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

My name is Mandy, and this is our 155th episode.

We've had a number of episodes about the S ending, but we've never talked about that small set of irregular plurals where a final F sound is changed to a V sound before adding the S ending.

These are words like the singular wife and its plural wives and the singular leaf and its plural leaves.

This seemingly simple episode explains a number of topics, starting with ideas good for beginners, and ending with some concepts that are a bit

complicated. If you'd like to read the transcripts along with listening to this show, go to

www.prenuncian.com slash podcast. If you're a Spanish speaker, you may want to listen to our podcasts in Spanish to be able to have the greatest understanding of the topics.

Go to the link I just mentioned, www.orgoncian.com slash podcast, and click on a Spaniel to see all the episodes we've published so far.

To begin with today, let's review how to create the F sound and V sound.

The F sound and V sound are an unvoiced, voiced pair.

An unvoiced sound is produced without using the vocal cords, while a voiced sound allows them to vibrate.

Both of these sounds are created when air is pushed between the top of the bottom lip and the bottom of the top

front teeth. You don't need to curl your bottom lip into your mouth to create these sounds.

It takes only a very little amount of friction. Also, these sounds are both fricatives, so their pronunciation can be held

for a long time. Create the F sound with me. Now create the V sound with me. Now create the V sound with me.

V.

Remember, if you can't hold these sounds for a few seconds, you're not creating them correctly.

We're going to say them again, and this time I want you to put a couple of fingers against the front of your throat and feel the difference?

Next, let's review adding the S ending to words.

If an S ending is added to an unvoiced sound, such as the F sound, the S ending is pronounced as an S sound.

So if I add an S ending to the verb laugh, I get laughs.

If I add an S ending to the verb cough, I get coughs. However, simply adding an

...