This podcast contains references to vulgar language and is intended for mature audiences.

Hi everyone! I've decided to make our 176 episode quite informal. As you can see in the title,

I'm going to talk about swearing.

I've chosen to talk about swearing now because it relates to our recently released YouTube

short vowels pronunciation video.

You can see that video by going to pronuncian.com and clicking the videos tab.

You can also find it on the Seattle Learning YouTube channel, which I'll link to from this episode's

transcript page. You can find the transcript by going to www.pronuncian.com slash podcast. For some reason,

short vowel sounds and English swear words go together.

If you're speaking with an American English accent, the most common curses are pronounced with short vowel sounds.

When non-native speakers try to swear but just don't quite get it right, The problem is usually because of not pronouncing the vowel correctly.

Now, before you get too excited about hearing teacher Mandy swear in English,

let me tell you that I'm not going to exactly swear today.

I'm going to near swear.

I'm going to substitute one consonant sound so you can still

hear that important vowel. I'm also going to give you a few collocations for each square word.

Collocations are other words that are used with a specific word. Collocations are ways to find common phrases.

I'm using the dictionary built into my MacBook computer to find the phrases. And here is today's

near swearing podcast. A swear word with the short A sound is A-S-S, which I will substitute with the word

ask. Can you hear the short A sound? A in the word ask. A-ask. Some phrases with AS include to bust one's ask, meaning to try very hard to do something.

A sentence with this phrase is, I busted my ask to help you move into a fifth floor apartment in a building with no elevator.

To get off one's ask, meaning to stop being lazy.

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