031 H as in Hot
4: The Consonant Sounds: How to Say Them, Drills & Avoiding Faults
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4m 23s
The “H” sound denoted by the letter aitch is called a glottal fricative sound and is made by breathing out through a slightly narrowed opening at the very back of your mouth and the top of your throat. This is achieved by slightly closing up your airway so that the air hisses slightly: “HHH”. If you yawn your throat open, and breathe out then the flow of air should b almost silent. Experiment by breathing out through your mouth silently and then making this slight change so that you can hear the “HHH” sound. The name of the letter H is often mispronounced as “haitch” by many native British speakers - this is understandable but, perhaps counterintuitively, the name of this letter doesn’t contain the “HHH” sound that it represents. However, English is “a living language” so if enough people say haitch then it could become what’s called “an acceptable variant” - but I hope not!
Sometimes the letter H is silent as in
Honour
But, as ever, consult your trusty dictionary to double check any confusing pronunciation problems!
Up Next in 4: The Consonant Sounds: How to Say Them, Drills & Avoiding Faults
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032 SH as in Ship and ZH as in Measure
Now let’s look at the unvoiced and voiced pair “SH” and “ZH”. Phonetically, the symbol for “SH” is a sort of elongated “S” and the symbol for “ZH” is a cross between a “Z” and the number 3. These sounds are postalveolar, meaning the tip of your tongue should be just beyond the alveolar ridge, and...
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033 CH as in Church and DZH as in Judge
Another pair of voiced and unvoiced sounds is CH and DZH. Phonetically, CH is written as T followed by the symbol for SH. T plus SH gives us CH as in
Church
Match
NatureNotice that this sound isn’t only indicated by a C and H spelling.
DZH is written phonetically as D followed by the sy...
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034 Voiced TH as in This and Unvoiced...
This is a tricky pair of sounds because although they are always spelled the same way, “T.H.”, they can be pronounced as either voiced: “TH” or unvoiced. As ever, if you are confused, the dictionary will always help you. Phonetically, the voiced “TH”, as in This, symbol is a sort of “o” with a li...
