How to pronounce 'important' in English

Hey, it's Hadar and this is the Accent's Way.

Your way to finding clarity confidence and freedom in English.

I was asked to explain how to pronounce the word 'important'

and since it's an important word I made this video for you.

So let's begin with, the beginning of the word all right.

So it begins with a relaxed I sound and m: im-, im

What is a relaxed I-sound? The tongue is pushing forward, the lips are relaxed

and the jaw drops a little bit. 'I'

It's not 'important' but 'I-I-', 'I-I-m', 'I-I-m'.

Then the second syllable is an OR as 'four' vowel. -pour, -pour.

It's very important to hear the clear vowel our- before you bring your tongue up for the R, all right.

If you raise the tongue up too quickly 'imp-rtant' it sounds like a different vowel.

'imp-rtant' it's not the same versus 'impour-' .

So keep the tongue down until you're done with a full vowel

our- You see the lips are rounded, the jaw drops

and then you only slightly raise the tongue for the R sound.

Pour-, impour-

And we have the end of the word.

Here the T, the N and the T kinda like connect together. These three sounds.

TNT-

What do we do here? So the tongue goes up for the T import-

okay you see the tongue is up there right behind the teeth touching the upper palate

but instead of releasing the air through the mouth 'important'

I keep the tongue up, holding the air and releasing it through the nose tn-

then going directly to the end tn- and then going back to the T.

Then I can release the T slightly tnt-, tnt-

then I kinda like release the tongue tnt- all right.

So it's not 'importAnt' or 'importEnt'. It's 'import'nt'.

Now if it's really difficult for you to produce this tnt-sound

you can add a little schwa between the T in the end.

'ɪmˈpɔː.tənt'

'tənt'

That's also okay. Just make sure it's not a full vowel okay.

So let's practice in a few phrases:

an important job

important practice

It's very important

important, tnt-

Alright, that's it. I hope you enjoyed this video and you found it useful

and if you did please share it with your friends after you subscribe if you haven't yet.

Have a wonderful week and I'll see you next week in the next video.

bye