Lessons Unit 1, lesson 37
ʃ as in shop
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.
ʃthe sh in shop
Push your lips forward, pull the tongue slightly back, and let air hiss: shhh — the quiet-please sound.
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.
Where your tongue and lips go
For ʃ, push your lips slightly forward and pull the body of your tongue back from the s position — the classic quiet-please gesture. That small shift back is what changes a hiss into this softer, rounder shhh.
Say shop and then sat from the s-lesson back to back, and notice your lips move forward and your tongue pulls back for the first one.
Not quite s, not quite ch
If your ʃ sounds too sharp and whistly, you're probably keeping the tongue too far forward, closer to s. If it sounds like it has a hard stop at the start, you're adding a t and drifting toward the ch sound instead.
ʃ should be one smooth, continuous hiss — you can hold it as long as you have breath, the way you do in wash or push, with no stop anywhere in it.