82: Thanksgiving holiday th sounds /ð, θ/ review

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Have fun reviewing the 'th sounds' with this extra practice podcast.

Transcript

Hi everyone, and welcome back to Seattle Learning Academy's American English Pronunciation Podcast. My name is Mandy, and this is our 82nd episode.

This Thursday is the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. Since it is a holiday week, I'm just going to do a simpler, shorter, review show today.

In honor of Thanksgiving, we're going to review the th sounds.

Listen to the following sentence.

This Thursday is Thanksgiving.

Listen to the th sounds.

This Thursday is Thanksgiving.
This Thursday is Thanksgiving.

The th sounds are fricatives, meaning they are a smooth, continuous sound that is created when air is pushed through a small opening in the vocal tract. To create the voiced and unvoiced th sound, the tip of the tongue is placed very close to the front of the tooth ridge, and then air is pushed through the small space between the tip of the tongue and the tooth ridge. The tooth ridge is the bony area right behind the top front teeth.

The voiced and unvoiced th sounds are identical except that the voiced th uses the vocal cords, and is voiced, and the unvoiced th does not. You can go all the way back to our first podcast episode for more information about fricatives and voiced and unvoiced sounds.

Listen to just the voiced th sound:

(voiced th)

And now listen to the unvoiced th sound

(unvoiced th)

Here is a quick practice for all of you who have trouble with the th sounds. It's only two sentences, and one of them I've borrowed from previous th sound shows. I'm going to say both sentences, then I'm going to break them into pieces for you to repeat.

For now, just listen.

This Thursday is Thanksgiving. Be thankful for this thing, that thing, and those things.

Okay, now repeat it after me, with perfect, smooth, th sounds. You should also practice linking smoothly from one word into the next.

This Thursday
is Thanksgiving.
Be thankful
for this thing,
that thing,
and those things.

Let's do it in little pieces again.

This Thursday
is Thanksgiving.
Be thankful
for this thing,
that thing,
and those things.

Okay, now let's practice in bigger pieces.

This Thursday is Thanksgiving.
Be thankful for this thing,
that thing,
and those things.

Now let's do it as whole sentences.

This Thursday is Thanksgiving.
Be thankful for this thing, that thing, and those things.

You can read the transcripts for this show by visiting www.pronuncian.com/podcast. I'll included an audio of the practice sentences so you can listen and repeat again without listening to this whole show again. I'll also link to the free voiced and unvoiced th sound lesson on Pronuncian.

If you have subscribed to Pronuncian's premium content, you also have access to four more listening exercises for more th sound practice. These exercises compare the voiced and unvoiced th, compare the th sounds with other close sounds, and practice the difficult unvoiced th plus r sound combination.

This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for all of you who listen to this show, and those of you who help support this show through your Pronuncian purchases and subscriptions.

That's all for today. Thank you for listening everyone.

This has been a Seattle Learning Academy digital publication. SLA is where the world comes to learn.

Bye-bye.