In this episode of Embarrassing English Errors Ep04 I teach you the subtle difference in pronunciation of the words bitch & beach.

Download the full PDF transcript here.

Embarrassing English Errors Ep04 – Bitch & Beach

So, welcome to episode number four of Embarrassing English Errors, guys. Today we’re going to do the words “bitch” and “beach”, and these are two words that I’ve had from a lot of my Spanish speaking friends that have been driving them crazy recently. They’ve been driving them nuts, because they find it incredibly difficult to pronounce the difference between the words “bitch”, and a bitch is a female dog, and often slang or [a] derogatory term for a woman. It can be sort of low to medium in rudeness. It’s not the most offensive thing you could say but it isn’t too… too nice. And the word “beach”, which is obviously a pebbly or sandy shore. It’s the part of land between the ocean and the land obviously. So, it’s that small strip. Whenever you go to the beach… everyone will know what a beach is.

Anyway, you can see how you could confuse the words “beach” and “bitch”. They sound very similar and obviously when you’re talking about going to a beach or going down on a beach, you don’t necessarily want to make someone think you’re talking about a woman and you’re saying… you’re referring to that woman in a nasty way by saying “I’m going down on that bitch”. And also, if you say things like “I’m going down on the beach”, that makes sense. “I’m going down onto the beach. I’m going to have a nice day on the beach”, but if you were to say that you’re going “to go down on that bitch”… for one thing you’re referring to a woman in that sense and it sounds like you’re being very nasty, very derogatory, like you don’t think a lot about the woman you’re talking about. And also, to say that you’re “going down on” a woman, it refers to more to… “going down on” it means like “to give oral sex to a woman”. So, it’s a very sexual and um… sort of a dirty way of… of talking about someone and suggesting something like that. So, it’s definitely something that you do not want to confuse when you really want to say that you’re going down on the beach.

Another awkward situation could be just saying that “there’s a really nice beach near my um… parent’s house” or something. You could accidentally say “there’s a really nice bitch near my parent’s house”, which would suggest more that you think there’s a… a really nice woman near your parent’s house. Anyway, they’re the kinds of errors that you could accidentally make when talking about these two things.

Um… what are some words in English that sound like “bitch” and have the same vowel sound in them?

Ditch

Glitch

Hitch

Itch

Pitch

Rich

Snitch

Switch

Twitch

Witch

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