The oo sound

the "'oo" spelling of the words "foot" and "soon"


Hi again, and welcome back to Seattle Learning Academy's American English pronunciation podcast. My name is Mandy, and this is our 140th episode.

I talked a bit about the other u sound in our last podcast about the word sure. The other u sounds like (other u) and is the vowel sound in the word put. Can you hear it? (Other u), put.

The other u is tricky because it doesn't have any vowel spelling of its own. It can obviously be spelled u, as in the word put, but it can also be spelled oo as in the word foot. Can you hear the rhyme between put and foot, put, foot.

The more common pronunciation for the oo spelling is the oo sound, as in the word soon. The word shoot (s-h-o-o-t) is also pronounced with the oo sound. Notice that the word shoot does not rhyme with the word foot, shoot, foot.

Let's talk a little bit about how these two sounds are different. The oo sound is usually easier to start with because it is a more common sound. Listen to the sound: (oo sound). The major characteristic of this sound is that my lips are brought into a small circle. In addition, the back of the tongue raised to a high position and sides of the tongue touch the top teeth at the back of the mouth. Listen to the sound again: (oo sound).

The other u sound, (other u), has relaxed lips. The inside of the mouth is similar to the oo sound. My tongue relaxes a little more and the back of the tongue drops some, but those details are really minor compared with the drastically different shape of my lips. Most of my students learn to create a perfect other u sound simply by staring with the oo sound, and then relaxing the lips.

Listen to both sounds, I'll say the oo sound first, then the other u sound (oo sound, other u, oo sound, other u).

So, let's get back to the oo spelling for these sounds. Between these two pronunciations (other u) and (oo sound), the oo sound is much more common.

I'm going to say a word spelled oo, and I want you to try to tell if it's the oo sound or the other u sound. Ready?

tooth
cook
good
food
school

Those were:

tooth, oo sound
cook, other u
good, other u
food, oo sound
school, oo sound

How did you do? Pretty good?

Here's a little more practice. I'm going to say the five most frequently used words spelled oo for each pronunciation. I am going to say the words pronounced with the oo sound first:

school
too
room
food
choose

And here are the top five other u words:

good
book
look
foot
cook

If you would like to see more high-frequency words, I've added an exercise to the lessons for those sounds to help you out. The lessons are free to everyone, and have all the common spellings for each sound of English as well as common non-phonetic words. The exercises provide additional practice for each sound. Only people who subscribe to Pronuncian.com have access to the exercises. That's how we pay our bills and are able to keep creating more content like these free podcasts, so please consider joining. Go to www.pronuncian.com/join.

If you just want to look at the free lessons, we link to those from each of our podcast transcripts pages. Go to www.pronuncian.com/podcast to find this episode's transcripts and related lessons.

You can also practice hearing the details of English by listening to an audio book. You can get a free audio book by signing up for a free 14-day trial of Audible.com. Use our special web address: www.audiblepodcast.com/pronuncian as a way to help us support this show and to get your free audio book to keep. If you cancel your subscription with Audible before 14 days, you are charged nothing, but you get to keep your free book.

That's all for today everyone. This has been a Seattle Learning Academy digital publication. SLA is where the world comes to learn.