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Pronouncing /a/, /ae/, and uh Part 2
äThe [ä] sound is a more common sound than [æ]; you will find 10 such sounds in the practice paragraph. To pronounce [ä], relax your tongue and drop your jaw as far down as it will go. As a matter of fact, put your hand under your chin and say [mä], [pä], [tä], [sä]. Your hand should be pushed down by your jaw as it opens. Remember, it's the sound that you make when the doctor wants to see your throat.
/ae/One American English vowel sound that many non native speakers have problems with is the /ae/ sound as in the words: cat, bad and man.
To articulate this sound your tongue should be flat and very low in the front of your mouth. Your lips should be open. Many non native American English speakers us the /ɜ / sound when they should use the /ae/ sound. That means that:
* man sounds like men
* sad sounds like said
* had sounds like head
Try to pronounce these phrases using the /ae/ sound. Remember to keep your tongue low, forward and flat in your mouth with your lips open when you make the sound.
1. That was your last chance.
2. That is an angry man.
3. The bad cat made me mad.
uhLast is the schwa, the most common sound in American English. When you work on the practice paragraph, depending on how fast you speak, how smoothly you make liaisons, how strong your intonation is, how much you relax your sounds, you will find from 50 to 75 schwas. Spelling doesn't help identify it, because it can appear as any one of the vowels, or a combination of them. It is a neutral vowel sound, uh. It is usually in an unstressed syllable, though it can be stressed as well.
Whenever you find a vowel that can be crossed out and its absence wouldn't change the pronunciation of the word, you have probably found a schwa: photography [f'tägr'fee] (the two apostrophes show the location of the neutral vowel sounds).
Because it is so common, however, the wrong pronunciation of this one little sound can leave your speech strongly accented, even if you Americanize everything else.
Remember, some dictionaries use two different written characters, the upside down e & [^] for the neutral uh sound, but for simplicity, we are only going to use the first one.
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