“Don’t say one thing and mean another,” I often heard this saying as a kid and tried to live my life accordingly.
But what happens when you say one thing and mean another – but you can’t help it??
There are many sound pairs in English that are so similar that they sound exactly the same for non-native speakers. And then, “let’s ship it,” may sound like “let’s sheep it.” “A new ring,” will sound like “a new wing.” And the word bad, may sound like… BED! Sometimes, you may hear the difference but not necessarily know how to pronounce it.
TRANSCRIPT
Hi, it’s Hadar. And you’re watching the Accent’s Way, your way to finding clarity, confidence, and freedom in English. And today we’re going to talk about the vowel pair “bed – bad”. Right? ‘eh’ -‘a’.
As you can hear, these are two different vowels, but they’re often pronounced the same by non-native speakers. So first let’s understand what the differences are between the two vowels. So the first sound ‘eh’ is very close to a neutral ‘e’ sound that exists in many languages. ‘eh’, as in the words “red”, “bed”, “head”, “set”.
The other vowel is a more open vowel, it’s a front vowel. The tongue is pushing forward, as in the word “cat”, alright? So it’s quite different: the quality of the sound is different, the mouth is really open for this one – ‘a’.
As you can see, the sides of the lips are pulling, right? The lips are pulling to the sides a little bit. The tongue is pushing forward, the front part of the tongue is flat. “happy”, right? It’s not the ‘hepi’, it’s not ‘haapi’ – “happy”. I’d say that phonetically speaking, this ‘a’ sound is somewhere between the ‘eh’ and ‘ah’, the neutral ‘eh’ and ‘ah’. Okay, so, “cat”. Again, “happy”, “that”, “bad”.
Now, when we compare them, it’s really easy to see the shift between ‘eh’ and ‘a’, right? So you got to drop your jaw. Sometimes, we have a tendency of speaking really quickly and not opening our mouths, and therefore the ‘a’ sound may come across as ‘eh’. And then words like “bad”, “sat”, and “laughed” may sound like “bed”, “set”, and “left”. Alright?
So, that’s what we’re practicing now, this distinction: “left” – “laughed”, “head” – “had”, “set” – “sat”, “send” – “sand”, “bed” – “bad”. All right, great job. So, practice this distinction. Don’t forget to drop your jaw, pull the lips a little bit, make it a front forward sound.
And that’s it. If you have any questions or insights about these two vowels, please share it with us below this video. If not, I will see you next week in the next video. Bye.
What can we do?
Learn how to distinguish between the two! First, to hear the difference, and then to pronounce it.
Today, we’ll begin with the vowel pair: bed-bad. What other vowel or consonant pairs are difficult for you?
Let me know in the comments below!
Have a fun practice, And I’ll see you next week!
Hadar
