English Pronunciation: Bitch or Beach?

Ah, the classic!

When you're talking about your country and you're saying :

"Oh my God, in my country, we have the most amazing bitches!"

People will look at you like :

Bitches, you know, the sand, the sea..

Oh, beaches!

I thought you said bitches!

So, this is a classic :

is it /i:/ or /ɪ/?

Ship or sheep?

So, you may have heard that the only difference is it's a long sound for /i:/ and a short sound for /ɪ/

Long sound for sheep, short sound for ship.

Same for sheet and shit.

But there's more to it in that,

And I'm gonna show you two ways that you can definitely make the sounds without any mistakes!

First, just look at my mouth, that's a weird thing to ask!

But look at my mouth!

When I say these two words : Beach ... Bitch

Now, let's try without sound!

Do you see the difference?

Bitch

Your mouth is more closed.

Bitch

and with beach,

your mouth makes a smily mouth, which is good!

Beach

but,

you could also make this sound regardless of what mouth shape you make!

For example : bitch, beach.

I did the same mouth shape and produced two different sounds!

So there's more to it in that!

It's what happens inside the mouth that's the real secret.

And to do this, I'll use a pen!

I don't know whose pen this is, I don't know where it's been!

So, with Bitch,

your tongue stays down,

with Beach, your tongue comes up and closes the gap inside your mouth!

Let me demonstrate!

So, you see, to make the /i:/

I have to lift my tongue up,

to get that /i:/

Because what it's doing, it's closing the mouth to get a higher pitch sound!

/i:/

So, tell us, what do you like to relax with?

A nice beautiful what?

Try these sentences!

Don't call women bitches, it's.. wrong.

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Non-automatic English subtitles by Julie Descaves