This is an All Ears English podcast episode 1345.
When to pronounce the S as a Z in English with Jennifer Tarl.
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Do you struggle when it comes to voicing the S sound as a Z sound?
How do you know when it should sound like a Z and when it should sound like an S?
Today, our guest Jennifer Tarl shows you four solid rules to watch out for.
Listen in today.
Our guest today, Jennifer Tarl, is a certified speech pathologist with over 24 years of experience in speech-related training.
She has a master's degree in speech pathology from Kent State University.
She's a published author of accent workbooks, audio CDs, DVDs, and iBooks.
Now let's meet Jennifer.
This episode was recorded a few weeks in advance.
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Hey, Jennifer, welcome back to All Ears English.
So happy to have you here.
Thanks, Lindsay.
Happy to be here.
Thanks for having me back.
Yeah, great to have you back.
We are always super excited to have pronunciation experts on the show, because we don't talk about pronunciation enough.
So this is great.
So tell me the name of your school and where you're coming from today, Jennifer.
I'm here in beautiful Chicago Illinois, and the name of my school is Tarle Speech and Language, And I have two components.
I work with kids, but this is my English component as well.
I see.
Okay.
And how is life in Chicago?
I think Chicago is an awesome city.
You guys have a great food scene and a great craft beer scene, which I love both of those things.
So how's life in Chicago?
It's amazing.
I do love the city.
I actually love all four seasons, even though the winters are typically very cold.
But this winter was very mild.
So it's been great.
And spring is here.
It's the best time of year.
That's amazing.
I love that.
Fantastic.
Well guys, if you have been a longtime listener of All Ears English, you know that Jennifer was on the show back in episode 326.
It actually kind of feels like yesterday, but it was like a thousand episodes ago.
Oh, really?
That's crazy.
Okay.
It was a long time ago, but Jennifer talked that day about immediate action steps to improve your American English vowel sound.
So another really, really good topic for you guys.
So go and check out her previous episode.
But Jennifer, today, what are we going to get into for our listeners?
Are we talking about that Z sound today?
Yes, we are.
We are talking about the Z sound.
Why is this hard?
So we're talking about pronouncing it and also spelling it.
Why are these things so hard?
Like doing those things?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think the reason that the Z sound is so difficult, a couple of reasons.
Number one, I think really most people don't think they need to work on the sound.
It's sort of that sneaky sound that no one thinks about.
Everyone thinks about the TH sound and works on that.
Right words are not spelled with the letter z, and so people will mispronounce the word based on how it is spelled.
I like that.
So today we're addressing the sneaky little sound that is there.
It's very present in the english language, but you guys might have overlooked it when you were learning.
It's also in different languages.
Of course it exists and it's pronounced kind completely differently, right?
I'm thinking of spanish from spain uh, pronounced with a th, right.
So we can get really mixed up and confused when it comes to this sound.
So we're here today for our listeners glad you're here, so let's get into it then, jennifer.
I mean, what is your first tip, or what is the first uh like group of words where this comes in and how we can clear this up?
Okay,
Well, you did bring up a good point.
If I could jump in and just say that this sound sounds like this.
It is sort of a strong, longer voiced sound in English.
If you need any tips on that, I have videos on my YouTube channel and articles on my blog about that.
But that's the Z sound that we're talking about.
Okay.
And we hear that in the word zoo and zip and zebra and zero.
So most people can say words that have that sound spelled with the letter Z in them.
So yeah.
When do you know how to pronounce, when to pronounce the Z sound, when the words aren't spelled with a Z?
So that's kind of what we're going to talk about today.
It's super tricky.
So I have a few tips for everyone.
So tip number one is when the letter S when we spell a word with the letter S and it comes between two vowel sounds, you are going to pronounce that letter S as the Z sound.
And this makes sense because all vowels are voiced.
They all have your voice box kind of on and moving.
If you don't know what that is, put your hand on your throat and say, ah, that movement is voicing.
So when you see again that letter S between two vowel sounds, We're going to pronounce it as a Z, like in the words cousin, reason and teasing.
So those are all spelled with the letter S, but we're actually going to pronounce them with the letter Z.
Okay so, cousin reason and teasing.
Yeah, I could definitely see.
You know, if our listeners are learning English, they may get confused here.
This is tricky, right?
If we haven't heard the word before, we may assume it's just that S sound, but it's actually the Z sound.
Okay.
So cousin, reason, and teasing.
So that's the first set.
It's where we're between two vowels, right?
All right.
That's fantastic.
Okay.
What else?
Don't get too hung up on, oh, I got to memorize all these voice sounds.
Just put your hand on your throat.
And if your throat is vibrating strongly, that's a voiced sound.
So we are going to use a Z, which is also voiced after voiced sounds.
We like to kind of, make it easier on ourselves here.
And we are going to say a Z for the letter S before a voice sound in words like wisdom, cosmic and spasm.
So again, wisdom, cosmic, cosmic, and spasm.
Yeah.
Wisdom, cosmic, right.
I can put my hand over my throat and I can feel the ah sound is making that voiced sound, right?
That's what you're talking about, correct?
The voiced sound, ah, and then there comes the S and we get the cosmic.
Good.
Right.
I'm actually talking.
So you are correct.
That is a vowel that we're voicing that awesome.
I'm talking about the voiced consonant sound.
So that like D sound, the D. So wisdom.
Okay. okay perfect so good to know yeah again I could see how this could be confusing we see it written we may think it's cosmic cosmic right it's not cosmic okay I love that all right so that's the second tip what would be the third one Jennifer Third tip is we have a lot of words that are spelled with S E at the end.
Okay.
So when you see that S E, most of those words are going to be pronounced as a Z sound, especially when you see a verb.
So if you see a verb that's spelled with S?
E, like arouse appease choose, those are all going to be pronounced with a Z.
So again, S-E at the end of a verb, we're going to pronounce that as a Z sound arouse, appease and choose.
Okay.
And the these, those also falls into that category.
Is that right?
Those are not verbs, but that's sort of a, that's a silent E at the end of those words.
Many words that have that S E at the end as a Z sound.
The tricky thing about This tip is that sometimes we still pronounce it as an SM, but I would say most of the time that SE at the end of the word we're going to pronounce as a Z Right.
I mean, native speakers always break the rules, right?
We can learn the rules and then there's always going to be exceptions no matter what.
The big words that I hear people mispronounce are those.
These and because and cause.
Those, these, cause, because. those are all pronounced with a Z sound at the end.
Yeah.
And those are also obviously super common words.
So a really good use of your time guys to learn this, right.
To make sure you've got these right, and then move on to the words like appease and arouse, because they're less common.
Yeah.
Good.
Okay.
What's next?
This is great.
I hope our listeners are taking notes here today.
My last big tip is these are just kind of memorizing words.
We have a lot of words that are function words.
So they're words that we use a lot, but they don't necessarily carry a whole lot of meaning.
It's not something we can visualize.
And these words are often pronounced with a Z. So we have the word has. is, was.
So how often do we use those words?
Has, is, was.
We use those all the time.
Um, and those, and the word as is another one.
Um, so I often hear people say has, Really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I've heard that too.
Right.
And so you really want to memorize those words.
Again, this doesn't really necessarily impact your clarity, because I'm all about just get out there and speak and you don't have to be perfect, but you want to avoid confusion.
And so oftentimes- just using this one Z sound is really going to help you be clearer, because people are expecting that sound.
Oh, this is great.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
Also one other point with the Z sound is this really gives you a whole lot of bang for your buck, because the Z sound really impacts your vowel.
And so if you're working on your vowel sounds and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm working on my vowels.
I think I'm saying them right, but they still sound a little off.
Oftentimes just working on the Z sound helps because We're talking about voicing.
If your voice is already on and moving for that vowel, it's going to stay on a little bit longer and it's going to help your vowel when you add that Z.
Yeah, that's what I noticed when you just did it incorrectly.
That shortens that vowel sound, but we say has, and it causes us to extend it and say it correctly.
That's brilliant, actually.
Thank you.
So you get kind of a BOGO, a buy one, get one free for just looking at it.
I love that.
Or it reminds me of the concept of the one thing, right?
What is the one thing we can do that's going to positively affect many more things, right?
This is one of those smart hacks that could do that.
We can cover a lot of ground just by learning the Z sound.
Yeah, exactly.
I love that.
So I'm thinking our listeners may want to ask you, you know, what, what can they do?
Like how they've learned these rules today on the podcast.
How should they go about actually going from understanding the rules intellectually to being able to use them when they're in that group with native speakers and they're having to read a read an article or say something and pronounce things correctly?
What can they do?
So I think first it's always be kind of easy on yourself and be gentle and just start by practicing the words.
Listen to this episode again and practice the words out loud.
That's the first step to kind of feel a little more confident in it.
I would say next, make a list of words that you use often and see if they fit into this pattern.
If you practice words that you use the most frequently, that's really going to help you.
It's going to carry over and you're going to create a new habit.
So I think that one is really important.
And then lastly, if you're really struggling with this, you can go online and you can find some paragraphs.
Most things now you can have the computer read it back to you.
I love the website.
Breaking News English, they have paragraphs and a recording every week of a new article.
Highlight the article, highlight all of those S's and figure out, should I be saying a Z?
Listen to the recording and then practice it on your own while you're reading it, as you've highlighted all of those words, so you can kind of get into the habit of doing that.
And then you're going to be ready to use it in a conversation, because it's going to be, you're going to be forming a habit, and then you can go and start using it when you're speaking.
I love that.
So there's a little bit of work we have to do on our own before we go out there and start using it right.
I love the idea of kind of you've got the rule.
Now now let's go and confirm the rule by kind of making a list, making a column, and seeing what falls in what native speakers say and how it falls into these rules.
And then we kind of own it.
Like we understand it when we confirm it for ourselves.
Right?
That's fantastic.
I love that.
Yeah.
Exactly.
And to get back to your hack.
If you don't want to do all those steps, you can just make several words from this episode today and say I'm just going to work on has, and is and was.
And you just don't want to do it.
Yeah.
Like each week you could choose one word and just say, okay, this is how I pronounce it.
I'm going to try to use this in conversation.
I'm going to listen for it.
I'm going to focus on this one word.
So good.
Fantastic.
I'm so excited that we've gotten to go through this today, Jennifer, because again.
It's a new topic to us.
We haven't talked about it on the podcast yet.
And I know this is going to help our listeners.
So where can our listeners find you online if they want to know more about what you're doing on the internet in terms of pronunciation?
Yeah.
You can go to my website, which is www.tarlespeech.com.
And that's T as in Tom, A, R L E speech.com can also find me on YouTube at Tarle speech.
I have so many free lessons on there.
That's a great place to start.
I often hear from people.
I can't afford to pay for classes.
Go on there.
There's tons of free stuff to improve your pronunciation right away different playlists for different occupations and different sounds and you could really get a great start there.
Excellent.
Well, thank you for coming on the show again.
It's great to have you back on and I hope you can come back on again, not before a thousand more episodes, but sooner than that.
If your listeners have any questions, I'd love to hear them and maybe we can do another episode on something that you're interested in.
Yeah, that would be great.
And enjoy the springtime in Chicago.
It sounds like a great time to be in Chicago.
And thanks so much for having me on again, Lindsay.
I really appreciate it.
Absolutely.
We'll see you soon, Jennifer.
Take care.
Take care.
Bye, everybody.
Bye.
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