How to say "Where are you going?" -- American English Conversation and Pronunciation

In this American English pronunciation video,

we’re going to go over the pronunciation of the phrase: “Where are you going?”

Let’s start with the stress. Where are you going? The question word, ‘where’,

and the stressed syllable of the verb ‘go’ are the two stressed syllables.

DA-da-da-DA-da. Where are you going?

Where begins with the lips in a tight circle for the W, where.

Then we have the EH as in BED vowel, so drop your jaw for that.

Next is the R sound, the tongue pulls back and up towards the roof of the mouth, where, rr, rr.

So your jaw will come back up. As the tongue pulls back, the lips will flare out a bit, where, -eh.

Now it gets a little complicated because we’re going to reduce the word ‘are’ to just the R sound,

rr, rr. Where are, where are.

To make it sound like a new syllable, which we want to do, you can pull your tongue down just a bit,

and then put it back up towards the roof of the mouth for the R, where are, where are, where are.

It should be really fast because it’s in an unstressed syllable.

Now we have the word ‘you.’ You may find people saying “ya”,

reducing the OO vowel to the schwa instead you, “ya”.

Either way it’s low in pitch and fast because it’s in an unstressed syllable.

Where are you, where are you. Where are you going?

Now the stressed syllable. Tongue reaches up in the back and touches the soft palate, g-, g- go-.

Then we have the OH as in NO Diphthong.

Your jaw will need to drop for the first half of that Diphthong, g-oh, g-oh.

Then the jaw will come back up as the lips round for the second half, go, go.

Then the lips relax for the IH and the back part of the tongue stretches up for the NG consonant,

going, going, -ing, -ing, -ing.

Make that last syllable really short, it’s unstressed.

Going, where are you going? Where are you going?

You may hear some people not pronounce the NG at the end but just an N.

Where are you goin’? Where are you goin’?

To make this sound, raise the front part of the tongue to the roof of the mouth instead of the back.

Where are you goin’?

Let’s watch one more time in slow motion.

This video is part of a series. Click here to see other videos just like it.

If you have a phrase you’d like to suggest for this series, please put it in the comments.

That’s it, and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.