Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.
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Made especially for speakers of Spanish and
Portuguese, in this American English pronunciation
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video, we're going to go over the pronunciation
of words that start with an S consonant cluster.
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Special thanks to my users who helped me develop
this topic. In Spanish and Portuguese, words
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do not start with an S consonant cluster.
But in English, there are many common words
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that do. For example, study. So, these speakers
tend to put an 'eh' sound in front: eh-study.
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Last week I went to a gala, and a woman there
accepted an award. She was a native Spanish
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speaker, and as she gave her speech, she said
the word 'spiritual'. And she pronounced it
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eh-spiritual, with that eh-vowel. I noticed
it especially because so much about her accent
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was very, very good. So, even after someone
has done a lot of work and corrected a lot
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of problems, this beginning S consonant cluster
tends to stick around.
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So how should you work on beginning words
with the S consonant cluster? Luckily, in
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both Spanish and Portuguese, there are words
that start with the S consonant. For example,
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'sin' in Spanish, and 'sem' in Portuguese.
So, when you're practicing words that begin
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with S consonant clusters, I would alternate
this with your word that begins with an S
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consonant. For example: sssssin, sssstudent,
and so on.
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Let's go over all of the different beginning S
consonant clusters. ST, like student.
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STR, street. SM, smart.
SN, snake. SL, slap.
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And, the SK consonant cluster,
which can be spelled four different
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ways: school, scoop, skip, square. SP, space.
SPL, split. SPR, spring. And SW, swift.
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I can hardly believe how many consonant clusters
there are! But now that you know what they
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are, practice them. Drill them. Look for words
that you use in everyday conversation that
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begin with an S consonant cluster. Keep track
of that, and at the end of the day, use those
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words to drill. If you can start a word with
an S, you can start a word with an S cluster.
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That's it, and thanks so much
for using Rachel's English.
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