How do you know if a word in English is pronounced with the long vowel sound or the short vowel sound? For example, “cut” and “cute” are pronounced differently, but which one has the long u sound? It may seem obvious with a short, familiar word, but what if you encounter a new word that you have never seen before? There is a quick an easy trick I have found that will give you the right answer most of the time. Watch this lesson to learn one pronunciation trick that will change your life! Then take the quiz at www.engvid.com/long-short-vow... .
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TRANSCRIPT
Buh-clue. Hi. I'm Ronnie. I have something that... Oh my god, this is amazing. Honestly, this lesson will change your life. It changed my life when my good friend, Leaf, told me about this. Leaf, thank you; grammar god, you are pronunciation god - Leaf. Awesome. So, I've been trying to figure this out for ages, years, maybe 100 years because I'm a vampire, and I got it. Thank you.
Are you confused about the pronunciation of vowels in English? So, for example, we have a long vowel sound, and a long vowel sound means that the vowel sounds like its alphabet name. So, for example: "a". But in English, we also have: "aw" and "a". Different ways to pronounce the vowels. One of them is a long vowel sound, so "a" is pronounced like "a". Then we also have a short vowel sound where "a" is going to be pronounced like: "ah". And how do you know when you read a new word to say it like "a" or "ah"? I have the answer. Oh, it's amazing. I... Okay, I get really excited about things a little bit too much; but this, I'm just super excited about it. And I want to teach you this - and, geez, it's going to change the way that you read things, the way that you learn English. So, give me some money or something. Just, enjoy. Listen. It's amazing.
So, we have some guidelines. Now, I want to make perfectly clear that people like to say "grammar rules", and Ronnie hates rules. I'm Ronnie. I do not like rules because they're made to be broken; and in English, there's always exceptions to rules. So, you study a rule and you learn it, and then you go: "Oh", but no - sorry; that's an exception. And then you say: "Why?" Maybe you ask someone, maybe you ask your teacher: "Teacher, why?" and the teacher goes: "I don't know." So, please think of these as only guidelines; life-changing guidelines, though. Okay? I'm telling you.
So, we have words that have two vowels. Okay? So: "a", "e", "i", "o", "u", and sometimes "y" are vowels. But this is our guideline: If in the word you have two vowels, the first... Oh, I'm sorry. The first vowel sound... The first vowel in the word is going to sound like its alphabet name or it's going to sound like a long vowel sound. The second vowel, it's silent; we don't even say the second vowel. Crazy. So, in English, if there's an "e" at the end of the word - we don't say it. In all of the other languages of the world, we say all the vowels; but English, oh no. The "e" is silent; we don't say that.
So, if you have two vowels in the word, for example: "a" and "e", we're going to say the first vowel like it sounds like in the alphabet, so "a". We're going to say: "ba", and we do not say: "bak-e"; we say "bake". So, the first vowel is going to sound like the alphabet: "bake". What about this one? We don't say: "fah-me", like "ah"; we say: "fame". And, again, we don't say the last vowel in the word. So, this works with two-vowel words. The "a" we pronounce like an "a", and the "e" or the second vowel is silent.
One more time the rule; it's life-changing. The first vowel sounds like its alphabet name, the second vowel is silent; we don't say it. Let's try this again. So, this is "a". The next letter. What's this vowel sound or what's this sound in the English alphabet? "A", "e". So, we say: "these". We don't say: "the-se", "the-se". "Look at the-se. Look at these." So, again, we're going to say the "e" like an "e", and the second "e" is silent. This is amazing. Woo-hoo.
This word. So, you look: "dre-am". "I had an amazing dre-am last night; I was flying." But it's actually just a dream. So, one vowel we're going to say "e", the second vowel is silent. So, we don't say: "dre-am"; we say: "dream". "I had a dream." Did you have a dream last night or now? Are you imagining this? No. No, no, no. This is real. Get back into this. It's amazing.
Let's see with this letter. What letter is this? Now, this is hard for you guys because in your languages maybe this is "uh" and this is "e", but in English, this is "i". So, watch this trick. Put an eye-woo-hoo-on your "i". […]