Cold Brew In America

There is a very big difference in the pronunciation of “pro” and “brew” “Brew” is like Br-oo “Pro” is like Pr-oh.

There is no similarity in pronunciation between "pro" and "brew."

They are quite different sounds. Brew - [**https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/En-us-brew.ogg**](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/En-us-brew.ogg) **Pro -** [**https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/LL-Q1860\_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-pro.wav**](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-pro.wav)

Quite a bit. The b is voiced, and the vowels sound very different. The o in pro sounds (in my pronunciation) like the oe in woe, the ough in dough, the ow in low and mow. The ew in brew sounds like the ew in dew, the oo in troops, the o in lose, and the ue in true and blue.

Just a native speaker here whispering “cold brew” to himself and realizing what a mouthful that phrase is. Those sounds are not happy about being next to each other.

Pro and brew are pronounced differently, not sure how to explain it but you can try our app to improve your pronunciation. After Sign up click on Tutor and then select English as second language, you can practice speaking, vocabulary, etc. It also has pronunciation evaluation: https://rogfy.com/demo

Brew ends in an "oo" sound as in "moon." Pro ends in an "oh" sound as in "home."

/b/ and /p/ are two distinct phonemes in English. Voiced stops are not aspirated and voiceless stops at the beginning of words and stressed syllables typically are (unless preceded by a fricative). So there’s a little puff of air that accompanies /p/ in “pro”. This also affects following sounds by devoicing the beginning of them. These words also have to distinct vowel sounds. Generally they’re transcribed as /o͡ʊ/ (pro) and /uː/ (brew), but these aren’t really great transcriptions for most modern accents. They’re more like /o͡w/ and /ʉ͡w/, respectively, or something similar to that for most speakers. The only thing these words do actually have in common is the R sound, but it’s also not entirely the same due to the aspiration. So they are audibly different, which is part of what helps native speakers distinguish /p/ from /b/ because voiced stops can be weakly voiced by natives. The aspiration does most of the heavy lifting, so much so that an unaspirated P actually sounds like a B out of context to most of us.

Maybe if you uploaded a recording, people could tell you where the problems are.

>What's the difference in pronunciation between pro and brew? The only thing they share in common is the r. P and b are different sounds and ew and o are very different vowel sounds. If those two words sound the same to you, then you really gotta work on your vowel pronunciation.

The P in Pro is more strongly plosive than the B in Brew. You may be over-enunciating the B. For many Americans, the B sound as it would be used in this word is ALMOST an M and lacks the intense pop that a P has. Pro rhymes with Low. Brew rhymes with Crew. Make sure you're hitting the vowel sound right. The American rhotic R may be getting you here, too. Adding too much roll can make it hard to understand.

If you’d like some feedback on your pronunciation you could make a recording on Vocaroo and add it here.

Just ask for iced coffee, they'll only have one or the other. If it's cold brew, they'll give you that!

Maybe they don’t know what you mean. “cold brew” is about beer to me. Why would you be talking about it in a coffee shop?