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

My name is Mandy, and this is our 158th episode.

This podcast is going to cover some advanced pronunciation topics, so I would advise you to go to

www.prenuncian.com slash podcast and click episode 158 to read the transcripts for this show along

with listening to it. Reading along will help you comprehend the lessonss for this show along with listening to it.

Reading along will help you comprehend the lessons in today's show.

I've spoken quite a few times about voiced and unvoiced consonant sounds before,

but I haven't spoken very much about the changes in the vowel sounds that come before voiced and

unvoiced consonant sounds.

Before I begin, let me say again that the terms long vowel and short vowel are common

names for vowel sounds in American English.

As tempting as it is to think that a long

a and a short a are the same sound except for how long we say the sound, that's not how it works.

The term long a represents the sound, A, as in the word cake. The term short A represents the sound A, as in the word cake.

The term short A represents the sound a, as in the word cat.

The sounds A and a are actually about the same duration if everything else is equal.

What do I mean, though, when I say, if everything else is equal?

Well, there are a few different things that change the duration of a vowel sound in a word.

First, of course, there's syllable stress.

Vowel sounds in a primarily stressed syllable

are going to have a longer duration

than vowel sounds in secondarily stressed

...