Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.
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In this American English pronunciation video,
we're going to take a look at how this letter
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is pronounced.
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I often get emails from people asking questions
like, 'Why is the CH in CHICAGO pronounced
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differently than the CH in CHOICE?' SH vs.
CH. And my answer is always, unfortunately,
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the sounds of American English do not correspond
one-to-one with the letters of the alphabet.
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To know for sure how a word is pronounced,
you need to either hear a native speaker say
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the word, or look up the word in a dictionary
that has the International Phonetic Alphabet
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transcription.
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Let's look at the letter Y. In the word 'syringe',
it is the schwa, uh, uh, syringe. In the word
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'you', it is the yy sound. You. In the word
'my', it is the 'ai' as in 'buy' diphthong.
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01:11
My. In the word busy, it is the EE vowel.
Busy.
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So when you see this letter in a word, you
can't make assumptions about how it is pronounced.
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Look it up in a dictionary, or have native
speaker say the word to you.
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That's it, and thanks so much for using Rachel's
English.
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01:35
Don't stop there. Have fun with my real-life
English videos. Or get more comfortable with
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the IPA in this play list. Learn about the
online courses I offer, or check out my latest
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video.
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This site will introduce you to YouTube videos that are useful for learning English. You will see English lessons taught by top-notch teachers from around the world. Double-click on the English subtitles displayed on each video page to play the video from there. The subtitles scroll in sync with the video playback. If you have any comments or requests, please contact us using this contact form.