Why does the letter E sound different in B, bed, and her?
It's the same letter, but English doesn't treat it that way.
Welcome back to the Learn English Podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
We have discussed the A vowel sound before, and on today's episode it is time for one of the most confusing vowels, the E vowel sound.
The letter E might be small, but it creates some of the biggest pronunciation problems in English.
On today's episode we are going to discuss the sounds the letter E can make in different words and how you can recognize those sounds when a native speaker says them to you.
If English pronunciation has ever seemed inconsistent or confusing, this episode is going to help.
So with that, let's begin.
The first thing you need to know is that English does not organize its vowel sounds by letter.
Instead, it organizes by sound.
That's why the same letter can have completely different sounds in different words.
Native speakers hear the sound first before they think about how the word is actually spelled.
So, instead of trying to memorize a bunch of rules, we're going to try to focus on training your ear to hear these sounds, so you can reduce your accent.
Let's start with the first vowel sound.
That is the short E.
I mentioned this on the A vowel sound episode, but every vowel has a short and long sound.
The short sound is relaxed, short, and open.
You'll hear it in words like bed, red, and head.
Listen again to how I am pronouncing the E in those words.
Bed, red, head.
Now listen to this practice sentence.
And after you listen to it, also try to pronounce it yourself.
I left the red pen on the desk.
One more time.
I left the red pen on the desk.
Now it's time for the long E vowel sound.
Every long vowel sound sounds like how the letter is pronounced.
So the letter E has that E sound, which means that the long vowel sound is going to be pronounced like the letter E.
You hear this sound in words like b, c and knee.
This sound is called the long vowel sound because it takes longer to pronounce.
You actually spend more time when you are pronouncing it and your jaw is actually tighter and a little bit more closed when you pronounce it.
If you're watching on YouTube, you can see my jaw, when I say red, my jaw opens.
When I say B, my jaw is a lot more closed.
And so that's what you want to do when you are trying to pronounce this vowel sound.
The easiest way to spot this vowel sound in a word is when you have two E's together.
However, like all vowel sounds, it can occur with different spellings, so you really want to try to train your ear.
Let's do a practice sentence here.
We need to see the key.
How many long E vowel sounds did we have in that sentence?
Listen to it one more time.
We need to see the key.
We had three long E vowel sounds.
So again, try to repeat that sentence and see if you can correctly make this sound.
The third vowel sound is the schwa sound.
If you listened to that A vowel sound episode, then you are familiar with this sound.
This sound is actually the most common vowel sound in all of English.
And the reason is, is that every vowel can make this sound.
Instead of sounding like the letter or some variation of that, the schwa sound sounds more like an uh sound, more like a u sound.
And you hear it in an unstressed syllable.
An unstressed syllable is the syllable from a word that is pronounced less forcefully.
You don't pronounce it as clearly and as forcefully and with as much time as you do with a stressed syllable.
The most common example of the E letter making this schwa sound is with the article the.
The book.
The cat.
The dog, the man.
Did you hear that uh sound right before each of those words?
When you take the article the and you put it before a word that starts with a non-vowel sound, you turn it into a schwa sound.
So the book, not the book.
You're never going to hear an American say the book, the cat, the dog, the man.
That's very unnatural for us.
Instead, we say the.
Now let's do some examples where that E schwa sound comes at the beginning of a word.
An example here would be elephant.
Another example, enemy, enemy.
Both of those start with E's, but that sound is more of an, A sound at the beginning of the word because it is a non-stressed syllable.
Let's look at some examples with this sound in the middle of the word.
Algebra, telephone.
Did you hear that uh sound in the middle?
I know these are similar words to what is in Spanish.
They're cognates of Spanish words.
Maybe they're cognates in other languages as well.
I only know Spanish, so I can only comment on that.
But if you are a Spanish speaker, really listen to the difference.
It is algebra, algebra, that uh sound.
Same thing with telephone.
It's telephone.
Practice that and see if you can get that.
Because that vowel shift is really something you need if you want to improve your accent.
Now let's do one practice sentence here.
And again, see if you can hear the number of times the schwa sound appears in this sentence.
The system has a problem with that item.
How many schwa sounds were there?
You should have heard four, the system problem item.
All of them have that schwa sound.
Fourth vowel sound is the r, controlled e.
This is when you have the letter e followed by the letter r and these two letters work together to make one sound.
You can hear this vowel sound in words like her, Term and person.
It's that R sound that you hear in those words.
When you make this vowel sound, you want to close your jaw and you also want to narrow your lips.
Again, if you're watching, you can see it better when I make this R sound.
My jaw is pretty closed.
My lips are close together and they're kind of pushed out when I'm making this sound. er.
Let's do our practice sentence here.
Her first term in college was successful.
Try saying that sentence and see if you can master that er sound.
And our last vowel sound is the reduced E, which sounds like an I.
In some English words the letter E is actually pronounced like a short I sound.
And confusingly, this also occurs when it is in the unstressed syllable.
So sometimes you get a schwa sound and sometimes you get this reduced E sound.
Listen to these words and see if you can hear the I sound.
All of those have this reduced E sound.
Benefit only has one I, but if you listen closely, that second E is pronounced very similarly to the ending I Benefit.
Same thing with element.
It has only E's in it, but do you hear the difference between that first E and the other two E's?
Element.
Element.
That last syllable almost sounds like mint, M-I-N-T, even though it's spelled M-E-N-T.
Element.
And the last word, pretty.
Pretty.
I sound right before the T part.
Pretty.
Let's try our practice sentence and see how many you hear.
The women discussed the business plan while eating chicken.
Women, business and chicken all have that reduced E vowel sound that sounds like an I.
Before we end this episode, I want to test your listening comprehension.
Just listen and see if you can notice these different vowel sounds.
I'm going to put these sentences in the description so you can also look at them.
But try to test your ear and see if you can hear the difference.
She sent an email about the problem and her message was clear.
In the end, though, the different details were decided by the system.
Those sentences actually had all five vowel sounds.
We had the short e which was sent and end the long e, which is she and email, the schwa e in problem and system, the r-controlled e in her and the reduced e in different.
How did you do?
Did you get all five sounds?
If you did, please leave a comment and let me know.
Or if one of those was particularly difficult or if this is the first time you ever heard of them.
Please also leave a comment and let me know.
Like I said, a native speaker is trained to really listen to the sound because we know that different words have different pronunciation, even though the letter might be the same.
And that's what you want to do.
You want to start practicing your listening comprehension.
You want to try to hear the sound instead of just guessing.
And every time you do that, you're going to notice that your English is going to get slightly better.
Practice as much as you can listening and also see if you can repeat some of these words and master the pronunciation.
See if you can pronounce them like a native speaker, because that really is the best way to help reduce your accent.
I hope you enjoyed this episode and I hope you are finding these pronunciation guides helpful.
I know that English is very difficult, so we're going to continue to discuss more vowel sounds and we will do more episodes like this in the future.
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Until then, keep learning English.
