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High back vowels /ʊ/ and /u/

 

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

/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.