How to Pronounce the /a/ Sound

main vowel sounds vowel sounds

Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready for a new journey? Well, here, I'm gonna tell you all the details of this sound. Shall we begin?

In this lesson, we are going to learn how the sound /ɑ/ is produced by looking at the articulatory organs.

What Type of Sound Is /ɑ/?

/ɑ/ is a long vowel. You can make this sound like when you go to the doctor and they ask you to open your mouth and say 'aah.'

How to Produce /ɑ/?

how to pronounce /a/

To produce it, open your mouth completely, lower your jaw completely, and keep your lips ungrounded. When producing this sound, your mouth is slightly more open than when producing the /æ/ sound. However, the mouth is slightly less rounded than saying the /ɔ/ sound as you can see in the picture.

/ɑ/ can be heard in these letters:

start /stɑːrt/

arm /ɑːrm/

father /ˈfɑː.ðər/

Tip!

As you have seen before in the examples, When two dots come after the sound as in /a:/, It indicates that it is pronounced as a long vowel sound, not as a short or weak sound.

Listening

Let's listen to the pronunciation of the /a/ sound which has been mentioned below:

Down below, there are two other sounds similar to the /a/ sound. At first, listen to the /æ/ sound and then listen to the /ɔ/ sound:

How to Pronounce the /e/ Sound

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In this lesson, we are going to learn all about the /e/ sound. Well, it would be more interesting if you knew this sound exists in your mother tongue, eh?