Welcome to Seattle Learning Academy's American English pronunciation podcast.

Not all Americans speak alike, but I'll help you get closer to how the majority of us do.

By the way, my name is Mandy. You can find transcripts of this podcast

and lots of practice activities at www.pronuncian.com. You will also find our practice sentences

there, like today's practice sentence, think about this thing, that thing, and those things.

I'm going to begin today with two sounds that cause trouble for nearly every non-native English speaker,

no matter what their first language is, the TH sounds.

Yes, there are two TH sounds. One is voiced and the other isn't.

What do I mean voiced? I mean that our vocal cords are vibrating during the sound.

We have lots of pairs of sounds that are voiced and unvoiced, but most of them are spelled

differently from one another.

For example, the D sound is voiced, but the T sound isn't.

D, t, t, D, t.

Other than that, the two sounds are very, very similar.

There are two easy ways to tell if a sound is voiced or not.

One is to put two fingers against the front of your throat and save the sound.

D.

If it is voiced, you should feel a vibration.

Some people will plug their ears with their finger and say the sound.

You should notice a big difference between the sound during a voiced or unvoiced sound

while your ears are plugged.

The B sound and P sound are another voiced, unvoiced pair,

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