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기초영어듣기/발음과 발성

Lesson 4a - L - English Pronunciation

L 하고 R 발음은 언제나 어렵습니다.  처음 미국에 왔을 때, 주유소 종업원이 제가하는 '말보로 (Marlboro)' 발음을 못알아 들어서 몇번 시도하다가 결국엔 발음이 쉬운 '윈스턴 (Winston)' 담배를 샀던 아픈 기억이 납니다.... ㅠㅠ 



 

Hello, in this lesson we’re going to talk about the ‘L-sound’.  This lesson will be in three main parts.  First, we’re going to look at L at the beginning of words.  Then we’ll practice making L in the middle of words.  And at the final part, we’ll take a look at L at the end of words.  Now many students have asked to practice with L and R together, but here is the plan; first we’ll look at L, then we’ll look at the R.  Once you’re comfortable making both sounds separately, we’ll look at R and L together and words like ‘girl’ and ‘world’.

 

Let’s begin by talking about how do we make the L sound.  The most important thing is position of your tongue.  I want you to take the front part of your tongue, which is called a tip, touch the backside of your upper front teeth, slowly move the tip of your tongue up until you touch a hard bump behind your front teeth.  Don’t go too far up, that’s called a roof of your mouth.  You want the bump right behind your upper front teeth.  Holds your tongue there, that’s the starting position.  Now, I want you to blow air out of your mouth.  Keep your tongue in place.  You should feel air coming both sides of your tongue.  If you feel the air coming out on the left and right side of your tongue, you know you have the correct starting position. 

 

Now, some student confused L when they ‘re trying to make T or D or confusing T and D when they’re trying to make L.  Here is the difference; with T and D, your tip of tongue does touch the same hard bump, but the rest of your tongue is up.  It stops the air flow.  It stops air and sound from coming out of your mouth until you open it.  That’s why we have sound like ‘’, ‘’.  With L, the tip of your tongue touching that hard bump, but the sides of your tongue are down.  And air can come out the whole time, it’s never stopped. 

 

So let me try to explain that not just in words, but with the drawing.  I’m not a great artist, but I hope this helps.  So, imagine these are your upper front teeth, these are your lower teeth. That’s the roof of your mouth, and here is that hard bump.  So you want to take tip of your tongue… ok, so it’s touching like that.  If it had little bit of contact with your upper front teeth, that’s OK.  But the main point of contact is between the tip and that hard bump behind your teeth. 

 

Now, let’s talk about your lips.  You don’t want to pull them out and you don’t want them to make a tight little O.  It’s something in between.  So, open your mouth and make a gentle rounding and relax a little.  Keep your tongue in place, and blow the air out.  Now, you need to add your voice because L is a voiced consonant.  That means that when you make the sound, you should always feel vibration here in your throat.  So keep the tongue against that bump, gently round your lips, make sure the sides of your tongue down for the air to come out, and let me hear your voice.  Now as we practice, we’re going to exaggerate a lot, and that’s OK because in practice it’s about teaching your mouth to work in ways to moving ways that you’re not used to in your native language.  So, we talked about where your tongue is, how to position your lips, and that you need to use your voice.         

 

We’re going to practice L at the beginning of words.  That means that L is going to smoothly move into the next sound, a vowel sound, so as you move into the vowel sound, that tip of the tongue is going to drop down.  For example, let’s take the word, laugh. Phonetically… look something like that.  It’s a great word because it reminds you that you need to keep mouth open.  It’s very difficult to laugh with your mouth closed.  The vowel sound in laugh is , , . So what you need to do is begin as I taught you by keeping the tip of your tongue against that hard bump, the sides of your tongue will down, but as you move into vowel sound, you need to drop your tongue to make the , so it’s like .  You try it in a few times. 

 

Let’s try some exercises.  First we practice L in single word, then we practice L in phrases.  Exercise one, listen and repeat after me.  [see screen]

 

Now move on to phrases, group of words.  Again, listen and repeat after me. [see screen]

 

I also think it’s helpful to practice L in first names.  It’s good to know how to pronounce people’s name correctly.   [see screen]

 

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