Often, when many people pronounce the three words, all they say is ‘pat’. This is despite the fact that their meanings are not only different but their pronunciations are also not the same. Today, we will attempt to establish the differences in the sounds and identify some other related words.
Being homonyms, pat, part and path have similar spellings and sounds, but the pronunciations are only similar, they are not the same. You can pat someone on the back. You can part way with someone or have an essay in three parts. Also, you can ask someone to tread a path. These are in terms of their meanings but our primary concern in this lesson is how they should be differently articulated.
Pat
This seems to be the easiest to pronounce. For one, it is a short vowel, and a popular vowel for that matter. It is present in cab, hat, wad, bad, sad, balance, mat attack, dab etc. Very simple to pronounce. Just A: PAT. Or PATriciA! Unfortunately, because of the relative ease with which it is realised, a lot of folks impose it on the other two words. So, when they mean ‘pat’, they say so. They mean ‘part’, they say PAT. They have ‘path’ in mind, they still say PAT!
Part
On the other hand, the pronunciation of ‘part’ is a little tricky. It demands a little more pressure. The energy required is not the type that saps the veins but the speech organs in the mouth have more work to do than when ‘pat’ is being produced. This is due to the fact that, in ‘part’, we have a long vowel, the long AA, occasioned by the presence of ‘ar’ in the context. So, instead of just saying PAT, you say PAAT. Not differentiating between the articulation of the two can ignite ambiguity as your listener may think you are pronouncing ‘pat’ instead of ‘part’. Other words in which you have the long AA include hard, card, bard, smart, sharp, tar, hard and scar. Put differently, don’t say ‘had’ when you mean ‘hard’.
Path
Interestingly, ‘pat’ and ‘path’ share the same vowel sound –A, the short one. This means that it is the way you pronounce the ‘a’ in pat that you articulate the one in ‘path’ too. However, it is wrong to pronounce the entire words the same way. The difference is fundamental and it borders on the consonants that end the two elements. A lot of people get it wrong because they pronounce T and TH the same way. ‘Pat’ should sound as PAT but ‘path’ should come out as PATH, with the TH coming out softer than you have in T. While the T in ‘pat’ is the same in pet, met, wet, mat, smart, rot, distort and twist, the TH in ‘path’ should be articulated like the one in south, mouth, three, with, throw, withhold, thrice, think, something and month.
When pronouncing T, the tip of the tongue contacts the teeth but when articulating TH, the tip of the tongue sort of wants to flow out through the barricade created by the upper and lower teeth. Can you then practise the pronunciations of the following pairs?
Pat – path
Fought – forth
Shout – south
Wit – with
Sheet – sheath
Tin – thing
Tank – thank.
https://punchng.com/pronouncing-pat-part-and-path/
