Why FUTURE Sounds Like “FUCHER” | English Pronunciation Explained
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Hello, hello, hello, my friends. Welcome back to another edition of English Makes No Sense, the podcast where we have fun with the English language one lesson at a time. Today, we're going to take a look at something that's totally illogical. And very confusing. And it comes at the request of Dr. Bolster, fourth grade bilingual class at Rogers Street Academy. And they had a really good question the other day.
Why do words like 'future' sound like they have a 'ch' sound?
They said, why do words like future, F-U-T-U-R-E, and nature, N-A-T-U-R-E, sound like they have a ch sound? When there is clearly a T and a U and no CH, why isn't it future? Why is it future and not future? Hmm. Well, I hope we can clear up this mystery right now. Are you ready? Come on. Oh, yeah. Let's get going. Okay, in American English, when T plus U come together in certain positions, the sound often changes to ch, the ch sound. This process is called, wait for it, palatalization. Woo, baby, that's a big word. Palatalization. Fun fact, never heard of that word until I started looking into why the T-U-R becomes a ch. Palatalization. But don't worry about that big, big word. No, no, my friends, just remember this.
T plus U often becomes like a C-H.
Let me repeat that. I should get a whiteboard, wait.
If you're just listening to this as a podcast, you're like, okay, why did you get a whiteboard? I can't see it. But if you're watching it either on YouTube or the Riverside or Spotify video, you'll see. So let me do this again. I got to get a little guy to erase my whiteboard.
Let me just use my sleeve. Okay. It's T. Oh, now we need a marker. Okay. Oh, sorry about that.
A little technical difficulty. T plus U. If you watch it on Facebook, you'll see T plus U often becomes C-H.
Not two, but ch.
What? Yeah, but not always. Of course not always. It's English. Why would it always do one thing and not do many things? I don't know, but we're going to talk about how to identify it. Okay? Let's get busy. Here are some common words where T-U equals C-H. Okay. Future. Wait, before I get started in the list of words, listen and repeat. In fact, let me write them down as we go.
Listen and repeat. Future. Nature.
Now, future is F-U-T-U-R-E. There's no C or H in it, but we pronounce it future. Same with nature.
Picture. Culture. Feature.
Are you repeating them? Come on. The only way to get better is to practice it. Adventure. OK, I'm going to put these up. I'm writing them as we speak. And gesture. And mixture. What? Notice the pattern.
Let me write those at the top. I'll put them sideways. Mixture. Gesture.
Okay, if you watch this on the video, you'll see it in the captions. But I have a little visual here for those of you that are watching and not just listening. Are you ready?
Here we go. Oh, no. Future. Let me move that light. Nature, picture, culture, feature, adventure, mixture.
Mixture, M-I-X-T-U-R-E, and gesture. Notice the pattern, T-U-R-E. Future, nature, picture, culture, feature, adventure, mixture, nurture, and gesture. The pattern, most of these end in T-U-R-E. That ending almost always sounds like chur. Got it? Chur, not tour, chur. Okay, you got that? Keep that in your head.
What is palatalization and how does it affect pronunciation?
Okay, I got it. But why does this happen? Here's the down and dirty explanation. Your mouth is lazy. What? Yes, really. English speakers naturally blend sounds to speak faster. I'm sure other languages do it too, but I only know about English. What happens is the T is made with the tongue forward. Notice where your tongue goes when you make the T sound. And the U sound in the U pulls the tongue up. U, your tongue goes up. So the sounds blend. Choo. Choo. Boom. It goes choo. It's a natural smoothing process. Choo. It's hard to go to-oo. Yeah, it's a got it. Okay. It's just our models are lazy. We tried to do things as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Okay, but you said some words do not follow the rule. I know.
You were listening. And here's where English makes no sense. Sometimes T-U stays a clean T sound.
What? Yeah. Listen carefully. Student. S-T-U-D-E-N-T. Student. Stupid. Studio. Tuesday.
Tuna. Notice the T stays T when TU starts a stressed syllable.
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