Before we get to our short pronunciation lesson, I want you to do something a little different this week.
I’d like you to memorize 3 tongue twisters and start your day by saying each of them 3 times in a row. It’s fun, it’ll help you gain more control over your tongue and improve your clarity.
You can look at my post ‘tips and tricks for better English’ to find a list of fun tongue twisters. Tell me how it goes!And today, we’re going to discuss the words ‘eventually’ and ‘actually’.
There are two ways to pronounce them, I picked the SIMPLE way.
TRANSCRIPT
Hi, it’s Hadar. And this is the Accent’s Way, your way to finding clarity, confidence, and freedom in English. I got a question from Rim Halil asking me how to pronounce the word ‘eventually’. There are actually two ways to pronounce this word. One is ‘uh-VEN-chuw-uh-lee’, and the other one is ‘uh-VEN-sh’-lee’. You can see that the second pronunciation is a bit more casual, more reduced, and this is what we’re going to focus on today.
We begin with a schwa sound – ‘uh’ – very reduced. Relax your jaw, relax your tongue and release a really quick sound: ‘uh’. Then we move on to ‘VEN’. It’s a V sound, so bring your bottom lip and teeth together, and open it to an ‘e’ as in red: VEN. Don’t drop your jaw too much, then it’s going to sound like ‘VAN’, all right? ‘VEN’. ‘uh-VEN’, and then it’s a SH sound and a schwa – sh’. ‘uh-VEN-sh’.
Then you end it with ‘lee’: ‘uh-VEN-sh’-lee’. The VEN is the primary stress, so you also go a little higher in pitch. ‘uh-VEN-sh’-lee’. Eventually.
Notice that the word ‘actually’ sounds pretty much the same. I can say ‘AK-chuw-uh-lee’, right? That’s the longer pronunciation. And you can reduce it to ‘AK-shuh-lee’. The ending is the same: ‘shuh-lee’. ‘uh-VEN-shuh-lee’ – ‘AK-shuh-lee’. Actually.
Good. That’s it for today. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please share it with your friends. And that’s it. Thank you for watching. I will see you next week in the next video. Bye.
