Hi everyone and welcome back to Seattle Learning Academy's American English pronunciation podcast. My name is Mandy, and this is podcast number 18.

Last week we practiced the S-H sound and Z-H sound.

Let's review our practice sentence for those sounds.

Vision is usually measured with special machines.

Do you remember the linguistic classification of those sounds?

They are consonant fricatives. That means that the sounds

happen when we create friction somewhere in the vocal tract. Today we are going to study two

more fricative sounds, the voiced, unvoiced pair of V sound and F sound.

You probably already know that we don't need to use the tongue to create these sounds.

These sounds happen when we place our bottom lip lightly against our upper teeth,

then push air through the small space between the teeth and the lip. The F sound is unvoiced,

and the V sound is voiced. Listen to these sounds and repeat after me if you can. F. F. V. When thinking about the V sound and F sound, always think about the lower lip and the upper teeth.

If you're creating friction with air between the lower lip and upper teeth, a native English

speaker will hear a V sound

or F sound, depending on if you are voicing the sound or not. Let's practice a few F sound,

V sound minimal pairs, and notice the difference between these sounds. Leaf, leave.

Few view.

Refuse, reviews.

Proof, prove. Reviews.

Proof, prove.

The biggest problem I hear with these sounds is usually with the V sound.

Some students do not voice the V sound, and so it sounds more like an F sound to a native English speaker.

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