Peppy Question of the Week with Steve Ford
Hello, and welcome to Peppy Question of the Week, my name is Steve and you have come to privateenglishportal.com. Our question this week comes from Francine from Quebec, Canada okay! Well, welcome! Welcome Francine! We are from the same country and in Francine’s e-mail she would like to know about the certain pronunciation that would be correct and…these sentence are actually quite funny! And pardon my pardon my French as we say the first one goes I am not sure if our newly hired employee is able to f#&*K us!!!!
Now be very careful you do not want to say that that is a taboo! That is a ‘no no’! What you want to say is I am not sure if our newly hired employee able to focus! So, there is a huge difference there. I know that the ’u’ and the ‘o’ might sound very similar you know! ‘u’ being like a more closed vowel sound and ‘o’ being a more open! But you want to say focus. You never want to say the another one okay? And let us move on!!!! In the next one we have you will see a listed on the page of the budget sh#t be careful, okay? Especially if this is in one of my business class settings, okay? You want to say you will see listed on the first page of the budget sheet! So be very careful! Do not be using that around your boss of anything likes that, right?
So, once again, that is a very subtle difference in vowel sounds between the famous English vowel sound ‘i and ‘e’ right? They sound very similar. It is just like ‘it’ and ‘eat’ but in this case we are saying it in the context of sh#t and sheet. So in this case you want to say sheet. Sheet is totally different in meaning from sh#t or eat is totally different in meaning from it and the third example that Francine sends me here is can your come to the business conference at five (o’clock) and then someone answers no sex would ne better that is pretty funny in itself and I am not laughing at you. I am laughing with you! Because I speak Portuguese and French I have had similar situations in those languages as well. And yes, it would be six (o’clock) would be better but six and sex they sound very similar they have those vowel sounds ‘i’ and ‘e’ and six is one thing and sex is another thing and I am sure you can figure that all by your self!.
Okay, so thank you Francine! Those were great questions on very very finite differences in open and closed vowel sounds. So thank you very much for your question and I look forward to your next peppy question nest week! Bye! Bye! Do you want to study English… with Steve? Classes with Steve online!!! Seven free classes. Lucky video contest find out how to play at: www.privateenglishportal.com
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