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

My name is Mandy, and this is our 142nd episode.

Our last podcast was about the T-Sound allophones, and part of that show was about the importance

of being able to tell the difference between a syllabic L and a non-syllabic L.

A syllabic consonant is a sound that's typically considered a consonant, but can sometimes do something that only vowel sounds are supposed to be able to do,

create a syllable.

We have three syllabic consonants in English,

the schwa plus R sound, the L sound, and the N sound. Today I'm just going to talk about the syllabic L.

Understanding syllabic consonants is important

because it allows non-native English speakers

to not over-pronounce words by adding unnecessary sounds.

If you want to sound like a highly fluent speaker of English,

learning where to not put sounds is just as important as knowing where to keep them.

A syllabic L does not sound different than a regular L. it's just a classification to help us understand

syllables and realize that some syllables don't include a vowel sound. I hope that makes sense.

Let's start with a few words that contain an easy-to-identify syllabic L, words where it's spelled L-E, as in the words,

trouble, single, and simple.

I'm going to say those words again, but I'm also going to say just the final two consonant sounds,

so you can hear that there's no vowel sound added between them. Those

words were trouble, bull, single, goal, and simple, pole. Try saying them with me. Trouble.

Single.

Simple.

...