today's question um the word is not very common it's how do I say the word

potluck which is when everyone makes a food at home and then they bring it to a

party and bad luck which means you're just not finding success so let's go

ahead and take a look at these words we have pot luck and bad luck so number one

we're going to start with compound nouns if you've watched some of my videos you

know that you stress word number one in a compound noun and the second word is

less stressed and then you're going to link those words together meaning there

is no pause between the words so we're going to have pot luck and bad luck so

pot luck bad luck the second point of confusion here is the vowel and the

voiceless T versus the vowel and the voiced D so for the word pot let's take

a look at that the middle sound here the oh is wide open in an oval oh hot and

then we're going to end that word by touching the tip of the tongue to the

back of the top front teeth pot pot yes we're not going to pull the tongue down

and a way we're not going to explode that sound so we have pot pot next we have

the word bad bad and to say this word we're going to have that short a sound

that ah and our mouth is gonna be more in a wide circle for both of these

sounds your tongue is going to be lower in your mouth with the back of your

tongue pulled up but for most people if you just focus on what your lips you're

doing that's so much easier than thinking about actually where your

tongue is so we're going to have bad and we're gonna end that again with the

D sound but we're not going to explode it so how do you know what the

difference is here the key is vowel length for word number one sound 1 the P

is not voiced and sound 3 that T the last sound is not voiced as well so this

vowel is going to sound much shorter shouldn't say much shorter most people

are going to put a comment in and say those sound exactly the same to me but

if you really listen this vowel is going to be shorter than the vowel in bad and

the reason is is because we have a voiced sound here and a voiced sound

here at the end when we have two voiced sounds sort of sandwiching that vowel in

the middle that vowel is going to sound longer because all vowels are voiced so

listen to these two words pot bad pot bad pot bad again let's listen one more

time and try to say them at normal speed pot bad so then we combine those

together we're going to say pot luck bad luck pot luck bad luck pot luck bad luck

I've had bad luck at potluck dinners because I always bring something people

don't like so I've had bad luck at potluck dinners because I always bring

something that people don't like give it a try I know people are going to notice

the difference if you found this helpful we'd love a like and a share don't

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our classes at tarle speech thanks so much I'll see you soon