message a verbal written or  recorded communication and 

massage kneading muscles

Let's take a look at our words.  We have message and massage.  

First things we are going to have a  stress shift here for the words. For  

message syllable one is going to be stressed.  That means it's going to be a little bit louder,  

a little bit higher in pitch, and the vowel will  be a little bit longer. Most of my students miss  

that vowel length one. So um, you know who  you are out there, if that's you, make it a  

little longer. And then we are going to stress  syllable number two in massage and you actually  

have two options um for the ending there. I do  hear both so i'm going to teach both of those.

Let's start with the m super easy breezy.  Put your lips together. Air moves out of  

your nose. Very easy. For meh your mouth is  going to be slightly open for that eh sound.

You can see the tip of my tongue  just between my top and bottom teeth.  

eh. It's peeking out there. So make  this vowel a little more relaxed,  

meaning it's not super tense. You're  not saying a a a its eh eh eh.

My tongue is relaxed in my mouth. There's  a slight little cup in the middle of my  

tongue. If you want to get super specific. And  my tongue is not touching anywhere in my mouth.  

If you struggle with differentiating these vowels,  it's not e in me, it's not mih as in mitten. It's  

eh a little bit lower just peeking out  of your mouth there. So we have meh  

meh meh. I just noticed I'm going to erase that  h there because some of you will get a little  

bit confused because this is not the way I  normally write it. And let me do my little  

short little u on the top there. Okay so we  have meh. And then for muh for massage, super  

relaxed vowel uh. My mouth is open.  

My tongue is very neutral. It's just in the  middle of my mouth. It's just that short uh.

Now let's move to syllable number two. Syllable  number two in both of these words starts with  

the s sound. For that s sound air is going to  move out of your mouth continuously. Tip of  

the tongue is either pointed down or just behind  the top front teeth. It's not touching anywhere.  

Then we're going to add that short i sound. Again  let me add that. I'm on the struggle bus with  

my spellings here today. Sorry everyone! And for  that IH we talked about that slightly. The tongue  

is going to be behind the top front teeth and a  little more relaxed. It's just behind the bottom  

part of your top teeth and you don't really see  it when you're saying this sound, sih sih sih

Then we're going to end with the j j.  To do this touch the tip of your tongue  

to the back of your top front teeth. Start at  that same spot where you would make a d sound  

and then pull the tongue back  into the middle of the mouth.

message message message

If you're struggling with this a little bit,  check out that my mouth is a little tiny bit  

more open for this part, and then it's a little  more closed for this part because of those vowels.

message message message message message

Now for saazh or saaj you actually have two  choices here. You know to start with that s  

sound and then we're going to move to that  open ah sound. Open your mouth wide. Tip of  

your tongue is low in the bottom of your  mouth back of your tongue is pulled up.  

You can say the j like we did for the top  part. ma saj with the j. Or you can just do the  

zh sound which is rounded lips. Voice box is  on and air is just continuously moving out  

of your mouth and your tongue is sort of in the  middle of your mouth. It's not touching anywhere  

so we have ma saj with the J or ma  sazh with the zh sound that zh sound.

So let's try these all again. message message message message 

massage massage massage massage massage

That one's hard for me because I  don't say that. And then with the  

s the z h there which is the zh sound

massage massage massage

So again message massage message 

massage message massage If you want to touch your teeth and say that j  

for massage go for it and you can do that as  well. So let's give it a try in a sentence:

Leave a message at the salon  to schedule your massage.

So give it a try i hope people notice  the difference. If you found this helpful  

give us a like and a share. If you have  time and if you need help check us out  

on Tarle speech for our classes and our products.  Thanks so much everyone have an amazing weekend!