Help with pronunciation: Difference between 2 variations of the “short u” sound

[hoang21anh]

I really need to distinguish between the 2 variations of the short u sound (in the red box in the pic below, many dictionaries have instructions for pronunciation like this). I can understand the difference of the 2 short i sounds but impossible with the short u.


Thank you in advance.

 

[PHenry1026]

They are very close:

/ʊ/ is a bit shorter than /u/.

The best way to hear the difference is to use a Phoneme Text to Speech Dictionary which can pronounce individual phoneme sounds.

;-) Percy

 

[bubbha]

/ʊ/ is also less rounded than /u/.