#11: American English pronunciation of the aw sound, oi sound, and ow sound

Learn about and practice these "other" vowels.
Transcript
 [bad word] to the eleventh episode of Seattle Learning Academy's American English Pronunciation podcast. If you are just joining us in this podcast, my name is Mandy, and we are just finishing up a series of four podcasts about vowels. I would strongly encourage you to listen to the previous three podcasts along with this one. These shows about vowels lay the foundation for many [bad word] podcasts, and I hope [bad word] back to them when you need a reminder about certain vowel sounds.

Last week we had a practice sentence in addition to our new key words. It was "Good [bad word] looks like good food should," and it emphasized the u as in put sound and the oo sound. Our key words for those sounds were put and soon.

Let's quickly review all of our key words, from the beginning.

    long a (long a) cake
    long e (long e) keep
    long i (long i) bike
    long o (long o) home
    long u (lung u) cute
    short a (short a) cat
    short e (short e) bed
    short i (short i) sit
    short o (short o) top
    short u (short u) sun
    oo sound (oo sound) soon
    u as in put (u as in put) put 

Today we are going to learn about the final three vowel sounds, the aw sound (aw sound), the oi sound (oi sound), and the ow sound (ow sound).

Our new key words are the words dog, join, and down.

We will start with the word dog. (d sound, aw sound, g sound). Listen carefully to the middle sound of the word again (aw sound). To create the aw sound you need to have you jaw more open and make your lips round, like the short o sound, but then stick your lips out. That sounds strange, but I want you to push them forward so the [bad word] out a longer round opening. Don't stick your lips way out, so you look odd, but enough to create a distinctively different sound from the short o [bad word] the key words for the aw sound and the short o sound, dog, top. (aw sound, short o).

There are not a lot of minimal pairs between these sounds, but there are a few. Let's practice them now. I'm going to say the word and spell it, because some of these may be new vocabulary for you.

    odd o-d-d, awed a-w-e-d
    tock t-o-c-k, talk t-a-l-k
    rot r-o-t, wrought w-r-o-u-g-h-t
    stock s-t-o-c-k, stalk s-t-a-l-k
    pond p-o-n-d, pawned p-a-w-n-e-d

Now you know that when you see a word spelled with the letter o, you need to be aware of the many sounds associated with that letter. Is it the long o, like in the word most, or the short o, like in the word stop, or the aw sound, like in the word cost?

Along with the aw spelling and the o spelling, the aw sound is usually the sound in words spelled ough and augh, like cough c-o-u-g-h, and taught t-a-u-g-h-t. When you practice the word lists on [bad word]  you will notice these different spellings, and now you know the sound associated with them.

Here is a practice sentence to help [bad word] the short o and aw sound, as well as the short u sound:

    The lost dog [bad word] and dug under a rock until his paws got muddy. 

See if you can identify the vowel sounds in that sentence.

Now for our last two vowel sounds, the oi sound and the ow sound. Lucky for you, these are usually pretty easy sounds for ESL students. They are both 2-sound vowels, meaning they are [bad word] of a vowel sound and a w sound or y sound. Can you hear the y sound at the end of the oi sound (oi sound)? How about the w sound at the end of the ow sound (ow sound)?

Our key words for these sounds are join and down. (oi sound) join, (ow sound) down.

The oi sound is usually spelled oi, like in join, obviously, and it is also spelled oy, like in the words boy and toy.

The ow sound spelling is a little trickier, though. The o-w spelling can have two different sounds, (ow sound) like in down,