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

My name is Mandy, and this is our 146th episode.

I'd like to take a moment to wish all of our listeners a happy new year. This is a great

opportunity to talk about the word new. New is one of those words that seems really simple,

but is worth talking about because of the slight difference in pronunciation between American English and

British English. The difference is so tiny that it won't cause any communication problems

at all, but it is worth knowing about if you're striving for a more American accent.

The difference is that Americans pronounce

Newe-spelled N-E-W or K-N-E-W

as the N-Sound followed by the O-O-O-Sound.

Remember, the O-O sound is pronounced as U.

So, new is pronounced N-U.

British speakers pronounce N-N-Sound as the N- sound, followed by the long U sound.

The long U sounds like you. Remember, for the purposes of learning pronunciation,

we call the Y sound plus the OO sound, the long U sound. While some linguists don't consider the long

you to be an individual sound, we teach it that

way so that correcting students inaccurate use of either the O-O sound or long-you sound can be

more quickly recognized and corrected.

It also makes topics like this easier to explain. So while Americans

say new, British say new. A good place to go to hear the difference between American and

British pronunciations is Cambridge Dictionaries Online. They not only show the symbols for both

American and British pronunciation, British First, but they also provide audio samples. Here's the Cambridge

...