Learn how to practice the word “murder” by breaking it down sound by sound. Then put it all together to feel confident using this word in American English conversation.
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Video Transcript:
Today I’m here at a beautiful cemetery in Georgia to teach you how to pronounce the word ‘murder’.
The word ‘murder’ or ‘murderer’, is actually one of the most requested words I get. Now, I’m going to try not to read too much into it. I’m going to assume that my audience isn’t going around murdering people right and left. It’s just that it’s a really hard word. And that’s definitely true.
So, it’s a two-syllable word, murder, or, a three-syllable word, murderer. In both cases, stress is on the first syllable. So, it’s DA-da. Or, DA-da-da. The first syllable begins with the M consonant, that’s simple enough. The lips come together: mur-. Then we pull right into the UR as in HER, the R vowel sound. Mur-. So, to make this sound, the lips will flare a little bit, mur-, mur-. The tongue is also moving. It’s pulling back some. Mur-, ur-, ur-. So the tip isn’t actually touching anything in the mouth. Now we have a D and then the same sound, -er, only in an unstressed syllable. So, to make the D, we’re just going to quickly flap the tongue against the roof of the mouth. Murrrr-d-errrr. You can hold out the ‘er’ sound at the beginning and at the end so that you can just isolate that very quick movement of the tongue for the D. Murder. So the second syllable here is the same position as the first for the vowel, but a little more relaxed because it’s in an unstressed syllable. Murder. So my lips will relax a little bit and the toungue might not pull back quite as far. Murder.
Now, if we’re going to go with a three-syllable word, murderer, we just need to reemphasize that second syllable to make a third syllable. So, I do this by lifting the tongue a little higher, towards the roof of the mouth again, sort of reemphasizing the ending R as a consonant. Murderer. Pulling into a tighter position and then relaxing again to make that third syllable. Murderer, murderer. If you find this especially difficult, try to slow it down and break it down into its parts, murderer, and see if that helps.
If there’s a word you find especially difficult to pronounce, put it in the comments below. That’s it, and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.
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