This is the “Sounds American” channel.

In this video we’ll compare two vowel sounds:

/ɪ/ and /ɛ/

as in the words “big” and “beg”.

In our previous videos we learned how to make them.

Remember the videos for the /ɪ/ sound, as in the word “it” and the /ɛ/ sound, as in the word “bed”?

This time we’ll focus on the differences between these two sounds.

Most non-native English speakers can distinguish the /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ as different sounds,

but they often distort or confuse these vowels when pronouncing them.

And that's what other people hear as an accent.

In this video we’ll help you fix this by practicing the /ɪ/ and the /ɛ/ and contrasting them in word pairs.

Before we begin, let’s check how well you can differentiate between the /ɪ/ and the /ɛ/ sounds.

You’ll see a pair of words on the screen and hear only one of them pronounced.

For example,

“b*g”.

Can you guess what word you heard?

Let’s try a few more word pairs.

How did you do? Don’t worry if you didn’t get all the words right.

You’ll improve if you complete the pronunciation exercises which are coming up in just a minute.

Here are the 2 key distinctions between the /ɪ/ and the /ɛ/:

First, look at the position of the lower jaw:

For the /ɪ/ sound, the mouth isn’t very open

For the /ɛ/ sound, the mouth is half open.

Second.

Look at the tongue:

For the /ɪ/ sound, the tongue is raised high in the mouth

For the /ɛ/ sound, the tongue is in the middle of the mouth.

Let’s pronounce these sounds one after the other:

/ɪ/ - /ɛ/

/ɪ/ - /ɛ/

/ɪ/ - /ɛ/

Now that you’ve revised how to make these sounds, let’s start practicing.

Don’t skip this part, as the only way to improve your accent is to practice as much as possible.

You’ll see a word on the screen and hear its pronunciation.

After that you’ll have a few seconds to pronounce the word.

[signal prompt to start speaking]

Repeat each word after the speaker,

the first word will have the /ɪ/ vowel sound,

and the second will have the /ɛ/ vowel sound.

Let’s begin!

You're done!

Congratulations!

To check how much you’ve improved, you can do the word pairs test again.

Click this link to go back and compare the results.

By the way, did you know that the letter ‘e’ can represent both the /ɛ/ and the /ɪ/ vowel sounds?

For example, /ɛ/ as in “beg” and /ɪ/ as in “begin”.

The rule is simple, the /ɛ/ is found in the stressed syllables and the /ɪ/ in unstressed ones.

Thanks for watching!

Hope you find it useful!

Stay tuned on our Sounds American channel!