The "EI" Diphthong Vowel Sound | American English Pronunciation and Ear Training | English Hacks

[@vineet4957]

Wahoo, what a great series I found

[@iiAbdullah635]

4:26 - it sounds like you're dropping the second part of the vowel. So, It sounds like /e/ the monophthong. This happens due to the dark/half L sound, right?

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

In the case of this slower, mostly enunciated version of a word like this, yes, I'd agree. But it's not something that has to happen. We tend to keep the full diphthong in exaggerations. Also, cutting the diphthong in general is just so common that it's easy to include it here, anyway.

[@iiAbdullah635]

@@NativeEnglishHacks dropping the second part of a diphthong really confuses me. I've got confused once because of this. I heard "bow" as "bad" since I don't differentiate between /a/ and /æ/.

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

Which is a good reason to do some more ear training 😉

[@laracroftvideos]

Y *a y* , I’ve been looking forward to the diphthong series 😁 Very curious about your takes on these. Btw - would you consider the /æ/ sound in words like “man, “ “damn” or “yeah” to have a diphthong-like quality to it? I honestly don’t even know how I’d transcribe it. Pronouncing man as /mæn/ (with a monophthong) sounds fine to me if the speaker was British, but many Americans do something like /mɛən/, where the /æ/ isn’t nearly as “bright” and open, and I can almost hear a gliding quality. This might vary depending on the region of the U.S. though.

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

Definitely a regional thing, but also a mode of expression, so to speak. For "yeah", it seems like that only because of the close proximity of the "y" consonant to the EE/EA vowel, followed by the dropping of the tongue through EH on the way to AH (vowel 4). As for other words, like "man" and "damn", aside from regional variation, let's talk about "expression". Damn is often emphasized with a change to the word itself and not just the stress, often being pronounced more like "dah-yuhm" or even "day-yuhm" (with the "ei" diphthong). But that's not the normal way to say it and in my experience the normal way is simply with the fourth vowel, ah. However, it's also natural for me personally to add a quick "eh" before the "ah", but not as a separate sound. It glides, as you said. "Man" has a similar situation, but much more when used as an expression of disappointment or maybe awe rather than when talking about an actual person. How you transcribed it is perfect, but it can also be emphatically said like "mah-yuhn" or "may-yuhn", just like "damn". Again, these are either regional or contextual cases and not necessarily reflective of the standard norm in my opinion and experience. Very perceptive of you, though. I hadn't even consciously thought about that until you brought up. However, I personally would not describe these as "diphthongs" necessarily, just more the smooth passing through of one vowel on the way to another. EDIT: I just noticed that you asked specifically about eh + uh (3rd vowel + schwa) in the word "man". That's another possibility and is probably pretty common, but again, I wouldn't say it's the standard, rather just that it might come out that way. In this case, it also glides, but again, I would say it's not really a "diphthong". Just passing through a vowel on the way to another point (the "n" in this case" as we pull the tongue back slightly for proper placement of the consonant). I know some people might not draw such a distinction, and I might be splitting hairs, but I think it's a valuable difference and at the end of the day small variations like this don't matter that much. On the other hand, not hitting an actual diphthong will cause problems for the listener and may even end up being a different word

[@laracroftvideos]

@@NativeEnglishHacks Wow, thank you for such an amazing explanation! You're really great at this. You have a gift of breaking down complex phonetic stuff in a way that everybody can understand. I've actually gone over the entire ear training course, starting with the very first couple of videos where you introduce the basic concepts of language acquisition and I feel like I'm picking up on things I either couldn't hear before or didn't pay attention to. It's fascinating how we still have the ability to retrain our ears to hear new sounds as adults. I've learned so much in the past week or so! 😊

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

@@laracroftvideos Awesome! Really glad to hear that I'm able to help so much! And thanks for the feedback 😊 As for retraining our ears, exactly! I think many people are still stuck in the limited mindset based on what we used to think about the brain. But we have more and more scientific evidence of the brain's amazing plasticity through the entire life cycle. Sure, it's greater as a small child, but our brains are learning machines. That doesn't stop just because you hit a certain age. What really blows my mind is how people can believe that age determines your ability to learn. This is one thing I hope to change for English learners through English Hacks, especially when it comes to ear training and pronunciation. That will have an impact on people's lives far beyond just learning English, whether in terms of confidence, self-awareness, and/or mindset, which can then be applied to other things.

[@edflam7555]

so the "e" in ei is similar to the Spanish e, this is great news, cause I struggle pronouncing English vowels, it's good to have an anchor vowel sound to use as model

[@أحمدالدسوقي-ت9س]

Hi Josh I hope you're well and thriving :) In the final position of the "EI" diphthong, I find the sides of my tongue pressing against the molars and the premolars which causes unpleasant experience while speaking. I have also noticed that the same experience repeats for the /s/, /ʃ/, and /ʒ/ sounds. Is this normal? And if it is normal, how can I overcome such unpleasant experience which can evolve into pain if I speak much?

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

On the top teeth or bottom teeth?

[@أحمدالدسوقي-ت9س]

The top ones@@NativeEnglishHacks

[@silverblue73]

First time here, but this channel's name could equally refer to bad English writers.

[@NativeEnglishHacks]

Lol. True story