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

My name is Amanda and this is our 212th episode.

Today's topic comes from a listener named Alex.

Alex wrote, I'm writing you with a request for a podcast for a couple of sounds that have been haunting me for a while.

I listened carefully to your podcast on how to pronounce quarter, and it was of great help.

I have trouble forming words that are formed when the original word ends in R sound and

schwa plus R sound is added.

For example, explore becomes explorer, murder becomes murderer.

Poor plus schwa plus r equals poorer. I don't know how to make those final two sounds together.

Is it a long R with no pause in between? Is there a pause? I know you said schwa plus r is really only the

R sound, but how to combine two R's without inserting an extra sound.

Every time I hear a native speaker say explorer or murderer or poorer, I just hear a final

long R sound, but I can't reproduce the sound. I always end up adding an extra syllable and it sounds different. Now that is an excellent

question, Alex. It did make me think about what is exactly going on with words like this.

I went back and reviewed the episode I did about the word quarter and I realized that I never

actually told you how to pronounce

the schwa plus r. All I said was, now one last thing to talk about in the word quarter, and

that's the final sound, schwa plus r. The key thing to remember about schwa plus r is that it's pronounced as just an r sound.

Don't add any vowel sound to it.

Really, just say the R sound, no matter how much it is not intuitive to do that.

I'll tell you how I create a schwa plus R after an R sound.

First, I need to explain what the bunched R is.

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