Hi again and welcome back to Seattle Learning Academy's American English pronunciation podcast.

My name is Mandy and this is our 118th episode.

I know I've talked a lot about suffixes during these podcasts, but I've spent little time on prefixes.

When I'm teaching, I often spend time telling students to stop using the long e sound,

E, and the prefix re.

However, I recently learned that there are times when the long E is appropriate.

Before I begin, I consider this an advanced topic, since we need to understand a lot of individual sounds and pronunciation concepts to really be able to understand this episode.

If you are new to this podcast, you may want to begin with some earlier episodes to prepare

for this one.

Let's begin.

When you learned the RE prefix, your teacher almost certainly pronounced it with a long e.

Re. That is how it's pronounced in isolation when it isn't attached to a word.

Then, like most things that were new to you, your teacher stressed it.

However, you probably were never told

that you can't assume that words beginning in the RE prefix should actually be pronounced re.

I'm going to try to make this complicated topic the least burdensome as possible for you.

Here's a quick summary.

The RE prefix can be pronounced with the long e, short I, short E, or shua.

Sometimes you have options, sometimes it's more straightforward.

Let's not forget how to pronounce the long-E, short I, short-E, and schwa.

During the long-e sound, the front of the tongue is very close to the back of the tooth ridge.

Our tongue is higher in our mouth during this sound than any other vowel sound.

...