Lessons Unit 1, lesson 38
ʒ as in measure
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.
ʒthe s in measure
The same shhh with your voice switched on. English hides it in the middle of words: measure, television, usual.
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.
The voicing pair: sh and zh
ʒ is just ʃ with your voice switched on — same lip rounding, same tongue pulled back, but now it buzzes. Say measure and feel the hum sitting right in the middle of the word.
Compare pleasure and its unvoiced cousin — if the middle sound comes out as a plain hiss with no buzz, you've reverted to ʃ instead of ʒ.
The rarest consonant sound in English
Notice that every example here — measure, television, vision, decision — has ʒ tucked in the middle, never at the very start of a word. That's typical; ʒ almost never opens an English word.
A frequent slip is swapping it for the sound in judge, adding a hard stop at the front. Keep it a smooth, continuous buzz, with no d-like click before it, as in garage or beige.