Name: Most Learners Get This Sound Wrong | /əʊ/ in British English
Uploaded: 2025-04-13T11:28:16.000Z
Duration: 8 min 31 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hello everybody it's me Elliot from ETJ English welcome back to my channel today we're talking about a really really common sound in British pronunciation and the sound is oh yes oh it's a diphthong which means it's a combination of two vowel sounds and they unite they love each other they join together and become one it's a combination of the schwa like in about ago around and then an sound like in good or look they might slightly change because they're joining together but let me just explain the most common mistake I hear most oh is for example somebody saying most or global I have a pronunciation course where students send me voice messages when they're practicing things from the course and I guide them through the course and them corrections all of that stuff and when students get to this oh sound it's usually most of the time a bit of a challenge because it's so much easier to follow this habit which many non-native speakers have just pronouncing it as an oh so no instead of no or global instead of global this can cause confusion for the listener and if you're looking for more of a you know rp british sounding accent this is one of those sounds that just screams at you yeah so it's really really important to focus on this one oh focus right so let's talk about it as I said we're beginning with a schwa sound we've talked about this sound a lot on the channel so I won't talk too much about it but keep your mouth relaxed maybe just slightly open it a little bit more a bit like that instead of an uh or an we want something a bit more in the middle uh uh uh uh we're going to an uh sound now a round shape with the lips pull the tongue back and up just slightly oh oh let's try two words together imagine something really bad has just maybe you might say oh no oh no oh no so we don't want oh no we want oh no try some intonation on this as well if you want more of a challenge oh no oh no oh as I said this sound is really common and I like to teach people with high frequency words words which you're actually going to use in your real life so let's go through some of those with some practice sentences one more time let's practice the sound uh oh oh no go let's go no I've got no idea so that's so nice of you go I will go to the shop later show can you show me how to do it home I'm going home soon so remember we don't want it to sound like home it should be home phone I've lost my phone low the price is quite low slow the traffic is moving slowly today grow I want to grow some vegetables this year so again we don't want grow instead of grow oh you have to make sure you're clearly making that movement between the two vowels creating this one sound oh oh into that round shape at the end as I said the most common mistake is just doing an or which we don't want remember start with a neutral mouth slightly open a couple of other words broke I broke my leg clothes can you close the door please coat I forgot my coat how about when it happens twice in a word because this does happen for example postcode oh oh postcode what postcode do you live in overload how you might be feeling my brain is overloaded with all of this information overcoat I need to buy an overcoat for the winter so I need to just share one thing because this is where it gets a little bit confusing you know we have loads of different accents in the UK I tend to focus on what we would call modern received pronunciation so a more contemporary version of RP so more of a standard a bit posher upper RP something more associated with the royal family you would hear them say pearl and hole where we're still doing this oh sound and we're adding the dark L to the end so this is when there's a situation where it's oh followed by L firstly for the dark L just very quickly tip of your tongue presses against the back of your top teeth gently oh oh so add that oh sound before it oh oh oh finish by touching the tip of your tongue against the back of your top teeth oh old go to me I laugh because it just feels uncomfortable and weird and I'm just I'm not that posh guys I speak with more of a modern pronunciation so in modern RP instead of saying hoe you're more likely to hear hole for example there is a hole in the wall oh so I'm not doing this at the beginning instead oh I'm actually rounding my mouth at the start of the sound so it's kind of just becoming an oh kind of sound oh hole hole so that's just a quick tip for you most modern received pronunciation speakers will pronounce it this way oh instead of L but if you like the posh accent and you're trying to go for a bit more of a upper RP please do this it's fine I would say it's less common you're more likely to hear them say it how I do hole goal instead of hole and go but just something to consider it's up to you your decision and don't forget that in places like the north of England and other British accents you might hear people say no instead of no or go instead of go feel free to explore other accents there are many available future Elliot here I completely forgot that I used chat GPT to create a paragraph for me to read to you with lots of o's in there now it's a bit weird sometimes chat GPT can be kind of strange uh but here we go so I was about to go to the show right I'd been looking forward to it all week but on the way there my phone suddenly froze totally useless I tried to reload the screen but no luck I stood by the road hoping someone would help but of course it started to snow honestly it was a complete joke I had no way to know where I was supposed to go so in the end I just gave up and went home thanks chat GPT maybe play that back and try to shadow me it's a really good technique just pause after every little group of words and try to copy how I pronounce the sounds specifically but as I said this is one of those sounds if you're looking for RP it's going to create a big effect in your accent so it's one of those sounds you need to know oh no oh no okay create some sentences of your own think about things you say a lot in your day-to-day life read some things ask chat GPT to make some sentences for you and of course if you're still not sure if you're pronouncing it right this is when teachers are really useful this is when my course could be really useful because you can send me voice messages whenever you want just to check ask questions and all of that stuff so feel free to join you can go to etjenglish.com if you'd like to work with me and thank you very much for watching guys I hope you found this useful today cheers take care bye