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

My name is Mandy, and this is our 181st episode.

One sound combination that seems to be difficult for native speakers of nearly every language

is the THR combination. This combination requires flowing smoothly from one difficult sound into another difficult sound.

When these sounds occur side by side, they definitely require some special attention.

So today we'll give it some of that practice that makes it possible to become fluent with this combination.

First, you need to understand that the TH sound in all THR combinations is the unvoiced TH sound.

It's the TH sound in the word think, not the TH sound in the word them.

I'll say both of these sounds side by side, so you can hear the difference.

Unvoiced TH, TH, TH, TH, TH, TH, TH, TH, TH, TH, TH, TH TH TH TH TH TH TH TH TH TH TH TH TH TH TH TH TH TH TH.

If you put your fingers against the front of your throat, you shouldn't feel any vibration for the unvoiced TH sound, but you will

for the voiced TH sound.

That vibration of the vocal folds is the difference between these sounds.

The trick to creating the TH sounds is to put the tip of your tongue behind your top front teeth

and force the air out of your mouth

through the tiny space between the tip of your tongue and your top front teeth.

Most of my students have had a teacher previously tell them to put the tip of their

tongue between the front teeth and blow. While that method will also work, and it's easy to say

all by itself, the problem is that it makes it very hard to link that sound with sounds before

and after it. The tongue has to move too far, which then causes learners to not even try it, which leads to substituting

the T sound, D sound, S sound, or Z sound in place of the unvoiced or voiced TH sounds. It's just

easier to keep the tip of your tongue inside your mouth.

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