Let’s talk about something important. The word important.
Although I’m sure it already sounds great when you say it, I focused on a few nuances that will make your pronunciation just perfect:)
TRANSCRIPT
Hey, it’s Hadar and this is the Accent’s Way.
Your way to finding clarity confidence and freedom in English.
I was asked to explain how to pronounce the word ‘important’
and since it’s an important word I made this video for you.
So let’s begin with, the beginning of the word all right.
So it begins with a relaxed I sound and m: im-, im
What is a relaxed I-sound? The tongue is pushing forward, the lips are relaxed
and the jaw drops a little bit. ‘I’
It’s not ‘important’ but ‘I-I-‘, ‘I-I-m’, ‘I-I-m’.
Then the second syllable is an OR as
‘four’ vowel. -pour, -pour.
It’s very important to hear the clear vowel our- before you bring your tongue up for the R, all right.
If you raise the tongue up too quickly ‘imp-rtant’ it sounds like a different vowel.
‘imp-rtant’ it’s not the same versus ‘impour-‘ .
So keep the tongue down until you’re done with a full vowel
our- You see the lips are rounded, the jaw drops
and then you only slightly raise
the tongue for the R sound.
Pour-, impour-
And we have the end of the word.
Here the T, the N and the T kinda like connect together. These three sounds.
TNT-
What do we do here? So the tongue goes up for the T import-
okay you see the tongue is up there right behind the teeth touching the upper palate
but instead of releasing the air through the mouth ‘important’
I keep the tongue up, holding the air and releasing it through the nose tn-
then going directly to the end tn-
and then going back to the T.
Then I can release the T slightly tnt-, tnt-
then I kinda like release the tongue tnt- all
right.
So it’s not ‘importAnt’ or ‘importEnt’. It’s ‘import’nt’.
Now if it’s really difficult for you to produce this tnt-sound
you can add a little schwa between the T in the end.
‘ɪmˈpɔː.tənt’
‘tənt’
That’s also okay. Just make sure it’s not a full vowel okay.
So let’s practice in a few phrases:
an important job
important practice
It’s very important
important, tnt-
Alright, that’s it. I hope you enjoyed this video and you found it useful
and if you did please share it with your friends after you subscribe if you haven’t yet.
Have a wonderful week and I’ll see you next week in the next video.
bye