How to Pronounce Put Foot Could Woman

How to Pronounce Put Foot Could Woman

Perhaps you already know how to pronounce put foot could woman. We pronounce the vowel sound in all of the words above as /ʊ/. Whilst you may be familiar with the pronunciation of the word ‘put’, you must see that this very same word could reasonably be pronounced /pʌt/. But it isn’t. We have the word ‘putt’ for this, and that is an important word for you if you play golf. I don’t want to give you a list of other words in which we pronounce the  ‘u’ as /ʌ/ as I have already been over the /ʌ/ sound in my earlier post. So turning back to the /ʊ/ sound, you can see the letter ‘u’ pronounced with this sound in the words ‘bush’, ‘bull’ and ‘cushion’. /bʊʃ//bʊl//kʊʃən/. The infographic below gives further examples.

Spelling And Regional Accents

Of course, this is received pronunciation. Although in southern England we pronounce ‘cut’, ‘bun’ and ‘gun’ as /kʌt/, /bʌn/ and /gʌn/, a lot of people, especially in northern England, would use the /ʊ/ sound: /kʊt/, /bʊn/ and /gʊn. So don’t be surprised to hear this.

Watch out for exceptions!

Exceptionally, we sometimes pronounce the letter ‘o’ as /ʊ/. We have ‘wolf’ and ‘woman’. But this is not a common exception, so please learn these examples on their own.

Aren’t There Different Ways of Pronouncing ‘oo’?

The ‘oo’ can make different sounds and you can find plenty of words ending with /k/, /t/ and /d/ making the /ʊ/ sound. But this is not always the case. So other than the words in the infographic, you can learn common words like ‘cook’, ‘good’, ‘hood’, ‘wood’ and ‘understood’ [/kʊk/,/gʊd/,/hʊd/,/wʊd/,/ʌndəstʊd/] for now.

It’s All Conditional

Finally, we have the conditional words ‘could’, ‘would’, and ‘should’, all very useful words which every English pronunciation teacher hears their students say incorrectly all the time. The problem does not, however, tend to be the /ʊ/ sound, but the letter ‘l’. In these words there is no /l/ sound as the letter ‘l’ is silent. So we pronounce these words /kʊd/, /wʊd/ and /ʃʊd/.

On the face of it all three look like they would all be pronounced in the same way. The word ‘dull’ is pronounced /dʌll/, like ‘gull’/gʌl/ and ‘Hull’/hʌl/. To ‘pull’ and ‘bull’ we can add ‘full’ /fʊl/. There is no particular reason for this and they just need to be learnt.