140: The ’oo’ spelling of the words ’foot’ and ’soon’
American English Pronunciation Podcast
Seattle Learning Academy
4.6 • 543 Ratings
🗓️ 14 September 2011
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hi again and welcome back to Seattle Learning Academy's American English pronunciation podcast. |
| 0:13.5 | My name is Mandy, and this is our 140th episode. |
| 0:18.1 | I talked a bit about the other you sound in our last podcast about the word sure. |
| 0:25.2 | The other you sounds like uh, and is the vowel sound in the word put. Can you hear it? |
| 0:33.9 | Uh, put. The other you is tricky because it doesn't have any vowel spelling of its own. |
| 0:43.7 | It can obviously be spelled U as in the word put, but it can also be spelled O-O as in the word foot. |
| 0:53.7 | Can you hear the rhyme between put and foot? |
| 0:58.0 | Put, foot. |
| 1:00.9 | The more common pronunciation for the O-O-O- spelling is the O-O-Sound, as in the word |
| 1:08.1 | soon. |
| 1:10.0 | The word shoot, S-H-O-O-T, is also pronounced with the O-O-O sound. |
| 1:18.6 | Notice that the word shoot does not rhyme with the word foot. |
| 1:23.6 | Shoot, foot. |
| 1:26.6 | Let's talk a little bit about how these two sounds are different. |
| 1:33.0 | The O-O sound is usually easier to start with because it's a more common sound. |
| 1:39.5 | Listen to the sound. |
| 1:41.5 | Ooh. |
| 1:42.9 | The major characteristic of this sound is that my lips are brought into a small |
| 1:48.2 | circle. In addition, the back of my tongue is raised to a high position and the sides of the |
| 1:55.0 | tongue touch my teeth at the back of my mouth. Listen to the sound again. Ooh. The other you sound, |
| 2:05.3 | U, has relaxed lips. The inside of the mouth is similar to the O-O sound. My tongue |
| 2:12.8 | relaxes a little more and the back of the tongue drops some, but those details are really minor |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Seattle Learning Academy, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Seattle Learning Academy and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.