Some consonants sounds in American English remind me of mathematics.

Specifically addition, I'll explain.

When I was young, I learned how to add numbers.

For example, one plus one equals two.

There are consonants sounds that are like this.

They're sometimes called affricates.

Affricates are made up of a stop sound, followed by a fricative sound.

Another way to say this is stop sound, plus fricative sound equals affricate.

There are two of these complex consonant sounds in English.

They are 'ch' as in chicken and 'j' as in judge.

Let's explore the 'ch' sound.

It starts with a stop sound as in 't' and then moves to a fricative sound 'sh'.

When you add the two sounds together, you get 'ch'. Similarly, the 'j' sound starts with the stop sound 'd' and then moves to a fricative sound 'ge', 'j' .

These complex consonants sounds are difficult for speakers of many languages.

Vietnamese speakers, for example, might replace an affricate sound, such as 'ch' with a fricative sound such as 'sh'.

The result is that a word like 'much' might sound more like 'mush'.

Speakers of other languages might use complex consonants sounds from their own languages while speaking English,

For example, Korean speakers might use something like a 'dz' sound –

a complex consonant sound that does not exist in English.

They might use this sound in place of a 'z' sound.

The result is that a word such as 'zebra' or 'zoo' sounds like 'dzebra' or the 'dzoo'.

The solution for all of these issues is for you to pay careful attention to complex consonant sounds.

Remember, there are only two of them in English.

Time spent mastering these sounds will be of great value to you.

That's all for today.

Keep up the good work.