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How to say I HAVE A

COLDIn this A merican English pronunciation video, were going to go over how to sayI have a cold.Im not in my n ormal recording space, as I m sure you can see.And thats b ecause Im not feeling well. I cant talk for very long, I cant record abunch of videos. I have a c old. Lets g o o ver that phrase. I have a, I have a, Ihave a cold. I and cold are the most stressed syllables t here. So, thestructure is DA-da-da-DA. I have a co ld. W e b egin with the AI as in BUY

diphthong. You d o n eed to d rop yo ur jaw for the rst sound o f that diphthong. I,I, I have a, I have a.Are you n oticing? Im dropping the H in have. This i s apretty c ommon habit. We do this w ith words l ike have, had, his, her. I havea [3x]. I have a co ld, I have a st omach a che, I have a h eadache. Dropping theH in have in all of those phrases.

So, I am keeping the AA as i n BAT vowel and the V sound, I have [3x]. I have

a. A dding o n a schwa n ow to m ake t he a rticle a. Notice that the V sound o f

have is l inking right into the schwa. I have a, I have a, I have a. Theres n o

break be tween a ny of those w ords. And nally, cold. S ome o f my studentshave problems w ith this w ord. Its h ard for them to make t he difference between

cold and code. So, lets t alk a bout it. First, we h ave the K consonant sound

where the tongue tip is d own and the back p art of the tongue reaches u p to

touch the soft palate. Kk, kk. F or the w ord code, we g o straight into the O H as

in NO diphthong. J aw drops, and the lips round for the se cond half. Code.

That means the w hole so und is up here in the front of the m outh. Now, for the

word cold, we have the Oh diphthong, but its a little different because of the

Dark L. I do drop my jaw for the beginning of the diphthong, col. But rather

than nishing the diphthong with a lot of lip rounding, I go straight to the Dark

sound of the Dark L, where the b ack pa rt of my tongue p ulls ba ck. So tongue

tip stays forward, col-, but the back p art of the tongue stretches b ack. Ll, ll.

Collllld. And to end, the front of the tongue goes u p to the roof of the mouth and

releases for the D . Cold, cold.

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So the d ifference between code and cold is t he Dark L. Code, the whole

thing is u p here. Collll, cold, some of the sound is b ack here for the dark L.

Code, cold [2x]. I have a cold.

Unfortunately, youre probably g oing to need to say t his at least once a year, so I

hope this vi deo helps.

Thats i t, and thanks s o much for using Rachels E nglish.