How to pronounce TH, S, F sounds in English

That's pretty. I think that looks very good. I think I'll go with that and this.

Hi. James from EngVid. How are you doing? I had a problem. I was teaching some students

the other day about sounds we make in English. I did a lesson earlier on, and it was the

STD lesson. You might remember it. If not, go back and go check. It was a good lesson,

but some students still were like, "I don't get it. What's the big difference?"

I've come up with something to teach you how to remember the sounds from three common sounds,

basic sounds, S, F, and T. Now, I'm going to read some sentences to you or say some

sentences, and what I want you to do is I want you to try to see if you can hear a difference,

and then I'm going to go afterwards and explain the differences. As you know, Ezekiel is here,

and you can see he's dressed up as a character. It's not even Halloween. The character is

Thor, but we'll get that in a second. So let's do the first sentence. "I think both Thor

and Thundercats are good comic books." How about this one? "The brother of my wife put

those there." The first time we're going to work on is this one. It's the TH, what we

call regular, and the versus, I'm going to say "versus" then, because we've got Thor,

aliens, right? Versus, TH, which is vibratory. That's my word. There's no such thing as vibratory.

Vibrate. They vibrate, and you're going to notice when I go down here, you're going to

see the differences all the way through, okay? So we have vibratory versus vibrate, or let's

just call it what it is, vibration, all right? So VS, if you don't know, it means "versus."

Versus means "opposed to" or "opposite" or "against." It's "against." So in this case,

we've got a TH. They're both the same, or they look the same, but one's a little different.

Now, words like "think both Thor and Thundercats," if you were paying attention, you would have

noticed that TH is at the beginning or the end of the word, but it can still be TH. Now,

this TH is basically, here's your tongue, here are your teeth, okay? Top teeth, bottom

teeth. We just allow the air to blow over our tongue. So it's like you bite your tongue.

Bite. Think. Thor. What else? Both Thundercats. Easy enough. Tongue. Teeth. Cool. Now, that's

regular TH. Now, when we say "versus," because I like that whole comic book thing, you know,

you can check out Thor and Thundercats. They're cool, once again. He's got his little hammer.

"God of Thunder. Nordic God of Thunder." Okay? See? Both have "Thunder" in their name. Anyway.

The TH here is a little different. Now, the "th" you're used to from the article "the"

or also "the." This is almost the same, but what happens is, I like to tell students this.

I'm copywriting it, okay? Remember this. It's the tongue and teeth method. So what you want

to do is you want to pretend this is your tongue. Okay? And these are your teeth. And

what you want to do is clean your tongue. Imagine you've got something on your tongue.

You drank coffee. I hate coffee, right? And you want to clean that tongue with your teeth

by drawing the tongue back. What you're really doing is moving your jaw. English is a very

mouth -- a language. It's very mouth-oriented. So it has a lot to do with the mouth. In this

case, what I want to do is move my jaw by this motion. Now, I know you're watching.

You're like, "How do I do that?" Easy. Stick your tongue out, put your teeth on top, and

pull it. By doing that, what will happen is it will cause the tongue to vibrate just so

small. See? This is how much we get paid for graphics. Watch. This is the tongue vibrating.

There you go. There's a graphics wig. And we pay lots of money here for this. So there's

your tongue vibrating as you pull it over. You get a vibration happening, and that's

it. "The." And if you notice in the middle, "brother." If you look at this, "those" and

"their." "The brother of my wife put those there." The tongue is here, and as I draw

it back, I allow the air -- still the air comes over, but I pull it back and clean the

tongue. So in the first one, I pulled the tongue, right? Both. I let the air just travel.

Because I hold it, it can't vibrate, and the air travels. In the second one, as it vibrates,

as I clean it. Good. So that's the "th" versus "th." Let's look at the second one, okay?

The second category, and it goes like this. Somehow, I made a mistake. I can't believe

I did this. I wanted this to be this, right? "Th" plus this one. Okay. So let's do the

next one. This one is "s" and "s." So what's the difference? Let's do it. "It was a silly,

sunny Saturday." Okay? Now, Ezekiel has a brother. Ezekiel, are you in the room? I know

you're waiting. You're like, "Who is his brother?" But actually, he's not a brother. He's a cousin

because they kind of look the same, but they're not the same. And the brother is Sylvester

the Snake. So Sylvester the Snake, okay? He won't be coming back often, but he should

be here once in a while. So Sylvester the Snake, he's a snake. So he does a lot of "s"

sounds. That's the regular "s" sound. Silly, sunny, Sammy. Sudden. Now, over here, he's

got a hammer to smash up the snake, Ezekiel. He's got a different sound. He's got a "z"

sound. Now, it's still the "s" that you see on words, like, "Is Mary's house big enough

for the five dogs?" It was a silly, sunny Saturday. "Is Mary's house big enough for

the five dogs?" You'll notice that, once again, we've got an "s" sound and an "s" sound,

but they're not the same, right? Remember we've got Thor now versus the snake, or Ezekiel

versus the snake? Well, this is why. Basically, with this one, it's the regular "s", and this

is what we call, remember, the vibration "s". Why? With the regular "s", similar to the

"th". The "th", we took our tongue and locked it, remember? With the regular "s", what we

do is, we close our mouth and just blow air through our teeth. That's it. With the "z"

that sound, it comes from the throat. Here. So you are blowing the air, but you take it

from your mouth and put it down. If you put two fingers here, you can put three. I'm feeling

generous. Maybe four if you want, but two's good. You'll feel a vibration. Do it enough,

it drives you crazy, all right? And because of that, what happens? You get the vibration.

Vibration, vibration. So that's how we get the second S sound to be made.

Now, let's do the third and final one. I know, you're going, "What, James? This is less than

20 minutes. Are you feeling ill?" No, I'm not. It's a simple lesson, but if you join

in with, remember, the STD lesson I mentioned before. Go check for pronunciation improvement.

Okay, this one, and there'll be a third one that'll come later on. If you look and put

all three together, you're going to get like a 30-minute lesson. Yes, you can thank me.

See, TH, thank me. All right, so now we've got this one. Fart off. In English, you might

have thought, "Oh, I know this even in English. I hear it before you say fart." No, not that.

It's not a bad word. Well, it kind of is. A fart is gas coming from your bottom. If

you can't see it, you don't need to, but I tell you, my bottom is fantastic. Okay, FF,

right? And off, it goes off. So, "The little boy farted." No, sorry, better yet, "We could

hear the little boy fart when we took off the music." Let's see. Soft. Notice what happens

here is this. You'll see that I take my teeth and I place them on my bottom lip, like so.

And once again, just like here, I allow the air just to go through. How are you? I'm fine.

I'm feeling fine. Fart off, please. FF, okay? By the way, don't try that in Canada or the

United States. They'll laugh at you, not because it's funny, but because you're a foreigner

who doesn't understand the language. So once again, the regular one, you'll notice in all

three regular versions, we just allow the air to pass naturally, just blowing it. FF,

FF. Over here, and the reason why I put these two specifically is because a lot of students

have great difficulty with "of" and "off." But you, the ENV, ENV, ENV, the ENG vid, the

ENG vid watcher, have now learned to master this because you're noticing the difference

is vibration versus regular, allowing the air to move, okay? Now, what we've got here

is when we say, "F vibrate," you're going to say, "James, well, how do we do that?"

Well, "of" is the only example I have for you, but it's okay because the "v" is the

same as in "v" for vomit, vivacious, voluptuous, and vivisection. So this F sounds more like

a "v" and it's similar to the "f" here, similar position, teeth on bottom left. But instead,

once again, put your fingers here, remember this? FF, FF, "of," "of," right? Which is

different than "off," free-flowing air, "f," right? So this sounds actually almost more

like a "v," so it's a good thing about the "v" here to show you this "f" sounds like

a "v" for "of." So, from one of my favorite songs, "I can't take my eyes off of you, I

can't take my eyes off of you," watch closer. You'll watch that movie, you'll see it, you'll

think of me, right? You will, in your nightmares. Anyway, where was I? So, if we look through

vibration, "th," "s," and "v," right? "The," you can feel it here, right? "Z," "Mary's,"

you can feel here. "Of," you can feel it here. Now, we don't make it a vibration, we just

allow it to come through our mouth. We've got "think," we've got "silly," and we've

got "fart," only because I like the word so much, okay? Hope you like Sylvester the

Snake, Ezekiel the Worm's cousin, okay? Hope you enjoyed the lesson. This should make your

pronunciation easier, so how to pronounce these sounds is what you just learned today.

Go to EngVid, of course, look for your quiz and comments, and look for other teachers

on the website. And, oh, you know what? It's time for me to depart. I thank you for allowing

me to help you study and think about the different ways of speaking in English. Have a good day,

and I'll talk to you soon. One second. I almost forgot. I want you to go to www.engvid.com.

We need to study this and other lessons, all right? See?