Bed or Bad? Head or Had? Men or Man? American English Pronunciation

Find out the difference between the / ɛ / and / æ / vowel sounds.
Learn how to make the vowels used in words like "head" and "had," "left" and "laughed," or "leg" and "lag."
Improve your accent with efficient pronunciation exercises based on minimal word pairs with the / ɛ / and / æ / vowel sounds.

Quick Links:
• Do you hear the difference b/w the / ɛ / and / æ /? Quiz: 0:41
• Key distinctions b/w the / ɛ / and / æ /: 2:07
• Pronunciation exercise: 3:20

Related videos:
#AmericanPronunciation #VowelSounds #MinimalPairs
► Interactive Vowel Sounds Chart: American English Pronunciation
https://goo.gl/IwiOIn
► Vowel Sound /ɛ/ as in "bed"- American English Pronunciation https://goo.gl/AKvPD0
► Vowel Sound / æ / as in "cat"- American English Pronunciation
https://goo.gl/0yeEhr
[THIS VIDEO HAS ENGLISH, SPANISH, JAPANESE, CHINESE, VIETNAMESE, KOREAN, PORTUGUESE, AND RUSSIAN SUBTITLES]
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TRANSCRIPT

Hello there! This is the "Sounds American" channel.
In this video, we'll compare two vowel sounds: /ɛ/ and /æ/, as in the words "bed" and "bad."

In our previous videos, we already learned how to make them. Remember the videos for the /ɛ/ sound, as in "bed" and the /æ/ sound, as in "cat"?

This time we'll focus on the differences between these two sounds.

Many non-native English speakers can't always hear the difference between /ɛ/ and /æ/.
What about you?
[QUIZ]
Let's check with a quick test.
You'll see a pair of words on the screen and hear only one of them pronounced. For example, "b*d."
Can you guess what word you heard?
Let's try a few more word pairs.

If you didn't get all the words right, don't worry. We've prepared useful exercises to help you improve.

The words in those pairs may sound similar but they differ by their vowel sound.
Here are the two key distinctions between the /ɛ/ and /æ/:
First, look at the position of the lower jaw.
• For the /ɛ/ sound, the mouth is half open.
• For the /æ/ sound, the mouth is open very wide.
Second. Look at the tongue:
• For the /ɛ/ sound, the tongue is relaxed and in the middle of your mouth.
• For the /æ/ sound, the tongue is tensed, flat and very low in your mouth.
Let's pronounce these sounds one after the other:
/ɛ/ - /æ/, /ɛ/ - /æ/, /ɛ/ - /æ/

[Pronunciation Exercise]

Now that you know how to make these vowels, let's do some exercises.
This is the most important part of your training as you can't improve your pronunciation without practice.

The best way to practice the /ɛ/ and /æ/ is to pronounce them in word pairs.
Let's do this exercise.
You'll see a word on the screen and hear its pronunciation. After that you'll have a few seconds to pronounce the word. Repeat each word after the speaker, the first word will have the relaxed /ɛ/ vowel sound, and the second will have the tense /æ/ vowel sound.
Let's begin!
• bed - bad
• beg - bag
• bend - band
• bet - bat
• dead - dad
• den - Dan
• end - and
• flesh - flash
• gem - jam
• guess - gas
• head - had
• left - laughed
• leg - lag
• lend - land
• letter - latter

You're done! Congratulations!

To check how much you've improved, you can do the word pairs test again. Click this link to go back and compare the results.

By the way, did you know that the vowel sounds /ɛ/ and /æ/ together make up about ~20% of all vowels in American English?

Thanks for watching! Hope you find it useful.
Stay tuned on our Sounds American channel!

Видео Bed or Bad? Head or Had? Men or Man? American English Pronunciation канала Sounds American