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  • In this American English pronunciation video,

  • were going to go over words with EH plus R like in the word AIR.

  • This video is a small excerpt from a larger video I made for my online school.

  • I’ll put more information about the full video on online school at the end of this video.

  • EH plus R, like inair’.

  • This is written with a schwa in between,

  • but as you might already know the R is a syllabic consonant,

  • it overpowers the schwa,

  • so you don't need to worry about making uh--

  • a schwa sound separate from the R.

  • First, let’s take the word AIR

  • and break into just the sounds EH and schwa-R.

  • Eh-- rr--

  • Eh-- rr--

  • Ehrr--

  • Ehrr--

  • Ehrr--

  • That’s not really how we pronounce the word 'air'.

  • It doesn’t sound quite right to me.

  • That's how I pronounce it.

  • Not ehrr-- but air.

  • Eh- ey- air.

  • It’s a little more closed than a pure EH.

  • Let’s take a look at a few other people.

  • How are they pronouncing the word?

  • I’m going to go to Forvo,

  • which is a website where people can record words.

  • It’s a good place to go hear several different takes on the same word.

  • I’m going to listen to the United States speakers.

  • Air.

  • Air, ey, ey, air.

  • Theyre all the same as me.

  • The opening sound is more closed than a pure EH.

  • Let’s slow down the sound.

  • Aaaaaaiiiiiirrr.

  • It’s sort of like an AY diphthong.

  • Not exactly like it, but close.

  • Air. Air. Air.

  • One mistake that is sometimes made is this: err-- err--

  • There’s no feeling of a vowel before the R.

  • The thing you must do is leave your tongue tip forward at the beginning:

  • aaiir.

  • Then you can pull it back for the R.

  • But if your tongue tip is pulled back from the beginning,

  • it’s just going to sound like er-- er--

  • Air. Air.

  • Tongue tip forward.

  • Air, care.

  • Share.

  • In the longer version of this video, I go through each vowel combination with R.

  • Even though I’ve been teaching English for over a decade,

  • I learned some things in doing research for this video!

  • To see the whole video, and almost 100 other videos that you can’t see anywhere else,

  • you can subscribe to my online school Rachel’s English Academy.

  • In the courses in the Academy

  • I really go in depth with the concepts you might be learning in the YouTube videos

  • There’s so much audio to train each concept:

  • slow motion, regular pace, and you can download it

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  • reduction, idiom, phrasal verbs, and so on.

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In this American English pronunciation video,

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