This video compares the 'ee' as in 'she' sound with the 'ih' as in 'sit' sound. If you are not familiar with those videos, I suggest you work through them before this blog entry.

Video Text:

I want to talk a little bit today about tense versus lax vowels. Specifically, the ee vs. the ih vowel sounds. As I already said in another blog entry, ee, which is tense, will tend to be held a bit longer than ih, which is lax. So when I say tense and lax, what exactly do I mean? Basically, with tense vowels, everything in your mouth is working a little harder than with lax vowels. If I was going to not say anything, and not prepare to say anything, clearly my mouth takes on a very neutral position. However, have you ever seen someone sleeping while they're sitting up, on a bus or something? Sometimes their mouth drops open into this position. That is very relaxed. And so lax vowels are often related to that extremely relaxed drop of the jaw and the relaxed tongue. Now, if I say ee and ih, which one looks closer to the sleeping-on-a-bus face? It's the ih, which is a lax vowel.

So what specifically are the differences here? Well, as I said, in a tense vowel, things will be working harder. So the tongue has to work harder in the ee than it does in the ih. And what it does, is it comes up and it touches the roof of the mouth, ee, ee, about here, ee, so it's about the middle. And of course, when the tongue raises, the jaw has to go with it, so the opening here in the mouth is not as great. Ee, ih, ee. Now, in addition to it raising, the tongue is sort of pressing forward a bit: ee ee, making the sound really controlled here. Whereas ih, the jaw drops more, the tongue is more relaxed, the sound feels in the face further back. Ee, ih.

Here we see a comparison of the ee as in she and ih as in sit vowels. As you can see, in the ee as in she on the left, the front top and bottom teeth are closer together than on the ih as in sit. This is due to the relaxed dropping of the jaw in the ih as in sit. Here we see these vowels in profile. Again, ee as in she is on the left. And you can see, the top teeth are closer to the bottom lip in the ee as in she sound. Again, this is because of this very relaxed dropping of the jaw in the ih as in sit.