 Hi students, it's Shayna from espressoenglish.net and today I want to give you a live lesson answering a student question. Someone asked me when we use the word cloth and when we use the word clothes. So today I'm going to explain the difference between cloth and clothes. First there's a pronunciation difference. The word cloth has an aw sound, cloth. It's similar to the words law, bought, and taught. Even though the sound is spelled differently, it's spelled with an o here, it's spelled with a w here, it's spelled o-u-g-h in the word bought and a-u-g-h in the word taught, but it's the same sound. So listen to all four words, cloth, law, bought, and taught. It's the aw sound. Now the word clothes has an o sound and that's similar to the words nose, hope, low. Listen to those, clothes, nose, hope, and low. Now listen to the difference between cloth and clothes. Do you hear it? Aw, o, cloth, clothes. Okay, so that's the pronunciation difference. Now how are they different in meaning? Well the word cloth just means fabric. Like this is a piece of cloth. Actually, this is what we call a washcloth because in America we use a washcloth to wash our face, often to take off makeup. So this is called a washcloth and it's a piece of cloth, it's a piece of fabric. Use the word clothes for talking about what you wear. So your clothes are your shirt, your jacket, your pants or shorts, and socks and underwear. Okay? So when talking about the fabric, use cloth and when talking about the shirt and pants and everything that you wear, use clothes. Now it looks like this one is singular and this one is plural, but that's actually not the case. The plural of cloth is cloths. If I have more than one cloth, I have washcloths. But clothes is always plural like this. It's always clothes. I'm wearing new clothes or I'm going to buy some new clothes. You might be wondering, well, what do I call a single piece of clothing? You can call it a piece of clothing or an item of clothing. Clothing is the same as clothes, okay? Both words refer to what you're wearing. So you can say a piece of clothing, an item of clothing. You don't say one clothes or a clothes. It's just not right. You can say one piece of clothing, one item of clothing or an item of clothing or you can just say its name, one shirt, one jacket, one pair of pants. With the word pants, it's a little bit special because even though it's one item, it's always plural. So don't say I'm wearing a blue pant. It's not correct. You would say I'm wearing blue pants or a blue pair of pants. This special little rule applies to pants, shorts, sandals. So don't say I bought a new sandal. I bought new sandals. It's always plural and that applies to pants and shorts even though it's only one item but it kind of has two parts, right? The two legs of the pants or the shorts. So we say a pair of pants or a pair of shorts. Okay, so that's the difference between cloth and clothes. Remember, clothing is another word for clothes and I want to give you one final tip about pronunciation. Some students have asked me, well, it's really hard to make the th sound and then the z sound, clothes. It's kind of difficult but you might notice that when native speakers say this word, we say it fast and it almost sounds like close, like close the door. So I'll give you a few sentences. Let's see. When I get up in the morning, I put on my clothes. It sounds like clothes even though I'm saying clothes. But when I talk fast, you almost can't tell the difference, right? Or I'd really like to buy some new clothes at the mall. You can tell by the context that I'm actually saying clothes, things to wear, shirts, jackets, pants, and shorts. But when I talk fast, then the word clothes sounds like clothes. Okay, that's it for today's lesson. I hope you enjoyed it and if you did, please give me a like, a comment, feel free to ask questions, or share this video with other English learners. Bye for now.