Why does the letter E sound different in B, bed,
and her? It's the same letter, but English doesn't
treat it that way. Welcome back to the Learn
English Podcast, the podcast teaching English
in context so you can learn naturally. We have
discussed the A vowel sound before, and on today's
episode, it is time for one of the most confusing
vowels, the E vowel sound. The letter E might
be small. but it creates some of the biggest
pronunciation problems in English. On today's
episode, we are going to discuss the sounds the
letter E can make in different words and how
you can recognize those sounds when a native
speaker says them to you. If English pronunciation
has ever seemed inconsistent or confusing, this
episode is going to help. So with that, let's
begin. The first thing you need to know is that
English does not organize its vowel sounds by
letter. Instead, it organizes by sound. That's
why the same letter can have completely different
sounds in different words. Native speakers hear
the sound first before they think about how the
word is actually spelled. So instead of trying
to memorize a bunch of rules, We're going to
try to focus on training your ear to hear these
sounds so you can reduce your accent. Let's start
with the first vowel sound. That is the short
E. I mentioned this on the A vowel sound episode,
but every vowel has a short and long sound. The
short sound is relaxed, short, and open. You'll
hear it in words like bed, red, and head. Listen
again to how I am pronouncing the E in those
words. Bed, red, head. Now listen to this practice
sentence. And after you listen to it, also try
to pronounce it yourself. I left the red pen
on the desk. One more time. I left the red pen
on the desk. Now it's time for the long E vowel
sound. Every long vowel sound sounds like how
the letter is pronounced. So the letter E has
that E sound, which means that the long vowel
sound is going to be pronounced like the letter
E. You hear this sound in words like B, C, and
NE. This sound is called the long vowel sound
because it takes longer to pronounce. You actually
spend more time when you are pronouncing it.
And your jaw is actually tighter and a little
bit more closed when you pronounce it. If you're
watching on YouTube, you can see my jaw when
I say red. My jaw opens when I say B. My jaw
is a lot more closed. And so that's what you
want to do when you are trying to pronounce this
vowel sound. The easiest way to spot this vowel
sound in a word is when you have two E's together.
However, like all vowel sounds, it can occur
with different spellings, so you really want
to try to train your ear. Let's do a practice
sentence here. We need to see the key. How many
long e vowel sounds did we have in that sentence?
Listen to it one more time. We need to see the
key. We had three long e vowel sounds. So again,
try to repeat that sentence and see if you can
correctly make this sound. The third vowel sound
is the schwa sound. If you listened to that a
vowel sound episode, then you are familiar with
this sound. This sound. is actually the most
common vowel sound in all of english and the
reason is is that every vowel can make this sound
instead of sounding like the letter or some variation
of that the schwa sound sounds more like an uh
sound more like a u sound and you hear it in
an unstressed syllable an unstressed syllable
is the syllable from a word that is pronounced
less forcefully. You don't pronounce it as clearly
and as forcefully and with as much time as you
do with a stressed syllable. The most common
example of the E letter making this schwa sound
is with the article the. The book. The cat. The
dog. The man. Did you hear that uh sound right
before each of those words? When you take the
article the and you put it before a word that
starts with a non -vowel sound, you turn it into
a schwa sound. So the book, not the book. You're
never going to hear an American say the book,
the cat, the dog, the man. That's very unnatural
for us. Instead, we say the. Now let's do some
examples where that E schwa sound comes at the
beginning of a word. An example here would be
elephant. Another example, enemy. Enemy. Both
of those start with E's, but that sound is more
of an A sound at the beginning of the word because
it is a non -stressed syllable. Let's look at
some examples with this sound in the middle of
the word. Algebra. Telephone. Did you hear that
uh sound in the middle? I know these are similar
words to what is in Spanish. They're cognates
of Spanish words. Maybe they're cognates in other
languages as well. I only know Spanish, so I
can only comment on that. But if you are a Spanish
speaker, really listen to the difference. It
is algebra, algebra, that uh sound. Same thing
with telephone. It's telephone. Practice that
and see if you can get that. Because that vowel
shift is really something you need if you want
to improve your accent. Now let's do one practice
sentence here. And again, see if you can hear
the number of times the schwa sound appears in
this sentence. The system has a problem with
that item. How many schwa sounds were there?
You should have heard four. The, system, problem,
item. All of them have that schwa sound. Fourth
vowel sound is the r -controlled e. This is when
you have the letter e followed by the letter
r and these two letters work together to make
one sound. You can hear this vowel sound in words
like her, term, and person. It's that r sound
that you hear in those words. When you make this
vowel sound, you want to close your jaw and you
also want to narrow your lips. Again, if you're
watching, you can see it better when I make this
R sound. My jaw is pretty closed. My lips are
close together and they're kind of pushed out
when I'm making this sound. R. Let's do our practice
sentence here. Her first term in college was
successful. Try saying that sentence and see
if you can master that R. And our last vowel
sound is the reduced E, which sounds like an
I. In some English words, the letter E is actually
pronounced like a short I sound. And confusingly,
this also occurs when it is in the unstressed
syllable. So sometimes you get a schwa sound
and sometimes you get this reduced E sound. Listen
to these words and see if you can hear the I
sound. Benefit. Element. Pretty. All of those
have this reduced E sound. Benefit only has one
I, but if you listen closely, that second E is
pronounced very similarly to the ending I. Benefit.
Same thing with element. It has only E's in it,
but do you hear the difference between that first
E and the other two E's? Element. Element. That
last syllable almost sounds like mint, M -I -N
-T, even though it's spelled M -E -N -T. Element.
And the last word, pretty. Pretty. I sound right
before the T part. Pretty. Let's try our practice
sentence and see how many you hear. The women
discussed the business plan while eating chicken.
Women, business, and chicken all have that reduced
e vowel sound that sounds like an I. Before we
end this episode, I want to test your listening
comprehension. Just listen and see if you can
notice these different vowel sounds. I'm going
to put these sentences in the description so
you can also look at them, but try to test your
ear and see if you can hear the difference. She
sent an email about the problem, and her message
was clear. In the end, though, the different
details were decided by the system. Those sentences
actually had all five vowel sounds. We had the
short E. which was sent and end, the long E,
which is she and email, the schwa E in problem
and system, the R controlled E in her, and the
reduced E in different. How did you do? Did you
get all five sounds? If you did, please leave
a comment and let me know. Or if one of those
was particularly difficult or if this is the
first time you ever heard of them, please also
leave a comment and let me know. Like I said,
a native speaker is trained to really listen
to the sound because we know that different words
have different pronunciation, even though the
letter might be the same. And that's what you
want to do. You want to start practicing your
listening comprehension. You want to try to hear
the sound instead of just guessing. and every
time you do that you're going to notice that
your english is going to get slightly better
practice as much as you can listening and also
see if you can repeat some of these words and
master the pronunciation see if you can pronounce
them like a native speaker because that really
is the best way to help reduce your accent I
hope you enjoyed this episode and I hope you
are finding these pronunciation guides helpful.
I know that English is very difficult, so we're
going to continue to discuss more vowel sounds
and we will do more episodes like this in the
future. If you found this episode helpful, please
share it with someone who is also learning English.
That way they can practice their English pronunciation.
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