Name: How to Pronounce the Letter A: American English
Uploaded: 2017-11-28T15:39:38.000Z
Duration: 2 min 32 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...

In this American English pronunciation video,
we're going to take a look at how the letter

This video highlights some of the work I've
done on my Sound Chart on my website. I often

get emails from people asking questions like,
why is the CH in Chicago pronounced differently

than the CH in choice. And my answer is always,
unfortunately, the letters in English do not

correspond one-on-one with the sounds of English.
To know exactly how a word is pronounced,

you have to look up the International Phonetic
Alphabet transcription of the word. Today

we're going to look at the letter A and all
the different sounds it can represent.

In the word 'exact', it's the AA sound, exact.
In the word 'father', it's the AH sound. Father.

In the word 'about', it's the schwa, the UH
sound. About. In the word fall, it's the AW

sound. Fall. In the word 'able', it's the
AY diphthong. Able. In the word 'share', it's

the EH sound. Share. In the word 'private',
it's the IH vowel. Private.

So, when you see the letter A, you can't necessarily
make assumptions about how that letter is

pronounced. It's always best to look it up
in a dictionary. Or, better yet, listen with

your ears open as you hear native speakers.
Make note of how they pronounce particular

That's it, and thanks so much
for using Rachel's English.

Don't stop there. Have fun with my real-life
English videos. Or get more comfortable with

the IPA in this play list. Learn about the
online courses I offer, or check out my latest