Hi again, everyone. It's me, Mandy.

Welcome back to Seattle Learning Academy's 8th American English pronunciation podcast.

I hope you're enjoying the shows.

Today, we are going to begin a difficult set of shows about vowels. Actually, today's show

isn't that hard, but the next couple of weeks will have harder topics. We talked a little about

vowels last week when I introduced the semi-vowels, the W sound and Y sound. Speaking of the W sound and Y sound,

do you remember our practice sentence from that show?

Will you watch TV quietly while I'm working?

How about the R-controlled vowel practice from the week before?

Learning early in the morning can be fairly hard work.

And before that, we had my favorite practice sentence.

I would really like a little red wagon like Laura's. That sentence is also great for practicing the W sound.

Just because those episodes are in the past, don't forget about them.

It will be very helpful for you to go back to them and practice them once in a while.

And you'll be surprised when they have suddenly

become easier. So vowels. Our alphabet has five vowels, A, E, I, O, and U. But we have 15 vowel

sounds. There are many reasons that vowels are so hard, both to teach about

and to learn about. One reason is terminology, or vocabulary. I don't teach pronunciation

using the international phonetic alphabet or symbols of any kind. I do this because dictionaries do not teach pronunciation using the international phonetic alphabet or symbols of any kind.

I do this because dictionaries do not have one standard symbol library that they all use,

and because you can't see the symbol I would be talking about.

Although, even when teaching in person, I use names instead of symbols. Once you know the name

...