Made especially for speakers of Spanish and Portuguese, in this American English pronunciation
video, we're going to go over the pronunciation of words that start with an S consonant cluster.
Special thanks to my users who helped me develop this topic. In Spanish and Portuguese, words
do not start with an S consonant cluster. But in English, there are many common words
that do. For example, study. So, these speakers tend to put an 'eh' sound in front: eh-study.
Last week I went to a gala, and a woman there accepted an award. She was a native Spanish
speaker, and as she gave her speech, she said the word 'spiritual'. And she pronounced it
eh-spiritual, with that eh-vowel. I noticed it especially because so much about her accent
was very, very good. So, even after someone has done a lot of work and corrected a lot
of problems, this beginning S consonant cluster tends to stick around.
So how should you work on beginning words with the S consonant cluster? Luckily, in
both Spanish and Portuguese, there are words that start with the S consonant. For example,
'sin' in Spanish, and 'sem' in Portuguese. So, when you're practicing words that begin
with S consonant clusters, I would alternate this with your word that begins with an S
consonant. For example: sssssin, sssstudent, and so on.
Let's go over all of the different beginning S consonant clusters. ST, like student.
STR, street. SM, smart. SN, snake. SL, slap.
And, the SK consonant cluster, which can be spelled four different
ways: school, scoop, skip, square. SP, space. SPL, split. SPR, spring. And SW, swift.
I can hardly believe how many consonant clusters there are! But now that you know what they
are, practice them. Drill them. Look for words that you use in everyday conversation that
begin with an S consonant cluster. Keep track of that, and at the end of the day, use those
words to drill. If you can start a word with an S, you can start a word with an S cluster.