HOW TO PRONOUNCE SH IN ENGLISH

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If you have reached this article it is surely because you have been wondering how to pronounce sh in English. The study and practice of English pronunciation and phonetics is very important, because thanks to the correct pronunciation of sounds, you will ensure that the message you want to convey arrives clearly and without confusion. Moreover, pronunciation is one of the elements of learning English to which a good amount of time is always dedicated.

In fact, SH is one of the most frequent consonant clusters in English, so it is necessary to know how to pronounce it correctly. For Spanish speakers, it can sometimes be a little difficult to produce correctly since it is not a sound common in this language. ABA English knows the importance of having good pronunciation, so in this article we explain how to do it in the best way and we will give you some examples so you can practice it.

THE ENGLISH PHONETICS OF SH

The phonemes of English phonetics, which are part of the International Phonetic Alphabet, are the best tools to know what the pronunciation of a given word is. Knowing and interpreting these phonemes is one of the best options to know how to pronounce any word in English. In this article we present to you the phoneme /ʃ/ that represents the sound of the consonant cluster SH.
HOW TO PRONOUNCE SH IN ENGLISH

THE PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF WORDS THAT HAVE SH IN ENGLISH

Now let’s see how SH is pronounced and sounds in English, whose phoneme, as we saw, is /ʃ/. To make it easy for you, this cluster is pronounced like when in Spanish you say ‘shh’ to make someone be quiet. Keep in mind that /ʃ/ is a soft sound. Practice first by making ‘shhhh’ a couple of times to do it softly and then try the words we propose below. First, we have show (to show), /ʃəʊ/, which in Spanish sounds like ‘shou’. Now let’s move on to ash (ash), /æʃ/, which sounds like ‘ash’, just like if you were reading it in Spanish. Finally, a word with SH in the middle ashamed (ashamed), /əˈʃeɪmd/, pronounced ‘asheimd’. As you can see, the cluster SH is not a sound that does not exist in Spanish, which already makes things easier for you. Now it is only a matter of practicing and enjoying speaking English. However, you must be careful not to confuse the pronunciation of ‘sh’ with ‘ch’, as in chamarra, since they are very different.

HOW TO IMPROVE THE PRONUNCIATION OF SH IN ENGLISH

Do you want to keep expanding your vocabulary of words that have SH in English? Here we give you three examples to add to those from the previous paragraph and keep practicing your pronunciation. Shine (to shine), /ʃaɪn/; clash (to clash), /klæʃ/ and ashore (ashore) /əˈʃɔːr/.

We already told you about our Listen-Record-Compare exercises, with them we suggest you practice listening to sentences from native speakers and then recording yourself repeating them. This way you can compare both ways of pronouncing and make the necessary corrections to improve yours and finally achieve an almost perfect pronunciation of sh in English.

It is always important to pronounce new words carefully because that prevents you from ‘learning to pronounce them wrong’ and having to correct them later, which is more difficult. 

HOW TO PRONOUNCE SH IN ENGLISH

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