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| Back high vowels: /u/ vs /ʊ/ |
Both /ʊ/ and /u/ are high back vowels. So both sounds are produced in the back of the mouth with the tongue raised high. The difference between them lies in the tenseness of the lips. The /ʊ/ sound is lax, and the /u/ sound is tense. To make /u/, we make the lips tense so that the lips are rounded and protruding. With /ʊ/, we raise the tongue and let the air out.
/u/ words
These are words with the /u/ sound:
with "'ew":
blew, brew, chew, crew, drew, screw, threw
with "o":
approve, approval, improve, lose, move, movie, prove, remove, shoe, tomb, whose, womb, do, two, who
with "oo":
boot, choose, cool, food, fool, loose, moon, pool, root, school, shampoo, shoot, soon, stool, tool, tooth, troop, zoo
with "ou":
group, soup, through, you, youth, routine, wound
with "u":
flu, include, June, Peru, rule, truth, haiku, tofu
with "ue":
blue, glue, sue, true
with "ui":
bruise, cruise, fruit, juice, lawsuit, suit, suitable, suitcase
Homophones
These words are homophones:
blew - blue
chews - choose
flew - flu
threw - through
too - two
/ʊ/ words
These are words with /ʊ/ sound:
with "oo":
book, cook, foot, good, hood, hook, look, shook, stood, took, wood
with "o":
bosom, wolf, woman
with "ou":
could, would, should
with "u":
bull, bullet, bully, bush, butcher, cushion, full, pudding, pull, push, put, sugar
homophones: wood, would
/u/ vs /ʊ/ minimal pairs
These are /u/ vs /ʊ/ minimal pairs.
fool, full
Luke, look
pool, pull
cooed, could
shooed, should
stewed, stood
wooed, would
Boole, bull
kook, cook
suit, soot
who'd, hood
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| /u/ vs /ʊ/ minimal pairs |
/u/ vs /ʊ/ in sentences
These are sentences with the /ʊ/ sound:
The wolf could be full.
The bull pushed the bucher into the bush.
Don’t pull or push the woman.
The bully took the sugar and put it in the pudding.
The butcher would cook the wolf for the woman.
These are sentences with the /u/ sound:
We packed the suitcase with fruit juice for the cruise.
The two groups choose movie-goers and crew members.
They approved watching the moon in the school swimming pool.
The bruise is blue.
You should remove the tomb and the two shoes from the room.
These sentences have both /ʊ/ and /u/ sounds:
I brewed coffee and cooked tofu.
You should look at the big blue moon.
Luke wooed the good-looking woman.
The fool kook wore a suit in the soot.
The foot looks good even though it has a blue bruise.