The /j/ Sound

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The /j/ sound is called the “palatal approximant,” which means that you form a narrow space in the middle of your mouth with your tongue.

The /j/ sound is made through the mouth and is Voiced, which means you vibrate your vocal chords to make the sound. It is defined by the position of your tongue and it is an approximant, which is a sound made by creating a narrow space in your mouth through which air flows. In this case, it’s the space between your tongue and the top of your mouth. The sides are blocked so the flow of air just goes through the middle of your mouth.

To produce the /j/ sound, raise the sides of your tongue to the roof of your mouth and voice out through your mouth while lowering the back of your tongue. The middle and front of your tongue should be touching the roof of your mouth to begin with. Then you voice outwards and drop your tongue away from the roof of your mouth. The air flows out through the centre, between the sides of your tongue.

This video is part of our series on phonetics and pronunciation for learners of English as a foreign language.

Phonetics is the science of pronunciation. It can be helpful for people learning English because one of the most difficult things about the language is the spelling and pronunciation. English is not very phonetic and as a result the same letters are often pronounced in many different ways in different words.
The IPA helps by providing a way to write words as they are pronounced. The normal alphabet only has 24 characters but there are 44 different sounds that are used to pronounce words. As well as that, most word in English originate from other languages like Greek, Latin and French to name just a few and in many cases the the language of origin influences how the word is pronounced.
The IPA provides a symbol (phoneme) for each sound so the correct pronunciation can be written or printed in dictionaries.

This video along with the others in our pronunciation series helps language learners to hear the correct pronunciation and also to know how to produce the sound of each phoneme.