In this American English pronunciation video, we’re going to go over the pronunciation of the word ‘beautiful’.

This week’s word of the week is ‘beautiful’. It’s a three syllable word with stress on the first syllable. DA-da-da, beautiful.

For the B consonant sound the lips are together. B, b. Then for the EW as in FEW diphthong. For the first sound the tip will be down here, and the front part of the tongue will be touching the roof of the mouth about here.

For the OO vowel, the tongue will pull away from the roof of the mouth, and in the back it will stretch up towards the roof of the mouth, but not touch. Beau-, beau- And the lips do need to round a good bit for the OO part of that diphthong. Beau-, beau-.

Now we have a T coming between two vowels, so this is going to be a flap T beau-d, beau-d. And in this unstressed syllable. We have the IH as in SIT vowel. Beauti-, beauti-.

And finally we have the F consonant sound, schwa dark L sound. -ful, -ful, -ful. Since this is in an unstressed syllable, we do have to be very short, low in pitch and may be with some of the energyof the voice taken out, -ful, -ful, -ful. Beautiful, beautiful.

To make the F consonant sound, the bottom lip comes up and touches the bottom of the top front teeth. Fff, fff.

Now we don’t need to worry about making a separate schwa sound here, just go straight into the dark sound of the L. To make that sound the back part of the tongue will stretch back a little bit. L, l, l. To get that dark sound. Now you don’t need to finish the dark L by bringing, the tongue tip up here. You can, but a lot of people will simply end the word, with the dark sound. L, l. Beautiful, beautiful. That’s beautiful work.

That’s it your “word of the week”. If there is a word you would like to suggest for the “word of the week” put it in the comments below.

That’s it, and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.