Lessons Unit 1, lesson 39
tʃ as in chair
One consonant, on its own page. Hear it, watch where it sits in each word's sheet, then say the words yourself.
What do the marks mean?
Want the full walkthrough? Read the map explains every mark, with practice.
tʃthe ch in chair
A quick t that releases straight into sh: ch. One sound, even though it's written with two letters.
Now say it yourself
Read each word from its sheet, out loud, three times. Where there's a play button, listen first and copy what you hear. Slow is fine — speaking clearly matters more than speaking fast. Tap a word's microphone to record yourself and see which sounds landed.
Check your pronunciation, on this device. The first use downloads a small AI listener (about 40 MB, one time, then it's cached). Your voice is analyzed here in your browser — it never leaves your device.
One sound, two letters
tʃ is a single unit, not t followed by sh as two separate beats. The tongue makes a quick t-style stop, then releases straight into the ʃ hiss without any gap — say chair or chat and try to feel it as one fast motion.
This is why it's called an affricate: a stop and a hiss fused together, spelled with two letters but acting like one sound.
Don't flatten it to sh
The most common slip is dropping the initial stop and saying only ʃ, so chew starts to sound like shoe. Keep that brief tongue-tip contact at the very start.
At the end of a word, like teach or each, the stop-then-hiss pattern still applies — don't let it soften into a pure ʃ just because it's word-final.
Try chop and church and listen for that brief click at the start before the hiss opens up — both beats belong to the same single sound.