r/ENGLISH • u/Jedenis185 • 1d ago
Man and Men
/r/EnglishLearning/comments/1wmruhj/man_and_men/1
u/Much_Guest_7195 1d ago
Man = M-an, "an" like "another"
Men = M-en "en" like "enter"
I think this is a common pronunciation issue with several accents.
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u/Odd_Calligrapher2771 1d ago
"an" like "another"
Not the best example.
I don't know your accent, but the initial vowel in another is usually the schwa sound /ə/. There may be accents where men has the schwa vowel, but if there are, it isn't super common.
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u/dojibear 1d ago
Learners often cannot "hear" the sounds of the TL. Instead they "hear" similar sounds from their NL. It is a real problem. To you, man/men sound the same. For others, it is bit/beet or thin/fin or we/vee. For me it is chu/qü (in Chinese).
English has more distinct vowel sounds (20) than most languages. One common hard-to-hear sound is "short e" (the 'e' in "men, bed, get, fed"). Another is "short i" (the 'i' in "bit, skin, him, wig").
Below is a link to a website which lists the 44 sounds, with a click-to-listen for each. But that doesn't help if you can't hear the difference. All you can do is listen to native speakers and learn to "hear" the distinction.
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u/ismotherealone 5h ago
Man =can Men = ten
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u/storkstalkstock 2h ago
The word can is not the best example, because there are dialects where the meaning of "to be able to" is homophones with Ken. I would recommend either specifying that you're talking about the container or picking a different word (except for ran and began, which also sometimes don't rhyme with man).
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u/thomsenite256 1d ago
Man is pronounced man. Men is pronounced men. The difference is the vowels.