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

My name is Mandy, and this is our 128th episode.

In podcast episode 126, which was the second part of the unstressed syllables podcasts, I mentioned that an unstressed

letter E is often pronounced as a quick, short, I sound. Today, I want to focus a little more

on the letter I by highlighting the I consonant E spelling pattern while taking syllable stress patterns

into account. This is a rather complex podcast and is meant for an advanced level student. At a minimum,

you will want to watch podcast episode 49, which is the video introducing the long eye and short

eye sounds before listening to this episode.

Also, since there are a lot of topics covered in this episode, you may want to follow

along with the transcripts, which you can find by going to

www.pronuncian.com slash podcast.

I know I've said this many times before, but some of you might be new to this podcast,

so I'll say it again.

Long vowels are not just short vowels that take more time.

Long and short are just names of sounds.

Long vowels and short vowels are sometimes similar in spelling, but they are not pronounced the same.

To review, the short eye sounds like i and is the vowel sound of the word sit.

My tongue is mid-high in my mouth and more relaxed than the long E, which sounds like E.

A general rule for short vowel sounds is that they occur when the vowel letter is between two consonants,

and there is no silent E at the end of the word.

I call this the consonant-vowel-consonant pattern.

The words kit, rip, bit, and quit are all pronounced with a short eye due to the consonant vowel consonant pattern.

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