Name: How to Pronounce WORK, WALK, WORKED, WALKED - American English Pronunciation Lesson
Uploaded: 2022-04-24T17:36:13.000Z
Duration: 4 min 43 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hello it's Jennifer from Tarle Speech  with your question of the week!

I've gotten this question a lot lately. It is how  do I pronounce the word work, which is a task a  

To-infinitive

job or something that has to be done, and walk,  to move on foot. Let's take a look at our words,  

um, to say these words correctly, let's  start with that w sound. To make the w sound,  

your lips are puckered and your tongue is  just kind of flat in the middle of your mouth.

Let's also talk about that k sound. To say this  sound, the tip of your tongue is low in your  

mouth, the back of your tongue is pulled up, and  the sound is just going to the air is going to  

puff out of your mouth for that k. k k w k w k

Okay. So we have the first and the last sounds.  

Now what's the difference between that oh and  the er. Let's start with that oh sound. To say  

that oh sound your mouth is going to be open in a  wide oval shape, the tip of your tongue is going  

to be really low in your mouth, and the back of  your tongue is going to be pulled high up, oh.

You can see with my hand, my tongue is flat, it  moves down with the back pulled up for that oh,  

Excellent! You can also see that we do not say  the l sound here. So that saves a lot of you  

who struggle with that. We just don't say the l  sound. Now for the er sound. You can see my mouth  

is in a square tense shape. The tip  of my tongue is either pointed down  

or flipped back. It really depends on the  person. The back of my tongue is pulled high up,  

and it's tense, and it stays there. The tip of  my tongue does not move once I pick my spot. If  

it's either down or back it stays there. It  does not move. Z.  It does not touch my teeth. 

er er er I make my r with the tip of my tongue down: er

You can see my tongue moves from flat, tip  is down, and then the back pulls up more,  

while the tip goes even further down for that k.

I think one of the other things that I um  realize people do is they try to say the o  

in work and we do not say an o and work  at all. It's just that er sound. Now  

what happens when we add an ed suffix to these  words. All we're going to do is add a t sound  

for that e d suffix. So we're going to have  work and walk. To do that, we're going to end  

with that k, and you know the tip of the tongue  is down, then you're going to move the tip of  

the tongue to the back of the top front teeth.  For that t, pull it down, and the air puffs out.

worked worked worked walked walked walked

work worked walk walked walked worked work walk

"I walked to work. The walk helped me to work  harder. I worked so hard after my walk to work."

So give it a try I know people are going to  notice the difference. If you found this helpful,  

please share this with your friends, and  give us a like. If you need more help,  

check out our products and our class  options at Tarle speech dot com.

Thank you so much everyone  have an amazing weekend!