Accent Training Podcast

The Difference Between "Fill" and "Feel" | #148

• Season 6 • Episode 148

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"Feel" and "Fill" have distinct sounds to American ears which most non-native English speakers do not know about.

"Feel" sounds like "FEE yuhl" when pronounced slowly. "Fill" sounds like "Fiiuhl", and does not make any "Y" sound.

Today's episode will break this concept down for you, and provide you with guidance to evolve your English sound.

To better understand Y glide Diphthongs, check out these podcast episodes:
Y Glide Diphthongs Part 1
Y Glide Diphthongs Part 2

Work on Dark L Sounds Here
Dark L Sounds

Practice your Y Glide + Dark L Sounds together here
Isle, Aise, Island

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Accent Training Podcast, a podcast where I teach you how to adapt the sounds of the American accent to your own speech. My name is Pat. I'm your personal accent coach, and today I'd like to talk about a way that we connect sounds together, specifically connecting dith thong vowel sounds to the dark L di thong vowel sounds to the dark L. Now, that's a lot of confusing language. Let me explain real quick. Diff thong vowel sounds are moving vowel sounds. Sounds that go like a I or oh, ow to clearly pronounce every one of those sounds. I make a movement with my mouth to vowel sound that moves as we pronounce it. Now we've got two categories of diff thong vowel sounds. They can either end in E or they can end in ooh, vowel sounds ending in E R A I. Ooi vow sounds ending in the woo. When I contract my lips as if I'm making that W position, woo, are simply, oh, ow, ew. We call these Y glides and W glides. Today we're just gonna focus on the Y glides. They're a little easier to adapt. So that gives you a bit of an idea of what dth thong vowel sounds are. If you need further clarification, check the description of this episode where I've posted a link, which I use to break down these Y glide vowels. A aye. And now dark L. Dark L comes into play when L is the final sound in a word, it sounds like oh. Oh, as if there's an uh uh, and then A oh oh. Again, if you need more clarification for how to make a good dark L sound, check the description. I've posted an episode there that'll help clarify this for you. So we've got Dth thong vowel sounds A, and we've got dark Ls O. What we're gonna work on is combining the tooth, making a clear dith thong, which we connect to the dark L. This is what we hear in words like oil feel while fail. Notice I'm not going just feel, feel or wow, but there's this Y that connects the two feel. Wow. You see, when a Y glide, dith thong precedes a dark L, an off glide is heard. This is when we're getting this Y, yeah, in the middle. This gives us a smooth transition between sound. The difficulty here is that if you don't do this in your native language, then you have no idea that it exists in English, which means that you're often going right from these vowels A to the L without making a clear to connect them. So instead of getting a sound like feel, feel, feel, you're possibly sounding more like Phil. Phil. Without the Y glide, your speech is likely understood. Without the Y glide, it's likely good enough to get by and to hold up a conversation. But without using the Y glide, it'll sound choppy and forced sounding. And if you want to change your accent, then adjusting this connection to your speech will show you some serious results. So repeat after me and you won't fail at this Again, let's start with that word right there. Fail Fay. When I pronounce this, I'm making this full A A. Then going into the L at the ending of the word, I'm releasing a repeat that back to me just like I did in slow motion. Now let's do it a little quicker. Fail. Fail, fail, fail. Now, folks, I don't want you to just fail. I want you to fail upwards. Repeat that back to me. Now. Fail upwards. Let's hear what you got. Fail upwards. That's a weird combination of words. What do you suppose that that means to fail in an upwards direction? Does this mean that you jump when you fail? No, it does not. This idiomatic expression or figure of speech is referring to using failure to your advantage, using failure as a learning experience to see progress later down the road. Fail upwards. Even if I don't succeed this time, at least I'll fail upwards. Repeat that back to me in slow motion. Fail quickly. Fail. Fail. Strong, weak, fail. So that's our first example with the A. The next I'd like you to repeat back to me is going to use an I I first, let me hear you make the sound. Iyo. Iyo. Let's hear what you got. Very good. Getting that? Yeah, yeah. After the ah, ah, ayo. And now let's put a W sound before that to say, wow, WYO, what do you got? And now, quicker. Wild. Wild. And in a common expression, a long while. A long while, A long while. That's like saying a long time. I have been waiting a long while for a couple of books to come out. I've been waiting since 2011 for one book to come out for book number six of a song in Ice and fire to come out the Game of Thrones book series. I've been waiting a long while or quicker, a long while. I've been waiting a long while. And now tell me what is something that you have been waiting a long while for? Say it out loud. Let everybody know I've been waiting a long while for good. Very good. So we've got Ale with Fail upwards. We've got Isle with a Long while. The next one I'd like to bring to your attention is repeat that sound back to me. Make a strong E, making pressure between the back of your tongue and your top teeth. E, let's hear what you got. That's it. Not just an E, but Eyo. And here's a nice word for you with the sound. Let's put a D before that to say Dio. And now quicker. Dio, Dio. As a matter of fact, I'm gonna give you two words, which I want you to feel the difference between. First, repeat back to me. Dyo. D E A l D. And now let me hear the word dill. Dill like this. Seasoning. Dill. Dill. Deal deal. Dill. Dill. Repeat those back to me. Notice dill does not have the glide. I'm not going deyo deyo, I'm only going, ill Ill the eye. In the word dill is a lax vowel. It's unmoving, it's static in its position, and it doesn't use the Why Glide deal Deal is a moving sound, and it releases a crystal clear why glide deal, deal. Now, let's put that word deal into a quick little idiom. Could I hear the real deal? The real deal? The real deal. When you share this podcast with your friends, you wanna tell them, Hey, you gotta listen to this guy. He's the real deal. The accent Training podcast is the real deal. The real deal means that something is authentic, it's legit. You can trust it. It's gonna give you exactly what you want. It will show you results. Pat the accent Coach is the real deal. This fella knows what he's talking about. Repeat that phrase back to me. Very good, very good. And I've got one more for you. One more for you with this sound. Oy ooi. This sound is one of the trickier vowel sounds to learn. I would argue that it's not the most difficult, but it is one that takes quite a bit of effort to get clearly. The trick is you round your lips to make this all, all sound. And then you relax your lips and pull your tongue back up to the ye ye oy. Now, just like we've practiced with ale E, when[inaudible] proceeds a dark al, we release that. Yeah, yeah. To make a seamless connection between our sounds. Oyo, OYO, repeat that sound back to me. Nice and slow. Let your muscles get used to it. What do you got? Yeah, lots of motion there. And now let's make it quicker. Oil. Oil. Now, keep practicing the word oil, because we've got a lot of uses for that, right? Olive oil, vegetable oil. But what I'd like to take a look at is how we can put an F before the word oil to say foil fo. Repeat that back to me now. And now let's even put the word tin, t i n, before the word foil. Tin foil, tin foil. And now quicker. Tin foil. Tin foil. Now, I've got an idiom for you to describe people that are a little abnormal, people that are prone to paranoia, and they believe that aliens are watching them from, you know, Saturn or something like that. We call them tin foil hat people, tinfoil hat, people. What is a tinfoil hat? Well, this is something that some people will make and put on their head because they believe it'll protect their brain from some sort of outside interference. I don't know all the details, but I believe it has something to do with preventing mind control maybe, or maybe trying to stop someone from reading your mind. You know, you put on a tinfoil hat, then you won't turn into a zombie. Now, it's not really my style. I'm certainly not someone who would put a tinfoil hat on their head, but there's a surprisingly large amount of people that would do this and that do, do this. And some people would use the word crazy to talk about these people. Other people would say, these are very intense conspiracy theorists. But me, I just say, if that's your level of comfort in society, if that's what it takes for you to feel safe, you know, go ahead. I don't really care. You know, put on a tinfoil hat if you want. Whatever makes you happy. But the point is, if you want to tell someone that you think their ideas are a little bit crazy or maybe based in paranoia, you can tell them, Hey, you know, take off the tinfoil hat for just a minute. It's like saying, let's look at this rationally. You know? Let's not just be afraid of everything that comes our way. Let's try to look at this situation rationally before we jump to conclusions. Take off the tinfoil hat. And that's our lesson for today, my friends. I'd like to briefly recap everything. I'd love to see that this sticks with you. But on the whole, I'd like you to know that this is a fairly advanced concept. What we're working on here is making clear sounds and connecting those sounds together. That takes a lot of practice and a lot of focus, and a lot of dedication to truly develop. This is to say, I don't want you to feel bad or discouraged. If it isn't coming to you right away, it's gonna take time. And you are going to make mistakes with this. Quite often you'll be speaking, you'll notice that you say a word like feel, but it'll catch your attention that it sounded more like Phil. Phil. And I want you to know that when that happens, you are failing upwards. You're failing upwards, because as I've discussed in the past, just becoming aware of this and learning to hear it is the first step before you can start to repeat and frequently and later, make it a natural sound in your speech. So if it doesn't come along right away, do not let that get to you. You're making progress just by keeping an ear open and by trying to repeat the motions that we've discussed today to adjust your speech to what other folks are saying. So let's briefly run through these idioms and then I'll let you go. First off upwards. Fail upwards along while a long while. The real deal. The real deal. Tinfoil hat people, tin foil hat, people. And that's it. Thank you for your attention. Thank you for taking the time to listen all the way through because it has truly been an honor to help my friends from all over the world take confident control over their spoken English. Make sure that you hit subscribe if you have not already, and have a good one. Folks.