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

My name is Mandy, and this is our 40th episode. There is only one more podcast until our first video podcast, which I will release on January 1, 2009.

Today's podcast is about the word Ben, B-E-E-N.

I always hear my students pronounce Ben as being, which is not necessarily incorrect.

It's just not the American style.

Listen to the difference.

British, Bean, American, bin.

Since I teach people who do live in the United States,

I like to let them know that there is a British pronunciation of this word

and an American pronunciation.

According to all of my students who were taught British pronunciation,

as well as the Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary, the British pronounced this word as bean, with a long e.

In the U.S., bean with a long e sound is thought of as B-E-A-N, the food we want our kids to eat more of.

The British long-e pronunciation makes perfect sense, since it is spelled like the long-E is

usually spelled. However, Americans say bin, with a short I, as if the word was spelled B-I-N.

I know it's frustrating that the most frequent words we say have the least expected pronunciation.

It isn't just English, though. Your native language probably does this too.

It's a common feature among many, many languages.

So in the U.S. we say,

Where have you been?

And the British will say, where have you been?

Don't worry, this difference in pronunciation will not cause

...