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Close to or close to?
Can you hear the difference?
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Are you feeling stuck with your English?
We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection, with your American hosts, Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, and Michelle Kaplan, the New York radio girl coming to you from Colorado and New York City, USA.
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Can you tell the difference when a native speaker says close to versus close to?
Today, let's figure out how they're different and how to make sure you never get confused again.
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They want their sentences to be correct.
But fluency isn't just about correctness.
It's about sounding natural, choosing the right phrase, responding quickly without translating every thought in your head.
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Hey there, Michelle.
How's everything today?
Everything is good.
How are you feeling good, michelle?
Is there a new friend that you've gotten close to recently in your life?
Uh yeah actually, i've gotten close to a lot of new friends recently.
Um, you know, i've talked about how i moved to the suburbs and i was really worried that it would be really hard to make friends Um, cause it's so different than the city life.
But I've actually gotten close to a lot of people and I feel really lucky.
Amazing.
I love that.
I love that.
I've gotten close to a lot of people.
So what I asked you at the top of the show is is there anyone you've gotten close to recently?
That Michelle?
What is another word that might get confusing or confused in our listeners' minds?
Yeah.
So close to, right?
But then there's also closed to.
Right.
Very different though, right?
Very different, but they sound really similar in English.
And it's easy to mix up the spelling or even to pronounce it wrong, because there's only really a one-letter difference, that D, but it changes both the meaning and the pronunciation.
Yeah, so I'm really glad that we're here today for really a pronunciation episode for our listeners, a listening episode.
Right.
So let's play a little game, Michelle.
I'm going to use both of the words and I want to see if you can hear the difference.
Here we go.
I live close to the park, but it's closed to the public for a special event.
Okay.
It's hard to hear.
Yeah, it's hard to hear.
But yeah, I mean, because even native speakers get confused or mix and misuse these sometimes.
So I did hear close to the park, right?
So nearby, right? but then closed to the public.
But what was interesting is I didn't really hear that D Lindsay.
No, you didn't hear the D. Yes.
Oh my God.
That makes it even more complicated.
The way we pronounce this in American English, we don't necessarily say closed, closed to the public.
We say, but it's closed to the public.
It blends right in with the T sound in the tube.
It does.
Yeah, definitely.
So we're going to focus today on the difference in pronunciation between these two words, so that you can both hear and say each correctly.
But guys, before we get into it, we want to remind you to hit follow wherever you're listening to the All Ears English podcast.
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Yeah.
All right.
Michelle, let's break down the pronunciation and make it super easy for our listeners.
Shall we?
Yes.
So first we'll start with close to.
So C-L-O-S-E to.
Right.
So this one has a soft S sound.
Right.
And it's short.
Right.
So close to close to.
Right.
This means physically near you.
So let's do a little role play.
Lindsay, what do you live close to?
I live close to Trader Joe's.
I'd be so jealous.
I'm not a big Trader Joe's person, actually.
I don't feel like they're in my experience in the Trader Joe's that I've gone to.
Their produce is not like the freshest.
So I have heard that about Trader Joe's and sometimes I find it.
It's where it's steam because it's very good price.
Um, but then you get it in like two days later, my tomatoes are done.
And I'm like, yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
They have a lot of good like package stuff, but yeah no, people are either Trader Joe's fans or not.
It's like one of two camps, you know?
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah, exactly.
Um, what about you, Michelle?
What do you live close to?
I live close to the baseball stadium.
It gets noisy during games.
Yes.
All right.
So this one is all about proximity, right?
Close to.
It's shorter.
It has a soft S. C-L-O-S-E.
Yes.
So let's go over closed to.
So that's C-L-O-S-E-D, to.
So this one has more of a Z sound, right?
It's not close to, closed to.
Yeah.
But also, as we were touching on before, the D is very subtle and you might not even hear it.
Or Lindsay, as you said, it could blend with the T in two.
And this one means shut or unavailable.
Right.
If you want to know more guys about letters blending with each other, check out our pronunciation course over at allersenglishcom.
Slash pronunciation.
We went into all of this.
All the different things that happen when letters and sounds collapse into each other, blend into each other.
We show you everything in a study plan.
But I mean, let's do a role play today just to see the differences here with closed to.
Right.
OK.
So, Michelle, is the library open today?
No, it's under renovation.
So it's closed to the public for a while.
Yeah.
OK.
And let's do another one.
OK.
Why is the road blocked?
Because it's Sunday.
It's closed to cars, but it's open for pedestrians.
It's the city's way of getting people out and about.
It's closed to cars.
It's closed to cars.
I cannot tell the difference between where the D ends and where the T begins in two.
Right.
Right?
Right.
Exactly.
Exactly.
After the break I think we're going to go and do a little game and see if we can tell the difference.
Yeah.
And just a note here, we're teaching you American English today on this show and every day.
Occasionally, we have British people on or Australians on.
British people might pronounce the S and the Z sounds a little more softly, but you will still hear a difference.
But just listen to British English to see that difference.
Okay?
Good.
Okay.
Game time, Michelle.
So which is which?
All right.
Should I quiz you or should you quiz me?
How should we go back to back and forth?
Okay.
Back and forth.
All right.
You go first.
All right.
The museum is closed to the public today.
Tough one, but I think that one is closed too.
So inaccessible, right?
Yes, exactly.
The convenience store is close to my house.
Okay.
Close to, right?
C-L-O-S-E.
Nearby.
So what's interesting is here is Lindsay.
You know our listeners might be getting confused because they're waiting for that D sound with the first one.
Right.
But it's not coming.
So instead, I think it's really good to focus on the length of the word.
And also if there's an S versus a Z sound, right?
So the museum is closed to the public today.
So close, close to.
That's a good point, Michelle.
It's really more stretched out.
It's stretched out.
It takes longer to say close to the public, close to the public instead of close to my house.
Close to my house.
And that has more of an S sound, right?
So close and close.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, um, okay.
So here's the next one.
My office is close to the beach.
Tricky, but I think it is C-L-O-S-E.
Close.
Yep.
The gym is closed to the... Sorry, let's start again.
Start again.
Here we go.
The gym is closed to members this week.
Yes.
So that's C-L-O-S-E-D.
Yeah.
Now Michelle, are there any patterns that we can?
I mean, we've given our listeners a few patterns.
Is there anything else we can try to look for to know which one we're using?
Yeah.
I mean, so we often say close to and a place.
Um, you know, we could say I'm close to my friend.
Right.
But often it's about a place.
Um, But we rarely say closed to and a place.
Doesn't make sense.
So close to could kind of be either, right?
But closed to, you don't really say like closed to Trader Joe's, right?
No.
That's pretty rare.
It doesn't really make sense.
It's usually closed to a group of people like the public, visitors, customers or things like cars.
Right.
Because we're just saying this place cannot be accessed by these people.
The public, the customers, the visitors, right?
It's something is access is closed.
Closed.
There we go.
Closed.
Yeah.
So yeah, I think we covered it, but should we do a role play?
I think we should Michelle.
Let's do it.
So here we're meeting during our lunch break and we're deciding where to go for lunch.
Okay.
Okay.
Hey, Michelle, where are we meeting today?
Let's go to the cafe close to my office.
Oh, I love that place, but it's closed to customers today.
Oh, really?
Why?
Well, they're renovating this week, so it's close to the public, but it should be really cool when it opens back up.
Oh, okay.
Bummer.
There's also a cute French restaurant close to my office.
That's right.
I've been meaning to try it.
Let's double check to make sure it's not closed.
Okay.
So again, I mean when we're speaking fast, it is really hard to hear the difference.
But we've given our listeners some clues today.
So hopefully they should be starting to pick up on this in the role play. so michelle the first one you said was let's go to the cafe close to my office is that close or closed which one did we use close c-l-o-s-e right shorter sounding s sound um and we're talking about a place nearby exactly yeah and there you go close to the place my office what else Then you said, I love that place, but it's closed to customers today.
Stretched out, C-L-O-S-E-D.
So it's more stretched out, closed, and a Z sound.
And also people after it.
It's closed to whom?
It's closed to customers who cannot access the restaurant.
It's customers.
Right.
Exactly.
And then I said they're renovating this week.
So it's closed to the public.
It's closed to the public.
I blended the D and the T sound, but we did say it's inaccessible to who the public.
Right.
Right.
And I said the Z sound and I stretched it out just slightly bit, a slight bit more.
Yes.
And then I said, okay, bummer.
There was also a cute French restaurant close to my office.
So that's C-L-O-S-E, right?
And we're talking about a place.
It's a little shorter and we're using that S sound, close to.
Yes.
And the last one, I've been meaning to try it.
Let's double check to make sure it's not also closed.
And sometimes closed will come by itself too, right?
It's not always closed to something, just closed or open, right?
Are you open or closed, right?
Yes, exactly.
Um, so yeah, this is really, it was a really comprehensive role play.
Um, lots of good stuff here.
Um, guys also we have other episodes for you to check out that deal with similar words.
So, uh, 2564 was human or person.
What's the difference?
Yeah.
And then there was another one, sites or sites, which to use for travel English.
Oh my gosh, that one.
As we got further into that episode, Michelle, we realized it's actually kind of confusing.
S-I-G-H-T-S or S-I-T-E-S.
So guys, check out those episodes.
And for a takeaway, Michelle, what do you think about in terms of connections?
Well, yeah, I mean, in terms of connection, this is huge, right?
These are so common.
You can see here, we're trying to figure out where to go for lunch.
It's just endless reasons why you might use these.
But really the takeaway is remembering close to C-L-O-S-E is a soft S and that's about distance, whereas closed to is about access and that's a little stretched out and with the Z sound.
Yep.
And I think, when it comes to connection, connection happens when you understand people kind of the first time right.
This is a listening skill, first of all.
We need to know which they said so we can not break up the conversation but continue it smoothly.
And when we pronounce this, we need to be clear so people know exactly what we're saying.
I mean, that's the connection right there, right?
Perfect.
Perfect.
All right, Lindsay.
I'm glad we talked about this today.
Guys, have a good day.
And Lindsay, I'm feeling very close to you after talking to you for how many years?
Yes.
Oh, how many years?
12, 13 years, Michelle?
A long time.
We should calculate the number of hours we've actually talked.
We could do that.
We could do that.
We could do that math, that quick math easily.
All right.
Good stuff.
Michelle, we'll talk to you again very soon.
You have a good day.
You too.
Bye.
Bye, guys.
Bye.
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