Pronunciation mistakes: short i /ɪ/ vs. long e /iː/.
Pronouncing English words is not an easy task for many of us. If we compare the English alphabet with our Indian languages, we come to know that our list of language letters and symbols is much longer than in English. That is one of the reasons why, as kids, we memorized the English alphabet better than the letters in our native languages.
But if we give a deep thought to our Indian languages, we understand why we have so many letters and symbols. There is not a single sound for which we do not have a symbol. In Hindi, whenever we need to make the sound come from the nose, we use (. bindu) on the top of the letter. In the same way, for short e sound or i sound, we have (ि choti e), and for long e sound, we have (ी badi e). This is why identifying the sounds after seeing the word is much easier in all our native Indian languages than in English.
When it comes to sounds in English, we think of phonetics. But a few sounds in the English language are very confusing.
As an English language teacher and trainer, I often see how my students struggle to make the difference between long e and short i sounds.
In this article, we are going to understand the difference between short i and long e sounds, and we will also understand how to pronounce the words with these sounds.
To learn these sounds, we have to practice and understand the placement of the tongue inside our mouth.
Listen to the sounds now:
Pronunciation of short i /ɪ/
Pronunciation of long e /iː/
A few months ago, I was talking to one of my friends. We laughed a lot on a joke when my friend said, “Oh, so funny, we laughed so much, my chicks are hurting now.” Being an English trainer, I understood the pronunciation mistake, as she meant to say ‘cheek’ but she pronounced it as ‘chick.’
Now let’s understand difference in sounds between the words chick and cheek.
Listen to this sentence: The chick pecked on my cheek.
In the above video, you will understand what the difference is between the words chick and cheek and how we can pronounce them correctly. I have also blended the sounds to help you understand that if we don’t pronounce these words correctly, then the meaning of the whole sentence changes.
If the sounds are blended, then the sentence will sound like:
The chick pecked my chick.
Now lets look into some other words as well:
dip vs. deep
lip vs. leap
Keep practicing to get better clarity in your pronunciations as well as your speech. For some of you, it might seem tricky, but actually, it’s very easy if you practice.
