Pronunciation ChallengeWhy do your jeans wear out so quickly? - Madhavi Venkatesan

Intro:
Hi, VoiceTubers! This is Jeff Chiao. Originally designed to withstand the harsh working conditions coal miners faced, jeans are arguably the most commonly worn pants in the world for their durable texture and casual style. With denim cloth, the sturdy cotton weave which is the main component of a pair of jeans, jeans could last for years when first invented.

However, nowadays, it seems our store-bought jeans wear out far quicker than that, with their color fading away after only a few washes, and having holes everywhere in just a year. Not only that, as we are replacing these jeans fairly quickly, the companies are also producing more to meet the demand, which then causes negative impacts to our environment without us even noticing. To learn more about how our favorite clothes end up becoming a burden for our mother nature, go watch today’s video. As for now, let’s go take a look at our featured sentence first.


Featured Sentence:
“All in all, the manufacturing process for a single pair of jeans emits over 33 kilograms of carbon—the equivalent of driving over 110 kilometers.”

Okay, let me repeat it one more time, just a little bit slower.

“All in all, the manufacturing process for a single pair of jeans emits over 33 kilograms of carbon—the equivalent of driving over 110 kilometers.”

With that out of the way, let’s head to the pronunciation tips.

Pronunciation tips:
Our first tip of the day is, you’ve guessed it: about the connection between two successive words. Our first example is “emits over.” We could combine the /s/ in “emits” with “over”, and pronounce them as “emits-over.” Emits-over.”
The second example is “kilograms of.” Likewise, we could combine the /s/ in “kilograms” with “of”, and pronounce them as “kilogramz-of.” Notice that the “of” should be a weaker /əv/ instead of /ɑːv/. “Kilogramz-of.”
Our last example is “equivalent of”. We could combine the /t/ in “equivalent” with “of”, and pronounce them as “equivalent-of.” Like “of” in the previous example, don’t forget to pronounce it as the weaker /əv/. “Equivalent-of.”

There are also a couple of words worth paying extra attention to. The first word is “manufacture”. Both “a”s sound like /æ/, the first “u”, combined with “n”, sounds like /njə/ /and the “ture” sounds like /tʃɚ/. With the stress put on “fa”, it should be: manufacture. Manufacture.
The other word is equivalent. The first “e” and “i” sound like a short /ɪ/, the “a” sounds like /ə/, and the “en” sounds like /ən/. With the stress put on “qui”, it should be: equivalent. Equivalent.

All right, with the tips sorted, let’s get to the vocabulary.

Vocabulary:

manufacture (v.) KK [͵mænjəˋfæktʃɚ] IPA /ˌmæn.jəˈfæk.tʃɚ/
to produce goods in large numbers, usually in a factory using machines

These models are hard to find nowadays as the company that manufactured it had stopped the production line a decade ago.

process (n.) KK [ˋprɑsɛs] IPA /ˈprɑː.ses/
a series of actions that you take in order to achieve a result

The country is undergoing unstable political turmoil in the process of democratization.

equivalent (adj.) KK [ɪˋkwɪvələnt] IPA /ɪˈkwɪv.əl.ənt/
having the same amount, value, purpose, qualities, etc.

It is rumored that the legendary pirate had hidden precious treasures that were equivalent to a nation’s wealth in the Caribbean Sea.

Outro:

So that wraps up today’s episode!

Aside from jeans, have you noticed any other clothes wear out way faster than you remembered in the past? As the trend of fast fashion is raging on, we now have much more choices when it comes to clothes with much lower prices. In the meantime, we could also sense the subtle or sometimes obvious change to the quality of what we are wearing, like the jeans in the video. According to clothes waste charity organization TRAID, the average garment is only worn 10 times before it is thrown away, and the fashion industry is producing 400% more than 20 years ago. As our population obviously didn’t pump up 400% in two decades, such absurd growth is truly concerning, and we really shouldn’t treat our clothes as disposable packages of our bodies.

This is Jeff Chiao from VoiceTube. Hope y’all have a good one! Until next time, goodbye.

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