the phrase: Are you ok?

This is part of a sentence study series, where we look at a short, common phrase, and discuss

its pronunciation. First let's look at the phrase up close and in slow motion.

You might hear two different stress patterns for this phrase: Are you ok? da-Da-da-DA?

That has a primary stress on the second syllable of 'okay', and a secondary stress on the syllable

'you'. Or, you might hear: are you ok? Without the stress on 'you'. Both are fine. What's

more important is that your unstressed syllables are short, and your words link together.

The word 'are' can reduce to just the R sound. rr, rr, rr-you ok? The lips will probably

flare out a little, but not too much because we're not starting a stressed syllable. And

it will be really quick. The tongue is pulled back and up, and the middle part might be

touching the roof of your mouth or the inside of your teeth here, but the tip isn't touching

anything. To transition into the Y sound, my tongue comes back forward. The tip will

touch behind my bottom front teeth, and the front/middle part of the tongue will touch

the roof of the mouth, a little further forward than it was for the R. Rr-yy, rr-yy. While

the tongue is at the roof of my mouth, the throat is making this sound. Yy, yy. My jaw

really doesn't need to move much between these two sounds, rryy, rryy. Now we have the OO

as in BOO vowel, are you. The lips will round some for this sound, though not as much as

they would round if they were in a syllable with primary stress. Are you, are you. So,

I'm stressing this word a little bit. My voice has a little curve up and down, the shape

of a stressed syllable. Are you, are you, are you.

Are you, are you. Next is the OH diphthong. So it might feel like you go through

the glide consonant W: are you--wo, you-o. Make sure you connect, no break. This is an

unstressed syllable, so the jaw won't drop as much and the lips won't round as much for

the OH diphthong as they would in a stressed syllable, are you o-, are you o-. But there's

still a little of both. Oh, oh.

And finally the stressed syllable. The tongue tip will stay forward while the back part

of the tongue reaches up to touch the soft palate, and release into the AY as in SAY

diphthong, kk, -kay. The jaw has to drop a good bit for the first sound there, the tongue

tip will be here, and for the second half the jaw will close some as the front part

of the tongue reaches towards the roof of the mouth. The tip will stay here. Are you

ok? Are you ok? Notice that the pitch of the voice goes up. -Kay, -kay. That's because

it's a yes/no question, and those usually go up in pitch at the end. Are you ok? Are

you ok? Are you ok?

Let's watch one more time in slow motion.

This video is part of a series. Click here to see other videos just like it. If you

have a phrase you'd like to suggest for this series, please put it in the comments.

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