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

My name is Mandy, and this is our 134th episode.

I'm going to stick with vowel spellings one more week and talk about a letter I really haven't talked about

very much, the letter Y. Specifically, I'm going to talk about the letter Y when it is between

two consonants. The letter Y at the beginning of a word is generally pronounced as a Y sound alone,

as in the word yes, or as the beginning Y sound of the two-sound vowel long U sound, as in the word youth. If the letter Y occurs at the

end of a word, it is often pronounced as a long I, as in the word my, or a long

e, as in the word any.

Today, however, I want to talk about why when it is in the middle of a word and is between

two consonants.

Luckily, there are only two different common pronunciations for this spelling,

short eye and long eye.

The short eye pronunciation seems to be about twice as common as the long eye.

Let's get into some of the details.

The short eye sound is pronounced i.

It is the vowel sound in the word sit.

The short eye is a rather relaxed sound and is one of the two common sounds for an unstressed

vowel. Listen to podcast episode

126 for more details on short I as an unstressed vowel sound. My tongue is rounded

upward for this sound, but not so much that I create a long e sound, E. Listen to a comparison of the short I and long

e. I'll say the short I sound first. I, e, e, e. Some examples of the letter Y pronounced as a short I include the words system, typical, and bicycle.

The long eye is pronounced I. It is a two-sound vowel. The tongue is neutral at the beginning of the sound

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