Native speakers of English, help me out. When you pronounce the words “shirt” and “short”, do they sound different? When I pronounce them, they sound identical but I wonder if that’s ok.
13 responses to “Language Question”
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Yes, they are different. The vowel in ‘short’ is lower and further back.
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What TomW said – for me, they sound entirely different. Shirt has the same vowel sound as “shirk” (as in “shirk your responsibilities”, an “er” type sound for me), whereas short has an “or” type sound as in “door”.
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I just can’t make it sound different. Drat.
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Can you pronounce sure and shore differently? What about fur and four? hers and whores?
You might consider something like a Spanish o for short and a Spanish e for shirt to help distinguish them (though spanish vowels followed by the English r is hard…)
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Ok, good, this helps. I need to practice because I’m confusing Klara.
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Yup, I struggle with that also!
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Maybe try this:
shirt шырт (distinct from ширт !)
short шорт
When I play the audio on google translate the шырт is close enough to shirt I think.
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In English English shirt and short are definitely spoken differently, although we don’t usually pronounce the r in either word like Americans and Canadians do. I’m sorry, I don’t know how to describe the differences, I’m no linguist. If the Spanish way helps, go for it!
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In American English, “shirt” rhymes with “dirt,” and “short” rhymes with “port.” If you can pronounce the common words “dirt” and “port” correctly, you shouldn’t have trouble with the “s” words.
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“If you can pronounce the common words “dirt” and “port” correctly, you shouldn’t have trouble ”
That’s logical…. and not how this kind of things works at all.
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