British English Pronunciation Practice: Long /ɔ:/ Vowel Explored - British English Podcast

How do you feel when you have to speak in English?

I used to be a very nervous speaker, even though English is my native language, I

would be fearful of answering the phone.

I'd get nervous if I had to read aloud in class.

If I ever had to speak standing in front of a group of

people, I would be terrified.

Even though I wanted to be an actress, I found it really scary.

And transforming my voice and my speaking confidence made a world

of difference to me and my life.

Now I have over 20 years of experience in teaching pronunciation.

I know how to build not only your pronunciation skills but

also your speaking confidence.

And I'm happy to share my strategy for voice transformation.

I'm running a free masterclass and I'd love you to come and join.

You can click on the link in the description below and reserve your

spot on the next available class.

Don't miss this opportunity to invest in yourself.

Vocal transformation made a world of difference to me, and

I'm sure it will for you too.

I hope to see you in class.

Hello everyone.

You are listening to the English Like a Native Podcast, the

podcast that's designed for lovers and learners of English.

I'm your host, Anna, and today we are perfecting our pronunciation.

When you take a pencil in your hand and put the tip of the pencil to paper, and

start making marks, perhaps a beautiful piece of art or a simple doodle.

What are you doing?

What's the common verb that's associated with using a pencil to make a picture?

To draw, D-R-A-W.

Draw.

And what do you call the item of furniture that you use to store all sorts of

items like clothes or cutlery or even the pencils that you are using to draw?

What is this piece of furniture called?

You pull it out and you push it back in again.

Of course, I'm talking about drawers.

So if this is a standalone piece of furniture, then it's often known as a

chest of drawers, a chest of drawers.

Now, a chest of drawers may have two small drawers at the top, and then

a one or two larger drawers below.

A single drawer is spelled D-R-A-W-E-R.

And it's pronounced /drɔː/, which is exactly the same as our early

pencil-utilising activity, to draw.

To draw a single drawer.

Now, do not let the 'ER' on the end of the word for our piece of

furniture pull you into an unusual pronunciation like /drɔ:ə/, /drɔ:ə/.

If you pronounce it as /drɔ:ə/, then you are referring to a person who

draws, like an artist for example.

If they use pencil, then they could be a drawer.

It could be known as the drawer, although we don't use

that phrase very often, but...

"A drawer draws the drawers.

A drawer draws the drawers."

Now, the vowel sound I used here is a tricky one for many.

In all the pronunciation assessments that I've done so far for students and,

this is a great number of assessments that I've done, I'd say that around

85% of those students struggle with this long vowel /ɔ:/, /ɔ:/.

Often replacing it with a diphthong sound /əʊ/, /əʊ/.

Now a diphthong is a sound that consists of two parts, two

vowel sounds that are connected.

There's an audible shift from one sound to the other.

For example, this diphthong I just mentioned, /əʊ/, starts with a

more open mouth, uh, uh, uh, and then the mouth closes to a more

closed position towards the end.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

So...

Ha-ha.

'So' has an /əʊ/ sound too, did you hear it?

So, so, so the /ɔ:/ sound tends to be replaced by /əʊ/, meaning that we hear

the verb draw being pronounced as /drəʊ/.

This is incorrect.

So try saying this verb to yourself out loud now and identify whether

you say the RP /drɔ:/ or whether you do the variation that many

students fall into of /drəʊ/, /drəʊ/.

Which one do you do, /drɔ:/ or /drəʊ/?

If you do struggle with the /ɔ:/ sound, if you've just identified that you

don't say /drɔ:/, but /drəʊ/, then it's really great that you've identified it.

And so now what you need to do is try to practice in front of a

mirror so that you can ensure that your mouth stays completely still

and that you don't move it at all.

So if you are pronouncing the long vowel that we're looking for /ɔ:/, our mouth

does not move, /ɔ:/, /ɔ:/, but if you are slipping into the diphthong /əʊ/,

/əʊ/, you'll notice the mouth going from an open to a closed position.

So find the long vowel where the mouth doesn't move and then let's

stick with that long /ɔ:/ sound and repeat the sentence with me.

"To draw a chest of drawers.

To draw a chest of drawers."

Once more.

"To draw a chest of drawers."

Great.

Now, there are a few other homophones that also contain this long /ɔ:/ vowel.

The following word is incredibly common.

Sure.

Meaning 'certain' or 'yes'.

"Mum, is it okay to use your car this weekend?"

"Sure."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Now American English has a huge influence on the style of English that's spoken

around the world, and in American English 'sure' is pronounced differently.

Either with r-colouring sure /ʃʊr/, sure /ʃʊr/, or with a kind of flattened vowel.

Sure /ˈshu̇r/, sure /ˈshu̇r/.

In British English, the 'R' is not pronounced, though you may occasionally

hear a variation in the vowel.

So in some speakers, RP speakers, of a certain age, or heightened RP speakers.

So people who are very high up, like aristocracy and royalty.

You may hear the vowel being changed to a diphthong /ʊə/, /ʊə/.

So they say, sure /ʃʊə/, sure /ʃʊə/, sure /ʃʊə/, sure /ʃʊə/.

"Are you sure?"

"Oh, we must cancel the recital, Charles."

"Oh, are you sure?"

But in my opinion, this is going out of fashion in modern usage.

And the Cambridge dictionary agrees.

Yes, I have the backing of the Cambridge dictionary.

The homophone of sure is shore as in the land along the edge of the sea, the shore.

It's lovely to walk along the shore.

So let's put those two words together in a sentence.

"I'm sure the shore is four more miles away."

"I'm sure the shore is four more miles away."

Repeat after me.

"I'm sure the shore is four more miles away."

Now, it may surprise you to learn that I actually grew up with a

completely different accent to the one you are hearing now.

And if you want to know how I managed to transform my voice, and

how you can do the same, then check out the link to my pronunciation

masterclass in the show notes.

Okay, good work.

So I have two more /ɔ:/ for you.

Not, not oars, like what you use to row a boat, but the long /ɔ:/ vowels.

I have two more /ɔ:/ homophones for you to get your mouth around.

And next up, is floor, the thing that is beneath us.

Unless we head to the cellar, also known as the basement, then the floor will be

above us and below us, the cellar floor underfoot and the ground floor overhead.

So the spelling is F-L-O-O-R.

Again, we're ignoring the R.

We have floor /flɔ:/, floor /flɔ:/.

The homophone, of course, is flaw, which means a problem, a blemish or

a weakness spelled F-L-A-W, flaw.

We are all flawed.

Nobody is perfect.

How boring the world would be if we were all perfect.

Here's your sentence.

"We were floored to find a flaw in the new marble floor."

Here to be floored.

I said to be floored.

To be floored in this context means to be gobsmacked, to be astonished,

agog, mouth wide open, surprised.

Aah!

Like you'd be knocked to the ground, to the floor with the surprising

thing that you've just seen or heard, you have been floored.

So there's the sentence again.

"We were floored to find a flaw in the new marble floor."

"We were floored to find a flaw in the new marble floor."

One more time.

Repeat with me.

"We were floored to find a flaw in the new marble floor."

Great work.

Okay, last but not least, the three Ps.

Pour, poor, paw.

Hmm.

Now before I spell them all for you, let me give you a sentence

with all three homophones and that will help you to make sense of it.

"I poured water on the poor doggy's paw."

"I poured water on the poor doggy's paw."

Pour, poor, paw.

To pour, P-O-U-R.

This is a verb, meaning to make a substance like a liquid or a powder

flow from a container by tipping the container, we pour water from

a bottle or a jug into a glass.

A cement mixer pours wet cement onto the ground when you are

making a road or a pavement.

Sand pours from the top of a sand timer to the bottom when you turn it over.

Pour.

Poor, P-O-O-R.

This is an adjective that means to have little money or wealth.

"The poor man didn't like begging for food."

Poor can also mean to be deserving of sympathy.

"Oh, my sister broke her leg on her 18th birthday.

Poor thing!"

And it can mean to be of low quality.

"This photo is of poor quality."

Paw.

P-A-W.

This is a noun that means the foot of an animal.

Oh, a foot of an animal that has claws or nails.

So like a dog or a cat or a bear perhaps, not a deer.

A deer has a different kind of foot.

It doesn't have claws or nails.

It has hooves.

Okay, so,

"The dog cut his paw while digging in the woods."

"My cat has left muddy paw prints all over my kitchen.

Naughty cat."

So now let's say the original sentence.

I'll say it three times.

Try and say it with me.

"I poured water on the poor doggy's paw."

"I poured water on the poor doggy's paw."

"I poured water on the poor doggy's paw."

Did you notice that in the word water we also have this /ɔ:/ sound.

Pour /pɔ:/ - wa /wɔ:/, pour /pɔ:/ - water /wɔ:tə/.

Okay, in the episode so far, we've covered: draw, drawer; sure, shore;

floor, flaw; pour, poor and paw.

Now, let me give you a little story that incorporates all of these / ɔ:/

words that we've covered so far.

Here we go.

Use your imagination to picture this.

Upon a little beach on the North coast of the UK, there was a small

quaint cottage near the shore.

Inside the cottage lived an old artist named Mr.

Higgins, who was known for his peculiar habits and artistic talents.

Mr.

Higgins had a favourite drawer in his studio, an ancient wooden relic that

contained his treasured art supplies.

One morning as he opened the drawer to fetch his brushes

and paints, he noticed a flaw.

The drawer had a creak that grated on his nerves.

He decided to waste no time and fix it straight away.

He set to work, determined to nip this creak in the bud.

With a sure hand, Mr.

Higgins took out his tools and began to craft, leaving the door

ajar to allow for ventilation.

The sound of the waves crashing outside, served as background

music to his repair efforts.

He couldn't help but smile, feeling inspired by the beauty of nature.

As he worked, he heard soft footprints approaching from the open studio door.

A little stray cat, poor and hungry, peeked inside.

Its playful paw reached out and touched one of the paintbrushes, leaving a

trail of tiny paw prints on the floor.

Mr.

Higgins chuckled at the sight.

"Ahh, little one.

Are you interested in art too?", he said, offering the cat a small dish of milk.

The cat purred in response, delighted by the treat.

From that day on, the cat became a regular visitor to Mr.

Higgins' studio.

Whenever the artist opened the drawer, the cat would curiously

investigate the art supplies.

Sometimes it even tried to draw with its paws, creating adorable little messes.

One evening as the sun painted the sky with hues of orange and pink, Mr.

Higgins decided to capture this unique friendship on canvas.

He set up his easel by the open window overlooking the beautiful shoreline.

The cat sat nearby watching with interest.

With a gentle pour of paint onto his palette, Mr.

Higgins started painting, depicting himself and the curious

cat in front of the drawer, both engaged in artistic exploration.

The sun's warm rays illuminated the scene, creating a stunning

backdrop for the heartwarming moment.

The artwork turned out to be a masterpiece.

Capturing not just the beauty of the surroundings, but also

the joy of newfound friendship.

The painting found its way to an art exhibition where it touched

the hearts of everyone who saw it.

It was a testament to the power of unexpected connections with beauty

that can arise from a simple flaw.

From that day on, people visited Mr.

Higgins' cottage by the shore.

Not just to admire his art, but also to meet the friendly cat

who had become his loyal muse.

And so, the artist and the cat continued to draw inspiration from each other,

forever connected by a shared love of art and the memory of that first

day when they had met by the shore.

Thank you so much for letting me tickle your eardrums.

I do hope you found today useful.

If you do struggle with the /ɔ:/ sound or any sound, or just transforming your

voice in general, then don't forget about my free pronunciation masterclass

where I tell you exactly how you go about transforming your voice and I share

exactly how I did it and what I have to offer that can help you to do the same.

The links are in the show notes.

Until next time, take very good care and goodbye.