These are homophones. These words have  different spellings different meanings  

but they are pronounced exactly the  same way. And today is a two for two  

Tuesday with a bonus word  thrown in so stay tuned .

All right so our words today are bin and been.

So a bin is a storage container and  been is the past participle of to be.

I am teaching the American version of been which  is pronounced exactly the same way as the word  

bin. So to say these two words correctly we're  going to start with a b put your lips together  

and open them up and the air puffs out. Next  we're going to move to that short i. You can  

see my mouth is not tensed. My lips are relaxed  and in doing that my mouth is just slightly open.

My tongue is high in my mouth. It's behind the top  front teeth and it's just relaxed and it is flat.

If you confuse this vowel with the long  

e all you need to do is smile for  that e in e and then relax your lips.

You can see when I relax my lips  my tongue just pops down a tiny bit  

and then I'm able to say that short i and with  the end n sound nnn. To do this you touch the  

tip of your tongue to the back of your top  front teeth air moves out of your nose.

So again these two words pronounce the  same in American English bin and been.

Now here's your bonus word - bean. And a bean  is a small food and we would say b eeee n

with that long e.

So we say bin differently than bean.

And yes this word gets a little bit confusing  for our uh American English learners because  

we have the two vowels together which  typically we pronounce as a long vowel.

But in this case we do the short i  instead. So again we have bin been and bean  

bin been been bean bean bean.

And now for your sentence: I've  been to the bin to buy some beans.

Give it a try people are going to notice  the difference! If you found this helpful  

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on google play and class options at Tarle  speech thanks everyone have a great week!