How to Pronounce ‘Mirror’

TRANSCRIPT

Hi, it’s Hadar, and this is the Accent’s Way, your way to finding clarity, confidence, and freedom in English. Let’s talk about the word ‘mirror’. ‘mirror’.

So although it may be threatening on the page with all these R’s and ‘o’ in the middle. And what are we supposed to do with this ‘o’ in the middle and all these R’s? So I’m going to give you a great tip on how to pronounce the word, but let’s begin at the beginning.

The ‘mi’ syllable. ‘mi’. Close your lips for an M and then shift to an ‘i’ as in sit vowel sound – ‘mi’, ‘mi’. Then you round your lips, lift the tongue up for the R, the tongue goes up, the sides of the tongue are touching the insides of the upper teeth, and the lips are round. Then you relax it to a schwa sound -‘r’, and then you lift it up again really quickly to another ‘r’ – r’r, r’r. ‘mi-r’r’.

Now, I know it’s difficult. That’s why I’m going to tell you, the R-schwa-R is usually reduced when you speak quickly to one long R. Listen. ‘mi-rrrr’, ‘mi-rrrr’. So instead of saying ‘mi-rOr’, definitely no ‘oh’ sound there. Or not even ‘mi-r’r’, which is the proper way – with a schwa-R – you just say ‘mi-rrr”. ‘mi-rrrr’.

“Look in the mirror”. “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” Mirror. All right. Simple, right? Good. So go ahead and practice it and we’ll end it here. That’s it. That was quick, right?

Thank you for watching. I’ll see you next week in the next video. Don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t yet. Bye.