The /u:/ Sound

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This is the /u:/ sound. It is a Vowel sound and it’s technical name is the ‘Close Back Rounded Vowel’.

Remember that the key to pronunciation s physical and the name tells us about how the sound is made physically. In this case your tongue is high and back of your mouth. Rounded refers to your lips because they are pushed together like you are going to kiss someone.

All vowels are made through the mouth and are voiced so you vibrate your vocal chords to make the sound.
It is similar to the /ʊ/ sound, but the two little dots mean that it is a longer sounds.
/u:/ not /ʊ/.
To produce the sound put your tongue high and at the back of your mouth and lightly push your lips together while making a long voiced sound with your mouth closed.

This video is part of our series on phonetics and pronunciation for learners of English as a foreign language.

Phonetics is the science of pronunciation. It can be helpful for people learning English because one of the most difficult things about the language is the spelling and pronunciation. English is not very phonetic and as a result the same letters are often pronounced in many different ways in different words.
The IPA helps by providing a way to write words as they are pronounced. The normal alphabet only has 26 characters but there are 44 different sounds that are used to pronounce words. As well as that, most word in English originate from other languages like Greek, Latin and French to name just a few and in many cases the the language of origin influences how the word is pronounced.
The IPA provides a symbol (phoneme) for each sound so the correct pronunciation can be written or printed in dictionaries.

This video along with the others in our pronunciation series helps language learners to hear the correct pronunciation and also to know how to produce the sound of each phoneme.

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