English Pronunciation: Learn when and how to say the S & Z sound



The S sometimes sounds like a Z in English. But when should you use which sound? Some words are spelled the same way but have two different pronunciations! In this pronunciation lesson, I will talk about words which look the same but can be pronounced in two different ways, with an S sound or a Z sound. For example, “close”, “use”, “house”, and “excuse” can all be pronounced with an S sound or a Z sound, and the sound will change the meaning of the word. There are also some words which are very similar, for example “lose”, “loose”, “advise”, and “advice”, which even native English speakers get confused about. So take my advice, watch the video, do the quiz at , improve your knowledge of English, and increase your vocabulary!

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30 Comments

  1. Great video!! This is really hard for Swedes as well since we don't have a voiced z-sound at all in our language, only the unvoiced s. Listen to Alexander Skarsgård or Joel Kinnaman speak, even though they speak English fluently, they still get the z-sound wrong sometimes!

  2. 04:32 is the moment we fully understand the difficult turning point and that with this lovely lady. We understand that it's really more about the length of the preceding vowel than that of a possible buzzing of the following s. I explained this to my ENG teacher, who hadn't really understood that fact. This is the last brick to understand the ENG language.

  3. This video saved my life honestly. I am learning Auslan (Australian Sign Language) and I want to be an interpreter in the future. I have no difficulties signing, as I passed all previous assessments with flying colours, no resits. However, if I need to translate Auslan to English, I will need to speak. I struggle a lot with speaking in English. My education was so strange that no one has ever explained pronunciation to me like what you did. I realised it's not my accent. It's actually I had no idea how to pronounce the words correctly. Thank you very much.

  4. Wow! I didn't know about the difference in sounds of verbs and nouns. But I have question why does the word rose, the flower, have the z sound If It is a noun?

  5. I have a question about whether the final S has a sound of Z when pronounced as any verb, like: "was" /woz/, "plays" /pleIz/ (verb used for the third person) and "plays" (noun in plural) or this rule can be used in any case.
    Thank you!

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