You're listening to the Rachel's English podcast, made especially for non-native English speakers,

where we study the way Americans really speak.

My goal is for you to listen to this podcast every week and sound more natural when speaking English and improve your listening comprehension.

In today's episode, we're answering questions from you.

Let me introduce my co-host today, my husband David.

Hey everybody.

Today we're going to be reading some questions that have come in through YouTube and

we're going to do our best with your names, but names can be hard. So forgive us,

please, if we mispronounce. Okay, David, why don't you start it off and ask a question?

All right. So the first one is from Natalia. She says, Rachel, I've been watching your videos,

and I really love them. Thanks for that. But I really need your help with two words that I think are kind of tricky for us Brazilians to know the difference between and pronunciation. What's the difference between color and color? Thanks in advance.

Oh, that's a classic issue. Ah versus uh. You all listening out there, can you hear the difference

between those two vowels? Ah. Uh. David, can you hear the difference? I can. Yeah. Yeah. I remember this

was one thing that surprised me actually when I first started teaching was to realize

that some people couldn't hear the difference between those two, because I thought, wait, but they're

totally different. But the more I taught, the more I realize they're not really. So the trick is

relaxation in a, the second one, the one that's in color, C-O-L-O-R.

So the issue that most non-native speakers have is that they don't speak with as much relaxation

in the neck and in the vocal apparatus as Americans do.

And you have to really have a lot of relaxation to get the

right vowel for a. This is in the word butter, in the word color, in the word done.

And if you say that sound with any kind of tension, then it starts sounding like awe, which we have in words like

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