Pronunciation ChallengeHow Olympic divers make the perfect tiny splash

Intro:
Hi, VoiceTubers! This is Jeff Chiao. Competitive diving is one of the most-watched sports in the Olympic games, and it is not really that surprising. Even for people who don’t have any experience in water sports or stand on a diving board, such as me, watching physically fit athletes jumping from incredible heights, doing unbelievable tricks in the process, and diving into water gracefully gives us a sort of fulfilling artistic satisfaction.

But, as one of the scoring standards is based on how small the splash is, have you ever wondered how do these athletes dive into the water with such elegance and technique to minimize the splash? Watch the video we covered today to find out! But first, let’s take a look at today’s featured sentence.

Featured Sentence:
“Divers can't change much once they're in the air, so when they push off, they have to give themselves enough height, enough distance from the board, and enough angular momentum to complete the dive.”

Okay, let me repeat it one more time, just a little bit slower.

“Divers can't change much once they're in the air, so when they push off, they have to give themselves enough height, enough distance from the board, and enough angular momentum to complete the dive.”

With that out of the way, let’s head to the pronunciation tips.

Pronunciation tips:

Our first tip today would be “push off”. Sometimes we could connect the ending sound of a word to the beginning of another word, thus making it easier and faster to pronounce. In this case, “push off” would become “push-off”. “Push-off”.

The second tip today would be the word “height”. It is worth noting that although as the word “weight” there is an “ei” in the middle, the “ei” in “height” should be pronounced “/aɪ/” instead of “/eɪ/”. So it’s /haɪt/ instead of /heɪt/. Height.

Our final tip focuses on the word “momentum”. This word has three syllables, and the stress should be on the second “men”. Momentum. Momentum.

All right, with the tips sorted, let’s get to the vocabulary.

Vocabulary:

height (n.) KK[haɪt] IPA[/haɪt/]
the distance from the top to the bottom of something, or the quality of being tall

I had tried drinking lots of milk in hopes of gaining some height, yet in the end, I just suffered from stomachache due to lactose intolerance.


distance (n.) KK[ˋdɪstəns] IPA[/ˈdɪs.təns/]
the amount of space between two places

The long distance between Los Angeles and New York and the lack of high-speed railways have left flying as the only time-effective option for commercial travel between the two cities.


momentum (n.) KK[moˋmɛntəm] IPA[/məˈmen.təm/]
the force that keeps an object moving or keeps an event developing after it has started

Although the engine had been shut down, the momentum left in the car still pushed it towards the edge of a cliff with its failed brakes.

Outro:

So that wraps up for today’s episode!

Although I am not particularly a big fan when it comes to water sports, water diving is always something I would watch during the Summer Olympics. At first glance, this sport is all about people jumping from 10 meters high into the water, and that’s really it. Yet the sheer beauty in such a simple yet elegant procedure, which is executed in such precision, by the athletes who have been practicing for thousands of hours, makes it really an art of extraordinary body control.
And now after watching the video, I am truly stunned by all the science behind these beautiful jumps, and amazed by how athletes could pull this off in such a graceful fashion.

This is Jeff Chiao from VoiceTube. Hope y’all have a good one! Until next time, goodbye.

Divers can't change much once they're in the air, so when they push off, they have to give themselfs enough height, enough distance from the board, and enough angular momentum to complete the dive.

Divers can't change much once they're in the air, so when they push off, they have to give themselves enough height, enough distance from the board, and enough angular momentum to complete the dive.

Divers can't change much once they're in the air, so when they push off, they have to give themselves enough height, enough distance from the board, and enough angular momentum to complete the dive.