Short video lesson: Tense versus relaxed/neutral sounds (English)

This video helped solve a lot of problems for me. My students almost always confuse the short i and long e sounds when saying English words. This was because their native tongue was Filipino, which is influenced by Spanish, which has Latin-derived vowels. So the letter "I" sounds like "ee". This is similarly found in Japanese and I believe Russian as well.

Filipino: Lito (Lee-toh)

Japanese: Kimiko (Kee-mee-koh)

Russian: Kirilenko (Kee-ree-leng-koh)

So the short I sound gives them fits. But after I showed them this video and taught them how to "feel" for the tense vowels, they found it easier to do! Thank you, Lisa Mojsin.

Phillip.Laplana wrote:

My students almost always confuse the short i and long e sounds when saying English words.

Yes, beach can be a dangerous word in Philippine English for example. There are some other vowel pronunciations that I get confused by too, as a native English speaker. "Crepe" for example. In English and French the first e is a long ee, but it's short in the Philippines. Can you explain that?

leosmith wrote:

Phillip.Laplana wrote:

My students almost always confuse the short i and long e sounds when saying English words.

Yes, beach can be a dangerous word in Philippine English for example. There are some other vowel pronunciations that I get confused by too, as a native English speaker. "Crepe" for example. In English and French the first e is a long ee, but it's short in the Philippines. Can you explain that?

You mean long ee like "creep?" But I always thought that was krehp. The online dictionaries say it's either krep with a short E or kreyp with a long A. @_@

Hehe... beach... we have many beaches in the Philippines. :D Foreign tourists all love our beaches.

Phillip.Laplana wrote:

You mean long ee like "creep?"

Lol, no, my bad. I meant ay like in May, but this made me re-think it and realize Tagalog is closer; French is more like krep.