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

podcast. My name is Mandy, and this is our 91st podcast. I've mentioned a few times that

pronunciation is now on Twitter, and many of you have become followers and now

get an instant update when new content is added to the website, or a podcast is published,

or a video is added to our YouTube channel. I was hesitant to put pronunciation on Twitter

because I really didn't think another distraction would help me to create

content. This week, however, I had a fun, surprise discovery about a bit of popular culture I would

have otherwise disregarded. I was looking through various Twitter feeds that mentioned the word

pronunciation. Among them, I found a large number of people commenting that in certain

dialects of English, Apple's newest gadget, the iPad, sounds nearly identical to their other

popular gadget, the iPod. iPad, iPod. When I first heard of the iPad this week, I didn't immediately think,

Wow, Steve Jobs just invented a new minimal pair, but he did.

Minimal pairs are two words that are identical except for one sound.

The words iPad and iPod are identical except that iPad is pronounced with a short A, and iPod is pronounced with a short O.

What a perfect time, I thought, for a little short A, short O review podcast.

The short A sounds like a, and is a vowel sound in the word cat. It's pronounced with a

slightly lowered jaw. The body of the tongue is pressed forward and the front of the tongue is

low and pressed lightly into the bottom front teeth. The lips are relaxed.

Listen carefully. Ah, cat, iPad. To transition into the short O sound, the jaw opens and the body of the tongue moves back and drops low into the bottom

teeth. The lips are more rounded than for the short A sound, but still relaxed. Listen carefully.

Ah, top, iPod. Listen to both sounds side by side.

I'll say the short A, then the short O.

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