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

My name is Mandy, and this is our 148th episode.

Today we're going to practice the TH sounds, but instead of practicing the sounds in single

words, we're going to practice them within a paragraph.

This is good, especially for the TH sounds, because they usually occur in function words,

such as the article the and the pronouns, them and they.

Since function words are spoken so quickly, those words pass by very quickly.

Even though they are said quickly, accuracy with these sounds will make you sound more fluent.

Since we'll be practicing whole sentences, you may want to read along with the transcripts for this episode.

You can find the transcripts by going to www.

www.pronuncian.com slash podcast and clicking episode 148.

Pronuncian is spelled P-R-O-N-U-N-C-I-N. Before we get to the paragraph, let's quickly review what the TH sounds are.

The letters TH are used to represent both the voiced TH and the unvoiced TH.

The voiced TH sounds like,

uh,

to create that sound,

the tip of my tongue is very lightly touching the backside of my top front teeth.

When I create the sound, air must be forced between the tip of my tongue and my top front

teeth.

At the same time, my vocal cords are vibrating.

You may have been taught to put your tongue between your front teeth to create this sound.

You will get an accurate sound, but most people find it very difficult to create the sound that way when speaking quickly.

...