One of the hardest things about learning a new language is knowing how to make the sounds unfamiliar to you in your mother tongue. It involves a lot of practice and a basic understanding of where everything is in your mouth.
In our guide for pronunciation and phonics, we often refer to different parts of the mouth. For people, unfamiliar with the terms to describe different parts of the mouth in English, we have made this simple guide to refer to. In some cases, we have sacrificed technical terms for more easily understood terms, so please keep this in mind when using our diagrams.
If you need any more phonics help, check out our Phonics Home page for lessons, flashcards, and articles.
Parts of the Mouth
Tongue Placement for Short Vowels
For the below diagram, the letters represent the five short vowels, we have chosen not to use their IPA symbols. This is a basic approximation of where your tongue should be in both vowel height and vowel backness. For a more detailed explanation of how to make these sounds, you can take a look at our short vowels explanation post.
