Si and Shi...

I recently noticed that many of my students have a hard time with the "si" sound. I think this is because in Japanese there is no "si" only "shi" or "し". So in Japanese you have sa さ, shi し, su す, se せ, so そ, which makes it very difficult for Japanese English speakers to pronounce the "si" without the "sh" sound attached to it.

I went over a tongue twister before to practice the "shi" sound:

She sells seashells by the seashore.

This will also help you with the "si" sound. All of these are pronounced the same:

C = see = sea = si(like the Spanish word for yes)

Now let's break down the previous tongue twister.

し sells si-shells by the si-shore

That tongue twister is a bit challenging and I would like to focus on the "si" sound without dealing with the "sh" sound at all. So, I wrote a simpler one to get you started.

Here it is:

Silly Sid sips single malt whiskey in the city of Sidney.

So you can practice the "si" sound 6 times in one sentence!

頑張れ！！！