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

My name is Mandy and this is our 39th episode. There are only two more podcasts until our first video podcast. I'm getting really excited.

And don't worry if you don't have an MP3 player that doesn't show video. I'll also upload each

show as audio so you can listen the same as always, if you want to.

I want to thank Ali 22 from the forums for suggesting that I continue to do shows about similar-sounding words.

You're right. Even simple words can cause trouble for pronunciation.

So, for today, I have chosen three very similar words. Quit, quiet, and quiet. The first thing I want to note is that the letter U, when it's

part of the QU spelling, is not treated as a vowel for pronunciation purposes.

Q plus U is treated as the K sound plus W sound.

Let's look first at quit, Q-U-I-T, and quite,

Q-U-I-T-E.

The only difference in spelling is the addition of the E at the end of quite.

It is that E, that silent E, that causes quite to be said with a long eye.

Remember, the long eye sounds like I, quite. On the forums,

short hair started a thread about long and short vowel spellings. If you're not sure what I mean

about the silent E, go to the forums and check out that post.

In the word quit, Q-U-I-T, because the letter I is acting like a single vowel, if we consider the

U to be part of the Q-U sound, is going to sound like a short eye. Remember, the short

eye sounds like i. Listen for that sound in quit. Quit. So the difference between quite and

quit is a long eye, I, and a short eye, i.

I. Quiet, Q-U-I-E-T, unfortunately does not follow any nice pronunciation rules.

There are two things to remember with this word. First, and most

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