Hello, listeners of the world and welcome to this week's Seattle Learning Academy

American English pronunciation podcast. My name is Mandy, and this is podcast number 24.

Last week, we studied two stop sounds, the P sound and B sound. This week, we're going to study two

new sounds that are similar to stops, but are a little different, the C-H sound and J sound.

Some of you may have been taught that the J sound is a soft G sound because the G spelling is sometimes used for the J sound.

I try to give as straightforward of names as possible, so I call the first sound of the word go, the G sound,

and the first sound of the word giant, the J sound.

Although the letter G can sound like a G sound or a J sound, the J pretty much always sounds like a

J sound.

I hope I didn't just make things more confusing for you.

Anyway, today's show is about the C-H sound and J-sound,

and not about the G-sound at all.

Here's what those sounds sound like.

C-H-sound, ch.

J-sound, J-sound.

As always, the transcripts for this show are online at www. www. pronuncian.com, P-R-O-N-U-N-U-N-C-I-N-C-I-N.

And I'll link to the free sounds practice of today's sounds with this week's transcripts.

So, what are the C-H-N-J sounds, and what makes them special?

In fact, there are no other sounds with their characteristics in American-English pronunciation.

They are special because they are africots. What is an africot? Well, to put it simply, an africot is a

sound that begins like a stop but ends like a fricative. Well, now you need to remember what a fricative is.

If you listen to last week's show, the V sound is an example of a fricative.

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