American Intonation is the missing link in Spoken English for non-native speakers! it is not always addressed in English studies although it is one of the most important elements of speech. Let me know what is the most important element for YOU? Is it stress? Rhythm? Or melody?
Brazil's in the house, what up? Totally agree with you on that! My native tongue is a syllable-timed language, so, entonation has always been sth I have to pay attention to when speaking English...
Hadar, you are god. This is your best video yet; and your channel is the most underrated channel in business. I wish more people could realize how helpful this is. Please keep this series going; try to focus on the three elements. If I had to pick, I would pick rythem and melody cuz no one else pays attention to that given how important they are. However, learning stress from you is a lot more enjoyable and effective than from others, so again focus on all the three elements plz. As I have mentioned before, I train others too, and there has never been a class I taught where I didn't give my students a heads up about this channel ever since I knew about it. God bless you!
As an American and a native English speaker, I find it interesting watching things like these. It makes me realize things about my language that I do every day without realizing. It's also interesting taking a look at what it would be like to learn English as a non-native speaker. I often wonder what English sounds like to those who don't know it.
It sounds weird man, Why does English language have this whole lotta perplexing things, i'm literally tired of it, whenever i speak English there's always gonna be sth missing 😢
I am originally from Russia, I have lived in English speaking countries for 24 years, and I have found this video very helpful, I've learnt a lot from it. Thank you!
I am from Quebec, Canada, so my native language is French. I always knew something was wrong whenever I try to speak English, but I had never learn anything about intonation and stressing words in my English classes at school... Only in an Advanced English class at University, the teacher slightly touched that subject, and since then I try to improve those things by practicing by myself, but it's hard. In French, all the words in a sentence are on the same tone, so stressing the words is a challenge for me!
Like Spanish :( like most romance languages but at least you guys have those weird "not really a,e,i,o,u" vowels in your language baggage so we Spanish speakers have to struggle finding the right spots to hit those sounds, aside of the intonation thingie D'x
I'm a native english speaker and soooooo happy I watched this video!!! So much awesome advice! And it's given me a whole different, and better, perspective when I'm learning other languages! FULL PROPS KEEP EM COMING
I’m an American who studied foreign languages in college. I took a class on French phonetics in which we talked about French phonetics, but I’ve never heard English intonation explained so well. We rarely think of English in terms of pitch and intonation, but English is actually a very musical language.
I’m from Korea. First of all, thank you so much for making this so meaningful video and sharing with us. I’m so grateful that I happen to know this video. I will never give up and keep studying with you! Thank you so much😭♥️
You need to do more videos about this topic. Pronunticion is important but intonation and rhythm is more and difficult to learn for me ( my mother league is Spanish). I looking forward for more videos like this. Thank you!
I don’t know how long you have been learning English, but your English is really good! I honestly couldn’t tell that you weren’t a native speaker until you said so. :)
I’m from Saudi Arabia and I struggle with intonation, but I’ve been following your videos for a while and my dream is to have an American English accent like yours
Watching your videos I get more and more convinced that you're like the messiah of English teaching. The way you do things on this channel is something unconveyable by words. Thank you
I'm from Malaysia. My native language is Tamil. In Malaysia, schools here teach in British English but we are more influenced by the American English. Currently, I'm working with teachers from the UK. It is so hard to understand them because of their native intonation. They can go so low that I could hardly hear them and when they chose to be loud, the whole block could hear them. These teachers possess strong voices too, which we, Malaysians don't have. In most cases, I end up nodding and smiling even though I don't have the slightest idea of what was said. I feel judged and uncomfortable most of the time. I also constantly have to repeat myself.
I know I'm years late but I just wanted to say I'm sorry that you feel judged in your learning journey and that the voice, intonation, etc can be difficult to understand from native speakers. I hope you haven't been discouraged too much or given up on trying to communicate with native speakers from this experience! Your written English is excellent and something tells me you probably speak it just as well, if not better than you write it! Most of us native speakers aren't taught these rules on stress and intonation, we just pick them up from others around us, and so when we speak to non-natives, we don't even consciously consider how confusing it can be for us to swap around vowels for softer sounds, for example. We don't think about things like "t" and "d" swapping because we just learned to say it that way from a young age by ear, rather than from a book. Because it's subconscious, a lot of native speakers don't even realize how different spoken English is from written or properly enunciated spoken English, and this can lead to ignorant people judging non-native speakers for speaking more clearly and following the rules more properly than a native, since it "sounds wrong." All that said... Most Americans I know don't judge people who speak English as a second (or third or whatever number) language. We tend to break the rules a lot on pronunciation and spelling anyway, and we're used to hearing a lot of different accents even among natural born citizens, There is no one correct way to use this language, and it's been in flux and evolving since before we existed as a nationality, so I think this leads to us being more open to absorbing non-native words, phrases, sounds, intonations, etc into our melting pot that is American English. That's how we ended up with so many Spanish loan words, for example, and they make the language richer and more interesting in my opinion. So what I'm trying to say with all of this is... please keep speaking English, even with judgey native speakers if you can stomach it! It makes our language richer, more interesting, and more special to have more people contributing to it's evolution. We're lucky to have people be interested in trying to communicate with us in our native tongue. I hope you encounter more people with a bit more patience and willingness to learn and speak with you!
非常感谢您的视频教程/Thank you so much for the tutorial. Being a Chinese native speaker I find it extremely difficult to stress the right words and speak out in correct melody - for in Chinese virtually every single word is treated equally. Stress is seldom noticeable unless in very fierce arguments or even worse in an insulting way. Furthermore, in Chinese prolonged tone such as vowels is rare. Hence when listening to a Chinese speaking English you might feel no Stress at all or every word being stressed and popped out in the same rhythm. Your teaching is very much helpful.
Wow... that's an introduction to the science of language... Knowing these things is very important if we have the ambition to speak better than most people... But unfortunately most people think they can speak as well as radio hosts if they want to. .. It's a phenomenon similar to bodybuilding... Almost all women and many men think they are building muscles like Schwarzenegger when they start exercising and they don't want it at all... :) I hope you Hadar will have the power to convince people that speaking better means living better... and we don't have to fear it…:)
I I'm from Taiwan and have a hard time struggling to understand the intonation. Your lesson helps me a lot. I just want to say thank you and hope there will be more lessons related to intonation.🙏
I'm from Morocco. I speak Moroccan arabic language and berber, and i just realised how intonation used to impact my English. Indeed, intonation is as equally important as garmmar to deliver a clear speech. Thanks
I'm an Egyptian-American who is living in U S. for more than 5 years and I want to say that your videos and your podcast have impacted greatly. while I still struggling with the R, but I really appreciate all your dedication. thank you
This is the BEST video available focusing on intonation! Thank You! I've been trying to find something for my students because this is SO difficult to explain.
Dear Hadar Shemesh, I'm CJ Song from Korea. Thanks a bunch for American intonation. You're on the fire and prominent. You rock! I've learned (just/rising/falling) intonation, which consists of melody, rhythm, and stress. I've learned the difference between content words and function words, why we need to stress content words, and how we reduce function words. These are fundamentals of American intonation. I'm sure I'm going to become a confident, fluent, and natural English speaker thanks to you. You rock! Hope you have a great one.
Hi Hadar, I'm from Spain. I found out your lessons a few days ago, and I love them. I can't stop listening to them. I hope they help me out to improve my speaking and listening skills and get fluent in English. Keep up with your videos. I appreciate them.
This is real English and how it is really spoken! Thanks for the video. It's super helpful! I'm from Taiwan, and I have been working on my accent and intonation lately. Please keep making more videos like this, appreciate it!
Hi! I'm from Vietnam. My teacher recommended this video for me. I really love your video. It's very useful to me. I practiced many times and I find difficult in controlling my sound up and down (like a staircase). When I reduce the speed of any audio, I can hear the the note up or down but sometimes I can't. There are a lot of words so different in pitch. I can speak word by word slowly, but when I speak fast, I can't control it any more. Can u help me? My mother language is Vietnamese. ah. You are the most beautiful English teacher I have ever seen. I really love your hair. It's great.
Hi, Iam from India🇮🇳, my first language is Kannada second language is Hindi and Third language is English. You have a great teaching skills, I really appreciate it.
Hi! My name is Santiago and I'm from Paraguay. My native language is Spanish and my biggest struggle is where i stress when i speak. I live in NYC so people here are from all over the world so natives are more used to listen different accents but if i go to a different state is when i realize that i'm not really clear because i stress in the wrong word. thank you so much for this video it helps me a lot !
As an Iranian, we also use the stress on the content words which we mean to make them more prominent. That's not my point though, you're also a very good actress! I bet you can take roles, your facial expressions are unique, thanks for being my intonation teacher!
Italian here! Hiii I think that if you are used to watch movies in english this helps you to perceive which word is stressed,probably without realizing it,you can perceive the intonation and sometime you learn how to say a sentence in the right way.(I hope you can get what I mean). When it comes to talk to a native speaker,have a conversation, melody is a real problem! Ciaoooo
I am from Japan and my native language is Japanese. Thank you for sharing the tip on how to sound more like an American when speaking English! I have always wondered why I sound different even when I pronounce words accurately. There is a difference in intonation between my native language and English, which makes intonation the hardest part for me. I'd like to know how you decide which words to highlight when there is a lot of important information to cover.
Steven, I'm from Taiwan. I really like your spoken,English. That's great. Even if I can't understand all the sentences. I will continue to practice and study.
Hi, I'm Kátia from Brazil. I watched all the video and I wrote all you said. A long time I wanted to know about this subject. I've learned English for 6 years and I want to improve it, I have many doubts, because of that, I study a lot. Thanks for the incredible video,
I've realized that ''Rhythm'' is the main difficulty we've found in our learning process, it causes us to misunderstand native speakers clearly, however, if they write everything, we'll be understand almost everything. Thank you so much you really have a good job, new subscriber from Haiti, Creole is my mother tongue and I consider French as well 'cause I grew up speaking French.
I'm from Cameroon, my native language is french. Great video, i've been struggling for almost a year now to level up my English and get rid of my foreign accent. I still have lots of difficulties on rythm, stress intonation. I wish you could do more videos on pronunciation to help me. I wish you a pleasant year ahead.
I'm costarican and I have to improve my intonation a lot to get into a Call Center and I don't want to have problems with english anymore. English is a very important key in my life.
I'm Brazilian and I love your channel. Your accent is so clear, I wonder where you are from. I think that the most challenging thing about American intonation is the rythm, but thank to your video I could notice my mistakes and try to get them straight.
The most challenging thing for me is to prolong or shorten words, because my language is most likely to keep its length the same. So I unconciously feel hesitate to prolong or shorten words. It's hard to get out of my habits. I'm from Japan.
I'm a native speaker of American English, but I still found this video to be helpful and interesting. I've studied several other languages, although not to the point of being fluent in any, and the rhythm and intonation is always the challenging part in any language, since they're all at least a little different. I didn't realize the up and down tune that we use. I use it, but never thought about it that way! So this was helpful going both directions. Once in Hebrew, I was trying to say I have four brothers. The coach kept telling me that I didn't say it right. Finally I got angry and spit it out fast and loud. He said "right!". Rhythm and intonation rules!
Fantastic. I am from Spain and I am learning English through videos. I have seen this video and it has impressed me. I liked it a lot. Thank you very much.
This might sound cheesy or not but by far you are the best non native english speaker, with you I learnt phonetics, took me 7 months! now I better tackle this and then I'll be good to go! Thanks for everything
Hi! Great video, it was really helpful... I'm from Argentina so, my first language is Spanish. And the thing that I most struggle with is melody, I always forget how to ask questions and other types of sentences with the proper intonation. I hope to improve soon, thanks a lot!
I am an English speaker learning Spanish and I sometimes have the same problem, although I think questions have similar intonations in both languages! When you go up at the end, it sounds like a question. By the way one of the things I do to learn Spanish is listen to music, and I love Vicentico!
Hi Hadar, can you make a video about your accent? I think it will be a super interesting video as you can showcase people how you can change and modify your accent ? You are a model to me Hadar and the way you speak English is just perfect. I have always wondering why you have just a beautiful voice and intonation. Another question that I have that you can use to make a video is that “ do you have to give up your personality when speaking English” ? Because again, what you have achieved is phenomenal. It is not just about the way you speak the language but what you’re doing during speaking is so American like keep smiling all the time or pause a bit when you are thinking, looking at the above, etc. I’m really interested in knowing how you acquire American accent. I know quite a lot Hebrew speakers and even if they’re taught how to say a word in a correct way, put strong stress, Rhythm, etc. there is still something missing, not perfect like you. I think you should make a video on it.
Hello dear! I think I've seen your comment before, and I'm sorry if I haven't responded yet to your wonderful request. A few things: First, yes. I will make a video about my accent soon:) Second, those small gestures you mentioned are very important for sounding and feeling natural, but they are not the same across all cultures. And this is why it doesn't always feel natural to do for all speakers. But I can teach you how to get comfortable, and even use some of these gestures consciously to help you feel and sound more natural. I just need to think of a good way to teach it. Lastly, no you most definitely should not lose your personality! I'll talk about it soon! Thank you for being such a great viewer! xoxo btw - what's your name and what is your native tongue?
Accent's Way English yeah, I commented on one of your videos but you haven’t replied yet( it’s OK) so I commented on this video to make sure that I get answered :))) Because you are so talented, Hadar. You are the best non native English speaker I have ever seen. I’m always curious about how you got to the point where you speak English so perfectly. I’m also on my journey to get better at English. My people complimented on my accent too, but they say there are some little nuances in my speech that make them realize that I’m not a native speaker although I know all the tricks ( flap T, connected speech or everything that you teach). Yeah, I’m a crazy fan of you. I wish I could go the future to see more of your videos :))). By the way, I’m Phước and my native language is Vietnamese.
This is very enlightening. I'm a Filipino, 47, and I used English language every time and all of a sudden I realized my previous mistakes during a conversation. Thank you very much for uploading this video. So brief but helps me a lot. Please keep on uploading this kind of video. Thank you!
Hi from France ! I really live this video, it's really useful for me ! French is a very "flat" language I think. So intonation is a very important point for me ! I love hearing american speakers because it's so beautiful and I need to practice a lot ! Thank you ! I need more videos like this one.
In my opinion [as an American], French is not at all flat! In fact, I often tell people I love French because it is so melodic. I speak French at an intermediate level and I find that the French can understand me better when I add more intonation -- as the French do.
Carla K I agree I'm French myself but I wanted to say that I love the music of American voices. French seems to me "flat" compare to American... but I'm french. Maybe we don't hear things the same way.. 😃. Actually I love American speaking it's so beautiful !
Wow, Patty! I've never heard anyone say that about American English. :-) Yes, I'm sure we hear things differently. To me, French is the most beautiful language in all the word and I love to listen to native French speakers even when I don't understand them. Some of my fondest memories are of French friends speaking melodically and with great intonation...BonJOUR, Carla! COUcou! Ca VA? PourQUOI elle parle comme ca? [My French friend's 3-year-old daughter when she heard me speaking English]. :-) ]
Carla K It's the same for me with American english ! I really love this accent and when American people speaks french it's so cute ! In my family we love American culture and language. Have a great day !
Hi Hadar! Hi from Belarus. Thanks for your lessons, I always watch them with great pleasure. You really inspire me to improve my English from day to day. For me, it's a real problem to save melody and stress in a real conversation, in general I use stress and rhythm like in my native tongue. However, your today's video made it more clear.
Hello dear! I'm so happy to hear you find my work helpful. This gives me all the more motivation to continue. Yes, its' one thing to understand it and to practice, a different thing to use it naturally in real conversations... Imitation exercises really help in this case by the way.
Madam I'm from India, Telugu is my native language but I interested English more. By the time I luckily found ur channel and learning English. Ur way of teaching is so good, and again and again lm repeating. Tq so much.
Hadar, you're the best! Thank you for the explanation - now I see why I've got the feeling that I speak like a robot lol - as in my native language we do have stressed words too but at the same time we are articulating every single word in a sentence. I have a question though: Can a sentence have more than two stressed words?
You seem like the right person to ask this question. Why do some people end a sentence with a raised pitch when it's not a question? I almost want to ask them, "Are you telling me something? or are you asking me a question?"
It sounds like you're talking about "upspeak" - and yes, it CAN be confusing when people do that! It's a feature of some dialects of American English, and a lot of people criticize it. They say it indicates uncertainty and makes the speaker sound less authoritative. However, I feel that if it's used in MODERATION it can be quite effective. If you say "He looked like he was serious?" with a rising inflection, it can give the additional sense of "do you know what I mean?" 🙂 Who have you noticed speaking this way?
Hi everyone, I personally l believe Hadar is a gift from Heaven! so genuine, generous, committed, and above all what l love most is the joy l see in her while teaching,l feel like it's a call from heaven its not a business, above all she teaches us ways to achieve our goals, commitment!!. I am doing better than when l started watching her video.. Thank you, Hadar you are the best! I would vote you the best teacher of the Year again and again!!
Great video. It would be helpful to get more sentences to get used to it, to get rid of our native patterns when speaking English. Hadar, can you make it? 😚 For me: to get the melodoy right is the most difficult thing. I'm a German native speaker. I'm not sure if I understand the difference between Melody and intonation correctly 🤔😑
Same! I'm from Germany too, and I tend to speak English rather "monotonously" (like German).. but I only really became aware of this through Hadar's videos so thank you! :) It's definitely not easy but the only thing to get it right is constant repetition, such as pausing the video and trying to imitate as close as possible.. it's hard but as you can see in Hadar's story it's definitely achievable to sound more natural in English :)
Hello Hadar. I'm impressed by your pronunciation being so "American". On the other hand I'd like to hear you in your native language which i assume is Hebrew. Have you record some video in your mother tongue? I appreciate your work very much. Thank you. Ps. I'm from Poland
Wow wow wow I started to study English in 1992 and that is my first time hearing a professor teaching these fundamentals intonation points Thank you, God bless you.
Hi! I'm from Brazil, it is more difficult to chose which word stress. My native language is Portuguese so we have problem especially in question, because we always increase our intonation at the end of the question. Pleeease help us!!
thank you for explain many important topics, I am a native Spanish speaker from Honduras, trying to flow naturally in English and my struggle is melody and intonation.
Hi Haddar. I am from Sao Paulo and my mother language is Brazilian Portuguese. I am still struggling with melody. I will follow you every day. Thanks for your enthusiasm
Random dude we need to listen to you just to see if it's true. Science says that it's imposible to rid of your native accent when you're an adult so make a video and let us hear your pronunciation and we will see if you're right or not. Give us facts not just words.
As a native Russian speaker I struggle with the intonation! I speak fluently, even write professional articles, but once I open my mouth, people ask me where I am from tight away! I am tired of it at this point LOL Thank you for the great content, and for breaking this topic into such detailed segments. It really helped me analyse the way people perceive my speech. 🌷🌼🌷
I’ve been speaking English on and off for the past 20 years, however, I am still struggling because of my strong, polish accent. Until Ive watched your videos I had no idea there were helpful mouth exercises and intonation patterns. Amazing job. Thank you so much
From Argentina, living in Oregon since 2015. Struggling with rhythm, melody and stress words! I been watching a lot of videos, taking classes. And I can say you nail it! Exceptional teacher. Thank you for this videos. Definitely I'll enroll in your program!!
I’m from Mexico I’m trying English for 35 years and l struggle with this reduction grups of words. Thank you for your explanation from now on i gonna be more careful with incidents.thank you again gb you….
I am from El Salvador, I did not realize how important the intonation is, thank you very much for this kind of videos. I am taking notes, I MUST improve my English. thank you
I'm from Bangladesh, a neighboring country to India. My accent/intonation/pronunciation is completely different and very comparable to that of an Indian. Please create contents that includes lectures and excersies that can help people like us to adopt American accent easily. :)
excelent video Haddar, my native language is spanish but Since I was 12 I've been studying english andll in love with it. Thanks to a teacher. I've started reading seriously in english 15, 18 years ago (light reading firt., then Jane Austen, Capote, then,..whatever I like today , I mean BOOKS byJulian Barnes, Martin Amis, Paul Auster, Rebecca Zolnit, David Lodge,Ian McEwan, John Updike, kinsley Amis, Mary Beard, Doris Lessing, , even those not english authors ( translated to english) as Flauber, S. de Beauvoir, Alain de Botton, Karl Ove Knausgaard etc, etc, etc.). Not only that , last year I tried audiobooks and was amazing to train the ear to different voices and I still do.. The thing is that I set myself a goal this 2019 to speack FLUENTLY . I managed to talk when traveled (2015) but I was not even close to what I 've always wanted to achive .I am old enough to know my weak points and to leave behind insecurities and fears to make mistakes or the judgment of others. That's why ... here I GO!
![#1 STRATEGY to become FLUENT in English [and why you DON'T NEED to 'speak like a native speaker’]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0V0WeEnsec0/mqdefault.jpg)
American Intonation is the missing link in Spoken English for non-native speakers! it is not always addressed in English studies although it is one of the most important elements of speech.
Let me know what is the most important element for YOU? Is it stress? Rhythm? Or melody?
Accent's Way English
teacher thank you so much.
Brazil's in the house, what up? Totally agree with you on that! My native tongue is a syllable-timed language, so, entonation has always been sth I have to pay attention to when speaking English...
Yo yo Brazil!! Thanks for telling me. xoxoxo
Hadar, you are god. This is your best video yet; and your channel is the most underrated channel in business. I wish more people could realize how helpful this is. Please keep this series going; try to focus on the three elements. If I had to pick, I would pick rythem and melody cuz no one else pays attention to that given how important they are. However, learning stress from you is a lot more enjoyable and effective than from others, so again focus on all the three elements plz. As I have mentioned before, I train others too, and there has never been a class I taught where I didn't give my students a heads up about this channel ever since I knew about it. God bless you!
Accent's Way English unfortunately you are Jewish :(
As an American and a native English speaker, I find it interesting watching things like these. It makes me realize things about my language that I do every day without realizing. It's also interesting taking a look at what it would be like to learn English as a non-native speaker. I often wonder what English sounds like to those who don't know it.
It sounds weird man,
Why does English language have this whole lotta perplexing things, i'm literally tired of it, whenever i speak English there's always gonna be sth missing 😢
Am.from Kenya,am struggling becoz my English is tied to my vernacular
ay black english cool as shit, what r u talking about. rock it bro,@@timxtv2621
u r wasting time my g
This man feels so worthless
I am originally from Russia, I have lived in English speaking countries for 24 years, and I have found this video very helpful, I've learnt a lot from it. Thank you!
I am from Quebec, Canada, so my native language is French. I always knew something was wrong whenever I try to speak English, but I had never learn anything about intonation and stressing words in my English classes at school... Only in an Advanced English class at University, the teacher slightly touched that subject, and since then I try to improve those things by practicing by myself, but it's hard. In French, all the words in a sentence are on the same tone, so stressing the words is a challenge for me!
Like Spanish :( like most romance languages but at least you guys have those weird "not really a,e,i,o,u" vowels in your language baggage so we Spanish speakers have to struggle finding the right spots to hit those sounds, aside of the intonation thingie D'x
Hello I know I'm Spanish speaker and it happens same in my language, there is no intonation . Actually I'm catching up to much about it.
I'm Japanese and we have the same problem too haha
Hi
I'm a native english speaker and soooooo happy I watched this video!!!
So much awesome advice! And it's given me a whole different, and better, perspective when I'm learning other languages!
FULL PROPS
KEEP EM COMING
Yay! Thank you so much for your support:)
I know, I don't know why I'm here, I wish she had these videos for speaking Hebrew as well.
I’m an American who studied foreign languages in college. I took a class on French phonetics in which we talked about French phonetics, but I’ve never heard English intonation explained so well. We rarely think of English in terms of pitch and intonation, but English is actually a very musical language.
Thank you so much!
I’m from Korea. First of all, thank you so much for making this so meaningful video and sharing with us. I’m so grateful that I happen to know this video. I will never give up and keep studying with you! Thank you so much😭♥️
You need to do more videos about this topic. Pronunticion is important but intonation and rhythm is more and difficult to learn for me ( my mother league is Spanish). I looking forward for more videos like this. Thank you!
Thank you!
Your mother league is Spanish League, my mother league is Champions League 😂
Dhia Oshaish Thanks to you I realized I made a mistake "Language". Btw, you are an idiot.✌
Mary Dc You are calling me names for a little joke?! I didn't mean to upset you. Sorry!
I don’t know how long you have been learning English, but your English is really good! I honestly couldn’t tell that you weren’t a native speaker until you said so. :)
I’m from Saudi Arabia and I struggle with intonation, but I’ve been following your videos for a while and my dream is to have an American English accent like yours
Watching your videos I get more and more convinced that you're like the messiah of English teaching. The way you do things on this channel is something unconveyable by words. Thank you
I think my major problem is melody and stress and my native language is Spanish
I'm from Malaysia. My native language is Tamil. In Malaysia, schools here teach in British English but we are more influenced by the American English. Currently, I'm working with teachers from the UK. It is so hard to understand them because of their native intonation. They can go so low that I could hardly hear them and when they chose to be loud, the whole block could hear them. These teachers possess strong voices too, which we, Malaysians don't have. In most cases, I end up nodding and smiling even though I don't have the slightest idea of what was said. I feel judged and uncomfortable most of the time. I also constantly have to repeat myself.
I Live in México AND Speak American English. British English SOUNDS Weird
I know I'm years late but I just wanted to say I'm sorry that you feel judged in your learning journey and that the voice, intonation, etc can be difficult to understand from native speakers. I hope you haven't been discouraged too much or given up on trying to communicate with native speakers from this experience! Your written English is excellent and something tells me you probably speak it just as well, if not better than you write it!
Most of us native speakers aren't taught these rules on stress and intonation, we just pick them up from others around us, and so when we speak to non-natives, we don't even consciously consider how confusing it can be for us to swap around vowels for softer sounds, for example. We don't think about things like "t" and "d" swapping because we just learned to say it that way from a young age by ear, rather than from a book. Because it's subconscious, a lot of native speakers don't even realize how different spoken English is from written or properly enunciated spoken English, and this can lead to ignorant people judging non-native speakers for speaking more clearly and following the rules more properly than a native, since it "sounds wrong."
All that said... Most Americans I know don't judge people who speak English as a second (or third or whatever number) language. We tend to break the rules a lot on pronunciation and spelling anyway, and we're used to hearing a lot of different accents even among natural born citizens, There is no one correct way to use this language, and it's been in flux and evolving since before we existed as a nationality, so I think this leads to us being more open to absorbing non-native words, phrases, sounds, intonations, etc into our melting pot that is American English. That's how we ended up with so many Spanish loan words, for example, and they make the language richer and more interesting in my opinion.
So what I'm trying to say with all of this is... please keep speaking English, even with judgey native speakers if you can stomach it! It makes our language richer, more interesting, and more special to have more people contributing to it's evolution. We're lucky to have people be interested in trying to communicate with us in our native tongue. I hope you encounter more people with a bit more patience and willingness to learn and speak with you!
Nalla.
非常感谢您的视频教程/Thank you so much for the tutorial. Being a Chinese native speaker I find it extremely difficult to stress the right words and speak out in correct melody - for in Chinese virtually every single word is treated equally. Stress is seldom noticeable unless in very fierce arguments or even worse in an insulting way. Furthermore, in Chinese prolonged tone such as vowels is rare. Hence when listening to a Chinese speaking English you might feel no Stress at all or every word being stressed and popped out in the same rhythm. Your teaching is very much helpful.
@yong yuan 这是我们这讲中文普遍所面对的问题。This are our common struggles as Mandarin Chinese speaker. :)
TOTALLY AGREE!
Just like in portuguese (I am brazilian). We do not stress the words either...
Same here! I'm from thailand.
So does Spanish.
Wow... that's an introduction to the science of language...
Knowing these things is very important if we have the ambition to speak better than most people... But unfortunately most people think they can speak as well as radio hosts if they want to. ..
It's a phenomenon similar to bodybuilding...
Almost all women and many men think they are building muscles like Schwarzenegger when they start exercising and they don't want it at all... :)
I hope you Hadar will have the power to convince people that speaking better means living better... and we don't have to fear it…:)
I I'm from Taiwan and have a hard time struggling to understand the intonation. Your lesson helps me a lot. I just want to say thank you and hope there will be more lessons related to intonation.🙏
It's very clear and understandable.
TIPS:
1. Melody
2. Stress
3. Rhythm
Thank you very much for this new pattern in English. God bless you.
Hi hadar I am a french student and I really enjoyed this video and for me stress is the most difficult especially the stress in the words ❤
Je pense que c'est un peu pareil pour le Français aussi.
“What are you going to dooooo?”
Your discussion is sheer genius. No, really, it is. I’m dazzled.
Thank you so much.
I'm from Morocco. I speak Moroccan arabic language and berber, and i just realised how intonation used to impact my English. Indeed, intonation is as equally important as garmmar to deliver a clear speech. Thanks
I'm an Egyptian-American who is living in U S. for more than 5 years and I want to say that your videos and your podcast have impacted greatly. while I still struggling with the R, but I really appreciate all your dedication. thank you
This is the BEST video available focusing on intonation! Thank You! I've been trying to find something for my students because this is SO difficult to explain.
I love this video, too! Who are your students?
Oh my god!!! This is what my students need! I am so going to develop this part of my teaching. Thanks for breaking it down for us.
hi from Turkey! you’re so good at this job. congratulations 😘
I am brazilian and also appreciate Hadar`s job a lot.
Would you like to have me as your speaking partner?
Seher seher
Seher seher
You are so good too
As an American, your intonation is impeccable! Glad people have a great teacher.
Dear Hadar Shemesh,
I'm CJ Song from Korea.
Thanks a bunch for American intonation. You're on the fire and prominent. You rock!
I've learned (just/rising/falling) intonation, which consists of melody, rhythm, and stress.
I've learned the difference between content words and function words, why we need to stress content words, and how we reduce function words. These are fundamentals of American intonation.
I'm sure I'm going to become a confident, fluent, and natural English speaker thanks to you.
You rock! Hope you have a great one.
Hi Hadar,
I'm from Spain. I found out your lessons a few days ago, and I love them. I can't stop listening to them.
I hope they help me out to improve my speaking and listening skills and get fluent in English.
Keep up with your videos. I appreciate them.
This is real English and how it is really spoken! Thanks for the video. It's super helpful! I'm from Taiwan, and I have been working on my accent and intonation lately. Please keep making more videos like this, appreciate it!
Hi! I'm from Vietnam. My teacher recommended this video for me. I really love your video. It's very useful to me. I practiced many times and I find difficult in controlling my sound up and down (like a staircase). When I reduce the speed of any audio, I can hear the the note up or down but sometimes I can't. There are a lot of words so different in pitch. I can speak word by word slowly, but when I speak fast, I can't control it any more. Can u help me? My mother language is Vietnamese.
ah. You are the most beautiful English teacher I have ever seen. I really love your hair. It's great.
Hi, Iam from India🇮🇳, my first language is Kannada second language is Hindi and Third language is English. You have a great teaching skills, I really appreciate it.
Hi! My name is Santiago and I'm from Paraguay. My native language is Spanish and my biggest struggle is where i stress when i speak. I live in NYC so people here are from all over the world so natives are more used to listen different accents but if i go to a different state is when i realize that i'm not really clear because i stress in the wrong word. thank you so much for this video it helps me a lot !
Thank you indeed, it was great , after many years of studying English I just learned it , never thought in any class💗💗💗
As an Iranian, we also use the stress on the content words which we mean to make them more prominent. That's not my point though, you're also a very good actress! I bet you can take roles, your facial expressions are unique, thanks for being my intonation teacher!
🙌❤️🙏
I think your English is already good.
Mammad
Italian here! Hiii
I think that if you are used to watch movies in english this helps you to perceive which word is stressed,probably without realizing it,you can perceive the intonation and sometime you learn how to say a sentence in the right way.(I hope you can get what I mean).
When it comes to talk to a native speaker,have a conversation, melody is a real problem! Ciaoooo
You are absolutely right! Watching movies is great, repeating what you hear is even better!!
I am from Japan and my native language is Japanese. Thank you for sharing the tip on how to sound more like an American when speaking English! I have always wondered why I sound different even when I pronounce words accurately. There is a difference in intonation between my native language and English, which makes intonation the hardest part for me. I'd like to know how you decide which words to highlight when there is a lot of important information to cover.
I am Fatima from Russia * I am circsssian I am 23 years old . And you are the best teacher when I have even seen! Thanx
Steven, I'm from Taiwan. I really like your spoken,English. That's great. Even if I can't understand all the sentences. I will continue to practice and study.
Good for you , Steven!! 💪🏽✌️
Hi, I'm from Azerbaijan, your videos are precious, thank you!❤️
Hi, I'm Kátia from Brazil. I watched all the video and I wrote all you said. A long time I wanted to know about this subject. I've learned English for 6 years and I want to improve it, I have many doubts, because of that, I study a lot. Thanks for the incredible video,
I've realized that ''Rhythm'' is the main difficulty we've found in our learning process, it causes us to misunderstand native speakers clearly, however, if they write everything, we'll be understand almost everything. Thank you so much you really have a good job, new subscriber from Haiti, Creole is my mother tongue and I consider French as well 'cause I grew up speaking French.
I am from India (in a State Punjab). I had been thirsting to learn intonation and lo, you have made my learning so easy. Thanks a tonne.
I'm from Cameroon, my native language is french. Great video, i've been struggling for almost a year now to level up my English and get rid of my foreign accent. I still have lots of difficulties on rythm, stress intonation. I wish you could do more videos on pronunciation to help me. I wish you a pleasant year ahead.
Çilem abladan geldim 😄
Me too 😁
aynen
:))
Aynen sjsjshhs
Bendeee💖😅
Hi, I'm from India. Thank you so much Ma'm .you're doing such a great job . ❤
I can hardly believe you are not a native speaker. You are obviously very gifted at learning foreign languages. Kudos to you!
I'm costarican and I have to improve my intonation a lot to get into a Call Center and I don't want to have problems with english anymore. English is a very important key in my life.
I'm Brazilian and I love your channel. Your accent is so clear, I wonder where you are from. I think that the most challenging thing about American intonation is the rythm, but thank to your video I could notice my mistakes and try to get them straight.
Ela é de israel. Tem outras informações na discrição
The most challenging thing for me is to prolong or shorten words, because my language is most likely to keep its length the same. So I unconciously feel hesitate to prolong or shorten words. It's hard to get out of my habits. I'm from Japan.
"Content words are stressed usually! Stressed words are higher in pitch and longer." I am from Korea. I am struggling with the stressed words. Thanks!
오 한국인이시군용
I'm a native speaker of American English, but I still found this video to be helpful and interesting. I've studied several other languages, although not to the point of being fluent in any, and the rhythm and intonation is always the challenging part in any language, since they're all at least a little different. I didn't realize the up and down tune that we use. I use it, but never thought about it that way! So this was helpful going both directions. Once in Hebrew, I was trying to say I have four brothers. The coach kept telling me that I didn't say it right. Finally I got angry and spit it out fast and loud. He said "right!". Rhythm and intonation rules!
As a native English speaker I'm watching your videos and learning more about my language than I thought even existed. English is crazy!
Wow you are good at what you do, keep it up.
Thank you:)
That's what I said too!
ya man !
Omg! What a great video! I'm studying to be an English teacher and this has helped me a lot, thank you so much
Fantastic. I am from Spain and I am learning English through videos. I have seen this video and it has impressed me. I liked it a lot. Thank you very much.
Thank you!
My name is William, I'm 42 years old and I've 4 years living in USA. The melody is the most important thing I have to improve.
This might sound cheesy or not but by far you are the best non native english speaker, with you I learnt phonetics, took me 7 months!
now I better tackle this and then I'll be good to go! Thanks for everything
Hi! Great video, it was really helpful... I'm from Argentina so, my first language is Spanish. And the thing that I most struggle with is melody, I always forget how to ask questions and other types of sentences with the proper intonation. I hope to improve soon, thanks a lot!
You will!!
I am from Brazil. People think portuguese and Spanish are the same hahah to me it is very hard to learn...
I am an English speaker learning Spanish and I sometimes have the same problem, although I think questions have similar intonations in both languages! When you go up at the end, it sounds like a question. By the way one of the things I do to learn Spanish is listen to music, and I love Vicentico!
Hi Hadar, can you make a video about your accent? I think it will be a super interesting video as you can showcase people how you can change and modify your accent ? You are a model to me Hadar and the way you speak English is just perfect. I have always wondering why you have just a beautiful voice and intonation. Another question that I have that you can use to make a video is that “ do you have to give up your personality when speaking English” ? Because again, what you have achieved is phenomenal. It is not just about the way you speak the language but what you’re doing during speaking is so American like keep smiling all the time or pause a bit when you are thinking, looking at the above, etc. I’m really interested in knowing how you acquire American accent. I know quite a lot Hebrew speakers and even if they’re taught how to say a word in a correct way, put strong stress, Rhythm, etc. there is still something missing, not perfect like you. I think you should make a video on it.
Hello dear! I think I've seen your comment before, and I'm sorry if I haven't responded yet to your wonderful request. A few things: First, yes. I will make a video about my accent soon:) Second, those small gestures you mentioned are very important for sounding and feeling natural, but they are not the same across all cultures. And this is why it doesn't always feel natural to do for all speakers. But I can teach you how to get comfortable, and even use some of these gestures consciously to help you feel and sound more natural. I just need to think of a good way to teach it. Lastly, no you most definitely should not lose your personality! I'll talk about it soon!
Thank you for being such a great viewer! xoxo btw - what's your name and what is your native tongue?
Accent's Way English yeah, I commented on one of your videos but you haven’t replied yet( it’s OK) so I commented on this video to make sure that I get answered :))) Because you are so talented, Hadar. You are the best non native English speaker I have ever seen. I’m always curious about how you got to the point where you speak English so perfectly. I’m also on my journey to get better at English. My people complimented on my accent too, but they say there are some little nuances in my speech that make them realize that I’m not a native speaker although I know all the tricks ( flap T, connected speech or everything that you teach). Yeah, I’m a crazy fan of you. I wish I could go the future to see more of your videos :))). By the way, I’m Phước and my native language is Vietnamese.
Çilemden gelenler?
Ben wjnxownd
Burda hahahah😅
Ben😂😂
Ben 😂😂😂✋🏼
Benn
Thanks Hadar I'm a Ugandan.my accent has improved because of your lessons.thank you for being a good teacher.
This is very enlightening. I'm a Filipino, 47, and I used English language every time and all of a sudden I realized my previous mistakes during a conversation. Thank you very much for uploading this video. So brief but helps me a lot. Please keep on uploading this kind of video. Thank you!
Hi from France ! I really live this video, it's really useful for me ! French is a very "flat" language I think. So intonation is a very important point for me ! I love hearing american speakers because it's so beautiful and I need to practice a lot ! Thank you ! I need more videos like this one.
hxxx kxxx Yes, French is very flat compare to English, so that could be quite difficult for us (the French people) to stress and do the rythm
In my opinion [as an American], French is not at all flat! In fact, I often tell people I love French because it is so melodic. I speak French at an intermediate level and I find that the French can understand me better when I add more intonation -- as the French do.
Carla K I agree I'm French myself but I wanted to say that I love the music of American voices. French seems to me "flat" compare to American... but I'm french. Maybe we don't hear things the same way.. 😃. Actually I love American speaking it's so beautiful !
Wow, Patty! I've never heard anyone say that about American English. :-) Yes, I'm sure we hear things differently. To me, French is the most beautiful language in all the word and I love to listen to native French speakers even when I don't understand them. Some of my fondest memories are of French friends speaking melodically and with great intonation...BonJOUR, Carla! COUcou! Ca VA? PourQUOI elle parle comme ca? [My French friend's 3-year-old daughter when she heard me speaking English]. :-) ]
Carla K It's the same for me with American english ! I really love this accent and when American people speaks french it's so cute ! In my family we love American culture and language. Have a great day !
i get my teacher be disappointed about my intonation American
Now, i need improve it by all thing of mine
Today, im better than yesterday
Hi Hadar! Hi from Belarus. Thanks for your lessons, I always watch them with great pleasure. You really inspire me to improve my English from day to day.
For me, it's a real problem to save melody and stress in a real conversation, in general I use stress and rhythm like in my native tongue. However, your today's video made it more clear.
Hello dear! I'm so happy to hear you find my work helpful. This gives me all the more motivation to continue. Yes, its' one thing to understand it and to practice, a different thing to use it naturally in real conversations... Imitation exercises really help in this case by the way.
Анна Китаевская you should practice your English more than you do , if you listening and talking lot you can improve your skills pretty .
Can we practice together in English just to improve...I m from India...hope ur reply...😊
Hello 😘
Madam I'm from India, Telugu is my native language but I interested English more. By the time I luckily found ur channel and learning English. Ur way of teaching is so good, and again and again lm repeating. Tq so much.
one of the best explanation of INTONATION. I never understood it until now.
Hadar, you're the best! Thank you for the explanation - now I see why I've got the feeling that I speak like a robot lol - as in my native language we do have stressed words too but at the same time we are articulating every single word in a sentence. I have a question though: Can a sentence have more than two stressed words?
Thanks a lot. It's very helpful. Hope to see more videos like this
Hi, I watch you from Brasilia. I think your accent is wonderfull. I can't believe you are an Hebrew native speaker.
🙏💜
You seem like the right person to ask this question.
Why do some people end a sentence with a raised pitch when it's not a question?
I almost want to ask them, "Are you telling me something? or are you asking me a question?"
It sounds like you're talking about "upspeak" - and yes, it CAN be confusing when people do that! It's a feature of some dialects of American English, and a lot of people criticize it. They say it indicates uncertainty and makes the speaker sound less authoritative. However, I feel that if it's used in MODERATION it can be quite effective. If you say "He looked like he was serious?" with a rising inflection, it can give the additional sense of "do you know what I mean?" 🙂 Who have you noticed speaking this way?
Hi everyone, I personally l believe Hadar is a gift from Heaven! so genuine, generous, committed, and above all what l love most is the joy l see in her while teaching,l feel like it's a call from heaven its not a business, above all she teaches us ways to achieve our goals, commitment!!. I am doing better than when l started watching her video.. Thank you, Hadar you are the best! I would vote you the best teacher of the Year again and again!!
Great video. It would be helpful to get more sentences to get used to it, to get rid of our native patterns when speaking English. Hadar, can you make it? 😚
For me: to get the melodoy right is the most difficult thing. I'm a German native speaker. I'm not sure if I understand the difference between Melody and intonation correctly 🤔😑
Melody is part of intonation :) and sure, I'll make more videos .
Same! I'm from Germany too, and I tend to speak English rather "monotonously" (like German).. but I only really became aware of this through Hadar's videos so thank you! :) It's definitely not easy but the only thing to get it right is constant repetition, such as pausing the video and trying to imitate as close as possible.. it's hard but as you can see in Hadar's story it's definitely achievable to sound more natural in English :)
Hello Hadar. I'm impressed by your pronunciation being so "American". On the other hand I'd like to hear you in your native language which i assume is Hebrew. Have you record some video in your mother tongue? I appreciate your work very much. Thank you. Ps. I'm from Poland
Not yet but I promise to make one soon. 😊
Accent's Way English I'm looking forward 😀
Here you go: facebook.com/jolt.us/videos/1202256193238415/
As soon as I did “The glass is on the table” one I freaked out hahaha XDDD So many questions answered.
I am a Cuban teacher of English Language in Guantanamo, Cuba. Your videos are very excellent!!! Keep shining, girl!!!
Wow wow wow I started to study English in 1992 and that is my first time hearing a professor teaching these fundamentals intonation points Thank you, God bless you.
Hi from turkey how are you today
Türkiye'den selamlar. Bugün nasılsın?
I'm like a cock
@@emrebadur5390 niye
"Let's eat, Grandma!" has a different meaning than "Let's eat Grandma!"
Oh my god that went dark💀
🤣😂🤣🤣
It's Dinner time grandma! or It's TIME to EAT Grandma!
😂😂😂😂
It's tasty grandma
Hi! I'm from Brazil, it is more difficult to chose which word stress. My native language is Portuguese so we have problem especially in question, because we always increase our intonation at the end of the question. Pleeease help us!!
thank you for explain many important topics, I am a native Spanish speaker from Honduras, trying to flow naturally in English and my struggle is melody and intonation.
Hi Haddar. I am from Sao Paulo and my mother language is Brazilian Portuguese. I am still struggling with melody. I will follow you every day. Thanks for your enthusiasm
I'm from Colombia, my native language is Spanish and lately when I'm goint to speak English with a native, I just black out and forget everything =/
I have a video - what to do when you get stuck in English. Watch it!
We are in the same page , I’m also from Colombian , I’m trying to improve the intonation and Rhythm
i am from colombia too, from cali :D
Who would like to have me as his speaking partner?
American Lessons Accent Hi if you have desire and time I will be pleased to speak to. My skype is loonybin80.
Great show! Though we won’t say “th” instead we would say “a” dropping the TH sound.
Rachel`s English
Random dude wow you sound like your accent in your second language is nothing short of perfection. I'd love to see that.
What do you mean by 'a regular dude from L.A.'? You know that in L.A. there are accents too, right? There's no such thing as 'a regular' whatever.
Random dude we need to listen to you just to see if it's true. Science says that it's imposible to rid of your native accent when you're an adult so make a video and let us hear your pronunciation and we will see if you're right or not. Give us facts not just words.
Rachel is a native speaker DAH!!!!! 🙄😑
As a native Russian speaker I struggle with the intonation!
I speak fluently, even write professional articles, but once I open my mouth, people ask me where I am from tight away! I am tired of it at this point LOL
Thank you for the great content, and for breaking this topic into such detailed segments. It really helped me analyse the way people perceive my speech. 🌷🌼🌷
I’ve been speaking English on and off for the past 20 years, however, I am still struggling because of my strong, polish accent. Until Ive watched your videos I had no idea there were helpful mouth exercises and intonation patterns. Amazing job. Thank you so much
Se tivesse usado “the book” teria sido mais fácil para entender. Just saying
From Argentina, living in Oregon since 2015. Struggling with rhythm, melody and stress words! I been watching a lot of videos, taking classes. And I can say you nail it! Exceptional teacher. Thank you for this videos. Definitely I'll enroll in your program!!
I love the way you teach so energetic and antusiast
I am from Liberia. Have problem with intonation. I really love your English class.
I’m from Mexico
I’m trying English for 35 years and l struggle with this reduction grups of words.
Thank you for your explanation from now on i gonna be more careful with incidents.thank you again gb you….
Thank you HADAR excellent lesson
Hi, I'm from Venezuela, but nowadays I'm living in Colombia. Thank you for your help! I need to get better my english.
I am from El Salvador, I did not realize how important the intonation is, thank you very much for this kind of videos. I am taking notes, I MUST improve my English. thank you
Thank you! I am an English major college student in S.Korea and my final exam is about stress,intonation so this video helped a lot!
I’m from Malaysia, mandarin speaking. You’re a great teacher.
I'm from Bangladesh, a neighboring country to India. My accent/intonation/pronunciation is completely different and very comparable to that of an Indian. Please create contents that includes lectures and excersies that can help people like us to adopt American accent easily. :)
Hi, I’m a russian speaker and your videos are very helpful. Easy to understand how to sound like american english native speaker. Thank you 😊
excelent video Haddar, my native language is spanish but Since I was 12 I've been studying english andll in love with it. Thanks to a teacher. I've started reading seriously in english 15, 18 years ago (light reading firt., then Jane Austen, Capote, then,..whatever I like today , I mean BOOKS byJulian Barnes, Martin Amis, Paul Auster, Rebecca Zolnit, David Lodge,Ian McEwan, John Updike, kinsley Amis, Mary Beard, Doris Lessing, , even those not english authors ( translated to english) as Flauber, S. de Beauvoir, Alain de Botton, Karl Ove Knausgaard etc, etc, etc.). Not only that , last year I tried audiobooks and was amazing to train the ear to different voices and I still do.. The thing is that I set myself a goal this 2019 to speack FLUENTLY . I managed to talk when traveled (2015) but I was not even close to what I 've always wanted to achive .I am old enough to know my weak points and to leave behind insecurities and fears to make mistakes or the judgment of others. That's why ... here I GO!
I'm from Nicaragua, so my native language is spanish and I want to improve my English. Thank you for your video... it's excellent!!!
By far, you are one of the best English teachers on youtube.