The Vowel Sound /ɪ/ (e corta)

The /ɪ/: short, relaxed, neither i nor e

The /ɪ/ is a short, loose vowel that doesn't exist in Spanish. It sits between the Spanish i and e, and it turns up in dozens of everyday words. It's the vowel Spanish speakers get wrong most often, because our ear files it away as a plain i.

How it's made

• 👄 Mouth: slightly open, lips relaxed and unspread.
• 👅 Tongue: forward and fairly high, but lower than for /i/.
• 🔊 Voice: voiced, short and untensed — don't stretch it.

You hear it in: sit · fish · lid · pick · bin

⚠️ The typical Spanish-speaker mistake: swapping in the tense, long Spanish i. That turns sit into seat, ship into sheep and fill into feel.

By the end you'll be able to: hear and produce the difference in pairs like sit / seat and ship / sheep.