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

My name is Mandy, and this is our 68th episode.

Today I'm going to return to a topic I haven't talked about in quite a long time.

The TH sounds.

Everyone could use more practice with these sounds, it seems.

Way back in episode one, I gave you the practice sentence,

Think about this thing, that thing, and those things,

so you can practice alternating between the voiced and unvoiced TH sounds.

If you're new to this podcast, let me review voiced and unvoiced sounds.

Voicing happens way down in our throats when our vocal folds vibrate.

You can feel this if you put your fingers on the front of your throat and alternate between saying

a D sound, which is voiced, and a T sound, which is unvoiced.

D. Diced D.

D.

You can also hear the difference better if you put your fingers in your ears while saying those sounds.

If you're not on a bus or train or other public space, try it. Put your fingers in your ears and say the D sound and T sound. D. T.

D. T.

I teach the difference between voiced and unvoiced sounds using the D and T as examples,

because most languages use those sounds at least a little bit.

You can practice hearing the difference between an unvoiced and voiced T.H. sound the same way.

I'll say both sounds, unvoiced T.H. sound, then voiced T.H. sound the same way. I'll say both sounds. Unvoiced T.H. sound, then voiced T.H. sound.

Th. Th. V.

...