot, box, open and low and at the back.
Learn them as four positions on a path, and practice moving between them, not one at a time.
Cat. Jaw dropped wide, tongue low and pushed forward, lips spread. It should feel slightly exaggerated and even unpleasant. If it feels polite, it is not wide enough.
Bet. Jaw about half open, tongue forward but higher than for cat.
Cut. Short, central, completely relaxed. No lip rounding, no jaw effort. Almost a grunt.
Cart. Jaw dropped, tongue low and back, throat open, lips neutral. The doctor's vowel, the one you make when someone says say ah.
The way in. Say them as a sequence, slowly, five times: cat, bet, cut, cart. Then in reverse. You are training the movement, not four separate sounds.
Say them as a slow sequence, five times: cat, bet, cut, cart. Then in reverse. You are training the movement between them, not four separate sounds.
The cat vowel should feel slightly exaggerated, even unpleasant. If it feels polite, it is not far enough.
I play one word. Tap the one you heard. No speaking yet, just listening.
Play each pair deliberately and feel the one difference. This is where the sound stops being abstract.
Pick anything above, then record yourself saying it. Your recording appears in red over the model in gray. You are comparing shapes, not chasing a score.
Why practice these four as a sequence instead of one at a time?