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

My name is Amanda and this is our 211th episode.

You've probably noticed that I've been gone a while.

Yes, I have and I'm sorry for that. The good news is that I'm back.

The even better news is that not only am I back, but exciting things have happened. If you haven't

heard yet, pronuncian.com has had a complete rebuild. Please check it out and tell me what you think.

You can email me at podcast atprancian.com.

Rebuilding the site was a lot of work.

The original started in 2007, and it hadn't ever had a total rework before this.

Not only is the new site responsive and displays beautifully on mobile devices,

it also has fewer bugs and just plain functions better.

But that's enough about pronuncian.

Let's get to talking about short A and short O.

I mean, why are they so important?

They're important because of the number of minimal pairs they have.

Minimal pairs are words that are pronounced the same except for a single sound.

The short A and short O have 40 minimal pairs, including black and block, add and odd, and hat and hot.

If any of those words sounded the same to you, you've got work to do.

We know that non-native speakers of a language who can't hear different sounds are probably not pronouncing those sounds correctly.

Listening and speaking are extremely related skills that can both be learned.

Let's compare the short A and short O, the sounds in the words hat and hot.

Both of these sounds are horribly named because they are not called The sounds in the words hat and hot.

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