m

The phoneme /m/ is produced exactly in the same way in English and Spanish, so it doesn’t pose any kind of trouble to Spanish speakers.

m (bilabial, nasal, voiced)

Spelling: m (meat, move), mm (summer, common), mb (climb, dumb), mn (condemn, column)

Do the sound /m/ in the same way you do it in Spanish. For once, it’s a very easy task. It may be interesting to have a look at the spelling, though.

 

Remember that when the m is doubled (summer, common) the sound doesn’t change.

Have a look at this interesting example:

sound_loud_speaker coma      sound_loud_speaker comma

The meaning is different (1. deep unconscious state; 2. punctuation mark) and the preceding o is pronounced differently as well, but the /m/ sound remains the same.

 

Also keep in mind that the consonants b and n become silent when they are placed after an m at the end of words. So you just have to say an /m/.

sound_loud_speaker climb      sound_loud_speaker column

 

Now, listen to some native speakers pronouncing the /m/.

sound_loud_speaker I confessed to having murdered somebody (Derek Jacobi, BBC4)

sound_loud_speaker Making it a woman made it less easy to dismiss, if you like, as a macho-man’s movie about war (Helen Mirren, BBC4).

 

This is the type of work I do with my students in my one-to-one classes. I make them practise these processes with exercises until they improve their comprehension of native speakers and are capable of speaking like that themselves. If you are interested in my classes, you can contact me here.

 

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