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

My name is Mandy, and this is our 164th episode.

Consonant sounds that commonly occur together are known as consonant clusters.

English has quite a few consonant clusters, like the common BL combination in the words black and blue,

or the longer three-sound SPR cluster of the words spray and spring.

When working with pronunciation, consonant clusters can present special challenges for learners

because even if your first language has the same two or three consonant sounds as English,

those sounds might not occur directly next to each other in words.

Or it might not have those sounds next to each other at the beginning of a word, or at the end of a word.

Since the R sound is such a difficult sound

for many non-native English speakers,

today we're going to focus on five of the 12 consonant clusters

that include the R sound,

BR, K-R, G-R, P, PR, and SKR.

All of those clusters include a transition from a stop sound into the R sound.

If you want to practice more than these five clusters, we've just added three new free lessons about consonant clusters. One lesson focuses on consonant plus

R, another lesson focuses on consonant plus L, and the final lesson focuses on S plus consonant.

I'll link to those three lessons from this episode's transcript page.

I would recommend reading the transcripts along with listening to this episode because this episode includes a number of difficult concepts.

As always, you can find the transcripts for all of our podcasts by going to

www.prenuncian.com slash podcast.

Then simply click the episode you're looking for.

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