FAST ENGLISH: Native Speakers CAN’T Understand!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 มิ.ย. 2024
- Want to speak fast English and sound more like a native speaker? One of the most important things you need to do is utilize reductions. If you want to learn how to speak fast English you’ll be surprised by this: sometimes even native speakers don’t understand reductions out of context. These bits of conversation sometimes combine three or four words into very fast reductions. I’ll prove it to you in this video! Come along with me, learn fast English and watch even native speakers struggle to understand these reductions out of context!
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00:00 Introduction
05:47 Repetition Exercise #1
08:06 Repetition Exercise #2
08:22 Repetition Exercise #3
08:39 Repetition Exercise #4
10:11 Repetition Exercise #5
10:28 Repetition Exercise #6
Improve your American Accent / spoken English at Rachel's English with video-based lessons and exercises. Rachel uses real life English conversation as the basis for teaching how to speak English and how to sound American -- improve listening comprehension skills. Study English vocabulary and English phrases such as phrasal verbs, as well as common expressions in English. Learn American idioms and American slang.
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Hi beutyful!!
Arabic Small English teacher
th-cam.com/video/VICJp7sK8wo/w-d-xo.html
@@robertonuneznunez9744 beautiful*
When she says native speaker she means to talk exactly like her. If you live in America and speak English then You are a native speaker. Everyone speaks English differently because of culture, region and education.....this does not make ppl non native speakers
Imagine being a non-native 14-year old who hadn't had much experience with English spoken by natives thus far (in ~2015) being asked by a cashier "Dywannabag". Like, yes, I want a bag, but please have mercy on me
>< lmao
LMAO I love this. Argentinian here, can relate
It could be misunderstood as: Do you wanna bang?
@@hawk66100 context my dude
@@editazilinskyte3681 I’m well aware of what context is, I was just kidding around.
One of my favorite "fast English" slurs is "What do you want?" pronounced. "Wa-yawant?" Or "I don't know" as "i-OH-oh".
I like how some people say: “you don’t even know.” As: U O E N O.
LMAO, ever heard a teenager say I don't know as "eh eh oh"? To me they're just grunting. I told my son e-nun--c-i-ate, you're speaking gibberish 😂
When I say I don't know it comes off as "I dunno"
And what do you mean is "Whaddya mean?"
I think the way we shorten words will depend on our regions too
“So watcha watcha watcha wanso watcha wan?” Beastie Boys, 20th-Century American philosophy club
A Jewish comedian whose name I don’t recall spoke of taking skiing lessons in Germany. He found it rather unnerving when his instructor greeted him and said, “Jew want to learn to ski?”
This happens often in AAVE (African American Vernacular English) too. If you say something like “Ouno, she wentuda sto-o summ.” Literally translates to “I don’t know, she went to the store or something.” It’s also spoken faster as well, sometimes quieter but also sometimes louder depending on what’s being said.
That might be why I got all of them. I’m use to AAVE
Unless you are southern!! “I had gone down to da sto an seen aow dem chillen out back”
@@lukeo.6410 *used to
I’m a native English speaker, I love hearing people try to learn English. As Americans, we don’t get how hard it is to learn and to sound natural.
💯💯
Apparently in the Midwest, they like to say “did you eat?” Like “djeet?”
as a midwesterner, yes.
Is that not how it works, everywhere?
@@sarahdonahue8393 Nope. Well, down here in Texas, I don’t think we would ask “did you eat?” in the first place. That is how we would say it if we were saying it quickly, though.
We would probably more likely ask if someone was hungry.
that’s how my mom says it! both my parents are from iowa.
We do that in the South, too. "Jeetyet?" with the 'T' making a glottal stop. Appalachian English is fascinating. There are so many parallels with British, Scottish, and Irish English that a southerner has no problem understanding the words from across the pond. The only pause would be slang itself. In fact, some linguists believe the Southern Appalachian dialect is closer to how the Brits used to talk before the Victorian Era.
I wish there were Spanish and Korean learning videos like this. Acclimating your listening to colloquial speech patterns is essential. Even as a native English speaker, I thoroughly enjoyed this breakdown.
..well.. chilean, dominican, cuban spanish and some islanders from spain speak so fast and bad that even natives can't understand them...
I feel like Talk To Me In Korean podcasts/soundclouds do a pretty good job at helping you speak more naturally. They often mention how words are smushed together, especially hellos and goodbyes.
I'm learning Spanish and Korean too, and I came to the comments to say this!!!!
@@laurynmiller4752 me tooo hahhha i gave up on korean tho
@@letshaveanormalname6325 I gave up on learning Korean for a bit but I want to pick it back up, I just never sit down and dedicate time for it:/
This is something that I did a lot when I was learning English, I'd repeat what people were saying on a show dead slow and accentuate it as much as I could and then go as fast as I could until it sounded similar. Today I live in England and not to flatter myself but I've had people assume I'm from here 😅 This is a great exercise in my opinion :)
Genius idea!
I'm a native speaker but I have an audio processing disorder so this happens to me a lot 😭 But despite the struggle I think it's really fun and interesting the way our brains process sound and speech. Your videos are super enjoyable, thank you for all the work you put into them and to helping teach people 💕
That's why I put subtitles on when I watch a movie. Almost every language has it's quirks. The accent in Glasgow, Scotland, is different than the rest of Scotland.
Sometimes I don't understand if I don't have subtitles on and English is my first language 😅
I went to Ireland in '98 and in Galway near the Gap of Dunloe, the BnB owner's husband had such a thick brogue he sounded Scottish.
its*
Thank you for actually addressing this because as someone from Scotland (I'd rather not say where) people lump us in with a 'British' accent, which isnt even British, it's from Essex.
I’m from the highlands but my family originate from the west coast and I have an awful time with people asking me to repeat things and asking me where I’m from, a lot of tourists ask if I’m American for some reason yet I think my accent is very thick. My friends recorded some stuff for a gaming session and listening back to it I could hardly make out what’s I was saying. Possibly it’s the pattern of my speech rather than just my accent?
I think the ultimate reduction I've ever noticed in my own speech is:
"I'm going to go to" -> "mna".
I always thought "Mna" is short for "I'm gonna"..
Well, usually it is. But apparently it's possible to squeeze even more in there and still have people understand you. Again, this is in my own speech.
@@Roldan_Belenos sounds interesting. Can you give us an example?
Yeah I say this more like "I'm gonna" shortened. "I'mna" as in "I'm going to go to the store"... "I'mna go do de store d'yawananything?"🤣
I'm gonna go to translates to "imna go ta" or "imna gota" if you drop the "go to" then you better be pointing at the door after dragging out the sound of "imna..."
Most English speakers will understand you're going to leave and if they have context on chores or whatever you were planning to do they'll probably know where you're going but it is awkward to not say where you're going without the context and saying imna without the go to part is only just the beginning of an unfinished sentence basically.
I've just discovered that my auditory processing disorder has given me the power of fully understanding tiny clips of out-of-context slurred segments of sentences because _all_ words sound like that to me anyway. Fascinating.
Thanks for sharing!
As a non native speaker, I actually got them all quite easily. Perhaps I subconsciously pay more attention to my pronunciation precisely because it isn't my native language, therefore being more familiar with this kind of "mumbling". However, I've noticed the same effect in my native language and genuinely struggle to understand what's being said.
This is like showing someone 10% of a painting or picture and saying "do you know what this is?"
And it’s like showing them a black section ...
Exactly whats the point lmao
I understood most of it.
You're so dense
No it is not. Because you’re not supposed to guess the picture from just a part of it which has no meaning. But you’re supposed to know exactly which words are being spelled regardless of meaning or context IF theres no such unstressed syllables. But guess what you don’t know ,which shows how unclear these sounds actually are. That’s the point.
This gives me more empathy for my immigrant father. Sometimes when someone is talking, he'll randomly stop them and be like "WHAT?" and tell them they're talking gibberish. And his own spoken English is good, so my family always makes fun when he does this because we just assumed that he was being annoying, but now I understand that he's genuinely having difficulty understanding us.
Damn, I hadn't thought of that. Thank you so much for sharing. It also makes me feel a bit better for having to rewind videos sometimes, especially from people with strong, less Hollywood-esque accents. Why did I even say -esque and not -ish there? I am going to lose myself in a google rabbit hole about it now, I can see it already. Sidenote: I'm argentinian
@@tywinderbaum5283 I believe that -esque is perfectly acceptable :)
@@ToYourHealthAndMine yep, I think it’s actually more acceptable than -ish in this instance, since by technical definition -esque implies “in the style of.” so it would mean “in the style of Hollywood (actors, movies, etc.)” 😊
Omg yea this is probably how my mother feels even though her English is really good too it's still her 2nd language
@@lissastargazer Good discussion. Love the username.
English is not my mother tongue, but I've been learning it for 20 years now and when I see videos like this I just feel really proud that I can speak it at all. These were all so hard.
oh my god. all the props to people who learn English as a second language, I'm a native speaker and never realized how complex linguistics is, let alone the complexities of English. if I hadn't been born in an English speaking country there's no chance I could learn it tbh.
As a non native, i guessed all of them right so idk.
English is my second language and I remember struggling so hard with how fast people were talking so for a few weeks I worked hard at learning rap lyrics from Eminem and Linkin Park and other songs that were popular at the time and after a few weeks of listening to even faster paced words then normal speech wasn't so fast anymore. From there I could pick up these little conjoined habits and emulate it as well. My American husband when he wants to say "I'm going to" says "Immana" like "Immana head out" and he doesn't like that I point it out. I find it cute. ^^
Thanks for sharing Ambi!
It really seems so cute to me, too. Still working on learning lyrics from both those artists myself, I'm argentinian
i'm a native english speaker but i've been learning spanish regularly for about 4 years now. i think learning languages from fast paced conversations and music is a great way to learn fast speech and common phrases. definitely helps ^^
Linkin Park?
That’s because you’re smart!
the way my brain went “dónde estás” for the first one and refused to hear anything else 😭😭😭
Me too!
Same. I'm a native English speaker learning Spanish, and that is precisely what I heard. Weird.
Lol
@@evanmagill9114 saaaame
Ontás
As someone studying Japanese (native English speaker), suddenly some of the things I've been finding difficult in listening to Japanese makes sense! It's very similar in some ways!
I started noticing this a couple of months ago when I noticed I pronounce “to” as “ta”. While I hadn’t realized how prevalent it is, it drew my attention to how spoken english is often mushed together and how difficult that could be for non-native speakers.
That’s why context and stress are the most important parts of English. It’s also why a lot of people who learn English don’t break the barrier of fluency. It’s amazing that people are starting to understand that this part of English is vital.
I had a class in university about poetry, and the lecturer made a point about the importance of stresses in words by speaking a sentence where he stressed the words/syllables that are normally not stressed, and vice versa, and he was not intelligible at all.
Not only are context and stress vital...they are *heavily* regional. When I moved to the Southern US, I felt like I had to learn English all over again, and I'd been speaking it with decent (some people cannot tell it's not my native language) for over 20 years already!
@@araeshkigal Yeah southern English is a beast and even then it’s regional. Carolinas vs Ga/fl vs AL/La
English is a ridiculously easy language to learn.
@@flood1417 but also a ridiculously difficult language to master and reach fluency on
I have an auditory processing disorder and that's how everything sounds until i process it.
The part where your friends and family suddenly understand is how my brain works
Exactly this. I am a native English speaker, but I cannot process these fast, unclear words in normal conversation.
The slowed down sounds were incomprehensible.
Even the context sections still sounded like random mouth sounds, not words until a few seconds later, when my brain had a chance to process.
This is exactly what TV without captions sounds like to me.
And the following "what'd you say- oh! Nevermind." as my brain figures it out a few seconds later.
I'm not diagnosed with an auditory processing disorder but I know they are exceedingly common in people with ADHD. I used to worry I was actually just going deaf but was confused how it was possible I couldn't hear words but it was still so loud.
Same! I actually understood most of the little out-of-context clips in the video... that is, I'm so used to not understanding *normal sentences* that I automatically took a second to puzzle through it and come up with a couple best guesses for what it meant.
In my daily life I miss a lot of simple questions that should be apparent from context. If I'm not listening carefully, I have to guess what was actually said, and sometimes it takes me 10-30 seconds to untangle afterward. By then I've usually already given a nonsensical answer to the question and the other person has long since moved on.
You'd think I would ask for clarification instead of going through that... But when I'm tired the whole world of human speech is just a flood of barely intelligible babbling, and I don't always realize I've misheard until it's too late.
@@WritingsOfQuill I can relate. Even though I’m used to it by now, it’s still embarrassing and makes conversations often feel like a chore.
oh my god i'm so glad someone else commented w an auditory processing disorder. honestly i think i had a leg up in understanding the clips bc i'm so used to having to piece sounds together to make sense of them
Wow! This was really fun to watch! Thankfully, even though I learned my native language first, because I was little, I was able to pick up English pretty quickly and could speak without an accent.
The thing about english is that everyone speaks it with some accent
where i'm from, the native speakers don't talk like that- but when i moved across the country, everyone spoke like this. to this day i still struggle. this video is very helpful!
I'm a native speaker and knew that running words together and dropping letters was common but seeing it broken down like this and then repeating it myself is just wild. It's as though the sounds are only a step above grunting. 😆
OOK!
The sounds are very much below grunting if I’m being honest
I am not a native English speaker. The aspect of English, you described, has always been a challenge for me. This handicap has had me not engaging in conversations because of the confusion it causes me. Reading and writing English is much easier than speaking it. Many words are spelled unlike what they sound. But, that poses no problem because they will always be spelled the same. The spoken aspect of English sounds different from region to region. This causes a lot of confusion.
@@indridcold8433 One of the Biggest Joys of the Engalish (Spelling is intentional, for humor) is the simple fact that we have stolen so many things from other languages.
And then we use the rule of THOSE LANGUAGES to govern the particular words we stole from it.
This is why the Plural of Goose is Geese, and the plural of Duck is Ducks...
And why my brain turns into mucks.
Wait, the plural of muck is "Muck."
And now you know why English is alleged to be the Second Most Difficult Language to learn as a Second Language.
"All the faith that I had had, had had no effect on the outcome."
@@TimeSurfer206 What you actually said was "She sells sea shells by the sea shore."
I love how unknowingly, her friend also gave a perfect example of this at 2:45! She said “do it again” but it’s almost completely unintelligible by itself. But given the context of the situation and being able to read her body language, we knew that she said “do it again“. But I would bet money that if that section alone was played by itself, I wouldn’t have any idea what she was saying. So interesting
Yeah, that "do it again" is super quick. I can't spell it in a way that conveys that because even when written, those words are short.
@@russellfautheree4650 dootagen
Russell Fautheree to me that sounds rather like: du(i)t-(e)gn
I honestly barely understood what she said.
Wow you're a really good observant
I don't know what's wrong with me, but I got every single one correct. It was extremely easy for me. I'm a person with ADHD and it makes me wonder if the way I process things has to do with me being able to understand gibberish
I don’t know if it’s an adhd thing or a “raised by a non native English speaker” thing but I think this is the exact reason why it’s impossible for me to watch shows and movies without subtitles. Even with context, I struggle to understand English that’s gone through reduction
I think its an ADHD thing cause everyone in my family has ADHD and we all put on the subtitles with the exception of my dad who cant read them fast enough lol
My dad has adhd and has never used subtitles. I had them one and he asked why. I told him it was because so I can read what people are saying because he won't stop talking to me
her: "repeat"
me: **does nothing**
her: "you have to say it out loud."
me, a native English speaker: **yes ma'am I'm sorry** "ydonavete"
Exactly, lmao! I'm like.. "why am I practicing this?!?"
y’donvete
@@nyanSynxPHOENIX because she said so 😂😭😅
And I just had to say "ydonavete" out loud a few times to understand it. XD
Lol
1. "You don't have to"
2. "I wasn't going to" "I wasn't gonna"
3. "It's just a"
I heard each very clearly the first time around. I am a native New Yorker and we are used to people talking fast and slurring their words here in the city.
My friends obsession with new York accents lead to him being able to understand me even when I slurr my words together. It's hilarious sometimes
I'm not even a native speaker and I understood
I'm Finnish and heard the first one perfectly and the last two pretty much right! Pretty proud of myself. 😊
Maybe thats why I got it to hahahaha
See that's what I'm thinking as well because I come from California where this type of fast-talk is extremely normal as well and typically used in films and television where she got her examples from
This is really interesting! I never realized the so many tiny changes in noises we do subconciously depending on the sounds around it, this is really opening my eyes to all the things people have to figure out when learning English!
This is so interesting! I never thought of how natural English is a whole lot of slurring words together. It really shows how difficult it must be to learn English when you aren’t a native speaker, with everyone muddling their words.
This is so true. I have NEVER noticed this. When learning languages, this needs to be taught more.
For sure!! I'm learning French, which is already so hard because so many letters are skipped, rather than pronounced, but when they start talking fast, I'm completely lost.
"I don't know" becomes a wavy "u-ugh-uh" sound. I don't even know how to type that sound in letter form. It's basically a shrug in sound form. It's the laziest way I know to communicate anything, and I love it!
This is really interesting bc I actually never put any thought into just how shorthand that version of idk is 😂 It really is just a sound but it can fully communicate confusion
I know exactly what you’re talking about! I don’t do it often but I do it
Lol I just tried it and you can even hum it
lol i do the sound of idk every timei did it since i was very young
yeah technically you could make any sound with the same like notes(?) and it would totally understood as “i don’t know”
As a native speaker, for all 3 of them I didn't pass until I heard the full sentence. But now I just realized, this type of speech is the part where I need captions on shows/movies/videos! Especially for the 1st one, if I was hearing that without looking at captions I would have to rewind and look at the captions because I had no idea what he was saying until the people in the video realized it.
Thanks for sharing Hepoxni!
Holy moly! I'm a native English speaker and this perfectly describes what I experienced living in eastern NC but I never heard it broken down like this!
I got the “don’t have to” thing. I normally listen to TH-cam and podcasts at 2x speed starting around the pandemic and I was curious if this was having an effect on how I comprehend language since I feel like my speaking speed has increased and I’ve caught myself slurring words more.
wait…that would explain why i got it too hahaha
Wait I listen to podcasts at 1.5x speed and I got both of them right, you might be on to something!
Holy cow! I thought I was the only one! Haha. Sometimes 2x isn't even quick enough
I agree! After listening to a podcast I tend to speak faster unconsciously as well
I listen at 2x as well! I should suggest this to my students.
As a professional actor, I have to make distinct choices about when I use reduction strings and when I choose to make my words very clear. Each choice produces a very different effect on character and a very emotional product. I also like to watch for these choices in movies and plays, and sometimes their speech patterns and their emotions/character don't match up. It's very fascinating.
Very cool! I’m actually just about to perform the second night of our musical at my school! We open in about 3 hours!
@@babyyoda587 break a leg! I’m a musical theatre performer. :)
Ayyy this is smart
@@babyyoda587 that's awesome! What musical? I hope it went well!
learning channels have the most wholesome comments fr
i have adhd and i talk very quickly and usually watch everything on 2x the speed. i am a native english speaker with english being my only language. i think that because i talk and consume media so quickly, i have an easier time understanding the fast talking. i understood all of them after the first listen and im pretty impressed with myself!
Thanks for sharing!
I'm a native English speaker and I never even realized what was happening. It's so cool seeing it broken down like this.
Thanks Sarah!
I do this at work
"Areyougonnawanta LID ON TOP?"
"It'sgonnaaskifyouwanna TIP andthenyoucanhitthe GREEN buttontopay" and I purposefully emphasize those words because those are the ones people get wrong (like they hit the red button because they don't want to tip, but it cancels the transaction)
It even took me a while to read it lol
Whoa! Good examples
Same. I work in a restaurant and often i have to force myself to slow down and pronounce words because I say it really fast and unclear since I have to say the same words all day
i feel like a dumbass reasking waiters what they say all the time
I’m a native english speaker, but my Spanish-learning has stalled because of this exact same thing in Spanish. It’s really hard to get used to how some words are typically contracted. Just listening to you break down this phenomenon for us really helped me realize some steps I can take to understand spoken Spanish much easier. Thank you!!
Yes!! I've had the same issue! Listening to Spanish music and looking at the lyrics has helped me pick up on words I wouldn't have normally caught
What type of Spanish are you learning?
This is the part that's frustrating me 😓 I have a minor in Spanish and can understand most people but especially with a variety of accents and colloquial terms sometimes I just have no clue.
I've noticed that in English there are sounds in words that we can sacrifice and still have the meaning get across, and sounds we must have to be understand. I started noticing which sounds these are in Spanish by listening to native speakers while reading what they are saying.
hey! I’m also learning Spanish now and I was curious to see if you have any video recommendations for learning Spanish contractions? or just Spanish learning in general
As a native English speaker who has learned German to fluency and is currently learning Korean, this is so fascinating. I didn't realize that syllable dropping and pushing words together was something that is actually taught! I also did understand all of the sample clips, though maybe it could have something to do with being around non-native speakers all the time and being very aware of English as spoken for/by non-native speakers.
Very interesting. 1 and 3 actually were pretty easy to hear for me. I end up turning my whole sentence into a reduction string often. I think most people also avoid reducing the phrase when they're responding to a question. Someone asks 'do I have to ___' and you say 'you don't have to' without such reduction even though there technically is context. I started instinctively adding a semi-southern accent to get my point across. Basically adding playful inflections to break up my sentence.
Real, real, American English! This is the pronunciation we can't learn at school! Thanks!👏🏿
absolutely
That's not English.
I'll go with Jade Joddle.
@@enriquegranados5179 Give Limmy's Show a shot ;)
If there is such a thing as "American English," then it surmises that all other forms of English are also valid and should therefore receive official recognition.
@@andrewmboya3101 Then start giving them recognition
I could hear them all correctly without context, but I also come from an American English dialect where folks speak very fast, I have very good hearing, and I've studied linguistics, so... maybe it's that? :)
I can definitely see how this would be frustrating for non-native speakers, though! I have similar struggles when trying to understand Japanese that's spoken at a good clip.
Same, I'm from a part of Texas where cramming words together to make new words is an art, lol
@@senatorarmstrong4936 lol I live in San Antonio so yea I hear that stuff alot too
I’m from Texas and can’t understand it at all
@@senatorarmstrong4936 We do that in the northeast as well. Didn't have a problem understanding any clip.
Like many of the other replies, I'm from Texas and could also understand all of them correctly. It's interesting to see that different dialects can affect a person's interpretation of what they're hearing.
this is such a great breakdown, i love the way learning more informal speaking can help so much when actually talking with native speakers
I always thought about how hard it is to understand our sentences as a non native speaker
I got them all, and what's interesting is that I'm autistic, so I have sensory processing issues. I'm curious if that made it easier for me, because I've grown up struggling more with understanding and have become more acutely aware. One of my favorite shortenings is 'cha for what are you, mostly used as cha upto. I also come from an area that swallows as many t's as humanly possible. Moun'n is so much fun to say.
Great! Thanks a lot for sharing Tracie! :)
I also got them all and I also have a sensory processing disorder
God, it’s actually incredible that we as english speakers have shortened “what are you” to “whatcha” to just “ ‘cha”… like what the hell
same with “ion” for “I don’t”
and lastly, one of the most contrived I know is probably “imma” which is short for “I’m gonna” which is short for “I am going to”
Yes! Same here! Sometimes my auditory processing issues make it sound like people are speaking gibberish, so it confused me that I managed to get them all. But this explanation makes sense.
I also got all of them... Maybe I should look more into sensory disorder stuff
And here in the South "yedunafta" becomes "yaintgotta" .😁 It's amazing that even with different reductions between dialects, native speakers still manage to understand each other...mostly !
yup lol
this looks like gibberish until i pronounce it lol but this is pretty interesting! i’ve never heard anyone saying “yaintgotta” but it totally sounds like something I _could_ hear
@@thesleepydot it might be an Appalachian thing. I even picked it up myself after being here awhile.
And that sounds perfectly normal in my part of the world as well just like I'm fixin to go do that or ain't nuttin out thar
@@schmodedo I say that more commonly than "yedunafta", but I'm from Florida, so I have no idea the origin of me saying this.
I’m so happy the algorithm suggested this. I got “don’t have to” “wasn’t gunna” AND “it’s just a” correct right away, but I’m autistic and have context and subtext blindness (including nonverbal cues). I developed a very high verbal/reading comprehension skill to compensate for all of the subtext and context I lose. I suspected this would be the case for me and it was, so this was super illuminating for me.
I find this so interesting bc I've noticed this before. I was randomly talking out loud and found I couldn't understand what I had just said, even though I knew what the words were. I love that this is a whole concept.
Thank you!
Rachel! Thank you so much for the these videos. As an English teacher in Japan, a lot of my students have been struggling with some of the listening tasks but when I break it down like you have done here, they get it. But sometimes it is hard for them to wrap their heads around that English does not stress every letter, word or syllable to achieve the goal of communication.
You're welcome and thanks for sharing Mokrah!
Chris Broad
@@crazyd4ve875 bruh his videos are so good
It depends upon your aim. Do you wish to teach your students to speak proper English or merely grunt like an American?
@@shaunpcoleman I think you're right. It's good to let people learning English know what's going on with this lazy speech, but it's wasted effort for them to try to mimic it.
i’m a native english speaker and i understood them all. for the last one i had to hear it repeated, but i understood pretty quickly. i’m a fast talker, and i’m used to fast speech. exposure seems to be important for native speakers to understand. this was an interesting video, now i’ll consider my speed when i talk to younger kids and anyone else learning the language. thank you 🙏
You're welcome and thanks for sharing Jada!
Yep! Fast talker, from New York, so I understood it all. Definitely has something to do with that as well!
This video makes me very happy so now I can put into words as a hearing impaired person why I don’t hear a whole sentence when missing only one or two key words! This is exactly how English speakers talk and we highly rely on key main words to figure out what people are saying in context. So this is what I hear when I mishear the main word or if a noise overlapped it.
i am in Awe my jaw has DROPPED im a native english speaker but i've been learning mandarin for 2 years now and i watched a video just like this about reductions in spoken language but about reductions in fast mardarin and EVERYTHING MAKES SENSE NOW because watching said mandarin reductions video had me wonder if that's allowed and how anyone could understand/hear such versions of things with so much taken out but seeing the same in english just made everything click... very cool video i love linguistics this is so cool !
That's great Mi! Thanks for watching! :)
As a native, "don't have to" was instantly recognizable
"wasn't gonna" required a few seconds of actual thought, but still not too hard to determine
"it's just a" was almost as easy as "don't have to"
If you listen to the context of the tone itself you might be able to tell what the words are without the context of the sentence
With "wasn't gonna", I could tell that it had "gonna" in it, and I could tell the verb was "was", but whether it was positive or negative was ambiguous. I didn't hear the negative contraction at all.
This tells me that it is mostly tone that communicates whether the statement is positive or negative, rather than the actual syllables. If I were speaking to a non-native speaker, I would go out of my way to make sure they clearly understand whether the statement is positive or negative. Even so far as to avoid contractions, so the "not" is clear.
This is a big problem when I'm trying to order food with an omission. "Without" and "with" sound way too similar, if someone isn't paying attention, or anticipating what they are hearing. Spanish does a much better job at keeping these words distinct, since con and sin sound completely different.
As an English teacher myself and speaker of 6 languages, i have to say, you are REALLY good. This is super helpful material I've heard before but never presented so clearly. Outstanding.
Thanks Nicholas!
I realized this when talking with my family. Sometimes my English becomes more stress-timed and I’ll drop vowels naturally, but people can still understand what I’m saying.
I'm a native speaker and I got the first and third pretty easily, and felt good about the second after your sister's input, but this was a really cool idea. Thanks for sharing it.
I can't believe that the way Chandler stressed certain words more than others in his speech pattern was actually a thing we all did until you pointed it out. And we used to make fun of him too.
Not a native speaker and I got "It's just a", I'm so proud.
Samee
This was a really interesting video! For whatever reason, as a native speaker, I don’t really talk like this, and as I listened, I was able to decipher all 3 phrases without the context of the sentence.
This has been my BIGGEST struggle in learning other languages too. For the life of me, even after years of learning, when I hear native speakers, i can't make out everything they say, only bits and pieces. Gives me comfort strangely, knowing it isn't just me.
I'm sure this is true in every language, and this is definitely true in French, my native language. When I started learning English 50 years ago (yes! And still learning) I was made aware of that very quickly, which made me pick up on how new words and expressions I learned could be pronounced in two different ways. In English, lots of less important words can be pronounced in two different ways depending on the context. "At" isn't pronounced the same in "what are you looking at?" And "I'm looking at you". But this video takes it to another level, with a whole bunch of words undergoing that process. Just like in French. A sentence like "Maintenant tu n'es pas obligé de me le dire" ("now you don't have to tell me") will come out as "manan tépa objé dmel dir", and every native speaker will understand. One thing that maybe this video doesn't say is that not only context but intonation help understand the sentence.
yeah i can’t understand spoken French despite the fact that i’ve been learning for 4 years, the shortening is hard to pick up
@@blade7506 One thing helps in case you haven't tried: watching French films or shows in French with FRENCH subtitles on, if you can have them. And repeating what you've heard the way the actors said it.
French and English are non-phonetic languages, which means that the spellings of words don't exactly define the pronunciation. a lot of other languages are phonetic, in that if you see a word written, you will know how to read that word. they're not as flexible in how you say the word.
still, they might have similar mechanics, but english and french are the worst for exemplifying it because they're just completely out there.
@@khaosklub I'm pretty sure you still can contract several syllables into one in what you call phonetic languages. Have you ever heard an Italian speak italian ? When I do that in French, it isn't because of the spelling of the words. It's the sounds that count, it's the sounds that get "contracted".
@@JustinCase99999 there's a big difference between a contraction like "can't" for "cannot" vs what we're seeing in this video.
though I'm not saying similar things don't exist in other languages, but english and french are the worst languages to use to make that case.
Native US English speaker here, I passed the tests! Although, I'd contribute my ability to piece out the statements to my love of hip hop and rap where reductions and areas to speak faster appear more regularly in the language to fit a better metric or flow. Awesome resource on English speech mastery, the way native speakers flex their speed muscle feels overlooked in how we teach others the language.
As a kid, I had an inside joke with my friends after one of my friends was asking another one where to go to find a particular object:
"Where do you gotta go to get it?"
Sounded more like
"Whered'y'goda'go't'gid'id?"
and immediately the rest of us started repeating the sentence. It sounded so unusually fast that we couldn't stop laughing at that moment. You also don't have to move your lips a lot to make it sound correct since the tongue does most of the pronouncing work. We even came up with a speedy reply to this newfound method of inquiry:
"You gotta go to get it over there".
Or
"Y'goda'go'd'ged'it'ove'der" 🤣🤣
Another childhood favorite was teaching myself how to repeat the nonsense word "biggitty" to make a very fast sounding drum roll sound with your tongue. You'd be surprised how fast you can churn this 'word' out in succession when you place your reductions in the right area. Biggitty becomes b'g'd.
"b'g'd'b'g'd'b'g'd'b'g'd'b'g'd'b'g'd'b'g'd'b'g'd!"
Last thing I'll add to this novel, as a kid I used to go out of my way to pronounce billboards, restaurant signs, and advertisements in ways that are not formally accepted in general American English. A quick example would be reading the word 'balloon' as 'bayllunn' since the a and oo's have multiple interpretations in American English. I think being able to make and have fun with the language you're trying to learn makes mastery of speech (and ultimately, pronunciation) much more interesting and easier to find the flow of your own unique tone of voice.
For those still lost on the concept there's a hilarious Key and Peele sketch on YT called Substitute Teacher which shows off different examples of alternative pronunciations of people's names in English (mature/adult language):
th-cam.com/video/Dd7FixvoKBw/w-d-xo.html
(If you're unfamiliar with the names, I highly recommend closed captions)
*Sorry for my lack of use of the correct pronunciation symbols (I don't know what they're called! 😳), I know very little about the academics of speech analysis, I'm just a native speaker 🙂*
Thanks for sharing Daniel!
Native English speaker here (NJ - not jersey shore accent god no), I find myself doing the same thing but usually enunciate the last word properly.
This is a brilliant observation. It also explains why we have difficulty learning the conversational form of a different language.
Very interesting. As a native English speaker learning foreign language this is actually a really interesting point on attaining fluency.
I've also struggled with animating lip flaps for these unstressed words.
This is curious! Native Midwesterner here.
1: "You don't have to"
2: I feel like "gonna" is at the end, but I'm not sure what's before that.
3: "It was just a" Oh, that's interesting, I keep hearing "was" in there during the shortened clips, but in the full sentence, I can clearly hear that "was" is nowhere to be found.
That's interesting! This has been a curious and fun exercise!
Thanks for watching!
Funny! I’m a non native speaker, but I’ve lived in the States for a good while, every now and again I find hear myself speaking like that and then my inner critic says ‘The hell man!! Speak clearly no one is going to understand you if you mumble like that!’
Hmm I never thought of it as a sign of assimilation of the lenguaje. Interesting
I think a lot of people struggle with this when English isn't their primary language. They stop themselves too much. My mom does this and she's been living in the states for over 3 decades 😅 over correcting herself all the time and feeling like she doesn't understand the language
Reminds me of the paragraph where you can read it and it’s all jumbled. I believe the first and last letter are the same but the rest is jumbled. You can read it because your mind is thinking through the words not paying attention to the exact location of the letters. Just like when someone asks you a question and you immediately ask them to repeat, your brain figures out what they said and then you answer, in the middle of them asking it again.
This is super interesting! I've always wondered whether English sounds different to Native speakers' ears because it's a language that relies so much on stringing syllabus tgt that a single sound means nothing. My native language is Cantonese which is very different because each/ character is a word in itself and it's always a sound in itself. This is actually rlly mind blowing!!!
Even as a native speaker, this is such a fascinating lesson in language! And yes, I could not understand anything until it was in context.
I'm a rather mature (old) native speaker and I find this really interesting. To me, it's like trying to decipher a text message from a young native speaker. I also have a hard time figuring out when it's appropriate to type in short hand conversational English versus grammatically correct English.
Haha.. Older here too. The best thing for us is to stick to the old fashioned way of spelling, and sentence structure. Otherwise we can get pretty silly. I have, however, learned a few shortcuts that work for me. Makes me sad that kids aren't learning the basics in school.
As a young person it is quite apparent that Boomers and Gen Xers don’t have the same concept of text etiquette that Millenials and Gen Z do. For example, typing ‘ok’ instead of ‘okay’ comes across as terse, but not necessarily rude, although it can seem a little curt sometimes, where just typing ‘k’ comes across to young people like you’re angry. The number of times I’ve thought my grandparents or parents were ready to fight me because they responded with a simple ‘k’ is off the charts. 😂
Older people also tend to “cold call” you, meaning just calling you out of the blue without a text or message first. Every time my Dad or Grandma call me out of the blue my first thought is “oh god who died?” and the call is always just about how I’ve been, which is something young people would just text about. 😂
@@adieljonsson864 that's not even mentioning kk, gg, aight, alright, etc.
@@adieljonsson864 Ikr I text "k" when I'm annoyed and not in the mood to talk, If I say "okay" then you know i'm feeling extra good that day
Native English speaker here. Got the "wasn't gonna" pretty easily, but not the other two. Certainly interesting.
Thanks for sharing!
This is brilliant, I’ve never even thought about this. Now I understand that hat people mean when they tell me to “slow down” and “finish talking”. This is quite ear opening if you get what I mean. Thanks for the lesson. The insight was great.
Me a native American English speaker: " *Ahh yes I see that the floor here is made of floor here* "
Yeah, same. I might cue in on this to be able to subtly tell if I'm speaking to a non-native English speaker even if they don't have a strong accent. I might even be able to pick it up in fewer words this way.
I feel like reduction string happens in other languages, too. For me, it's especially noticeable when I listen to Spanish songs or watch a Spanish film with subtitles.
It definitely happens in French and Italian; it probably happens in all languages. What I've found in French is that it mostly happens when native speakers speak to each other, not when they talk to a non-native or when they talk directly to the camera as in a TH-cam or Instagram video.
In spanish:echado para adelante=echao Palante
---voy para el colegio=voy pal colegio
---alguna otra=alguotra
Anytime a Spanish person says "la verdad es que..." it's all one word "lverdaesque"
Happens a lot in Japanese, too. It's why I struggle understanding the language in variety shows because it's more natural Japanese than, say, the Japanese you hear in anime.
All languages, yes
Looks like it's gonna be the third English language for me to learn. First, at school, I learnt Br English, then I put lots of effort to learn Am English. Now it's time to start learning native speakers' fast version... :D
Fascinating. I did guess right at first for “you don’t have to,” possibly because I use this phrase sometimes. But after someone said they heard “Jonathan,” then the next repeat I definitely thought it sounded like Jonathan, my sons name. So context and expected words do strongly influence what you think you hear.
This is also the explanation for Niel Armstrong's missing "a" in his one small step speech.
One small step for a man, became one small step fura man. With the "a" sound barely voiced.
I saw a show use audio analysis equipment to find the "a" in his famous quote.
And in that dialect, "uh" is common as a filler word or sloppy added syllable, so probably subconsciously it's understood as "one small step for (uhh) man" or "one small step ferruh man"
I've had to be very conscious of this lately, making sure my toddler with a speech delay learns how to enunciate properly, and I find myself stopping and re-saying each word individually. This was an awesome video, thank you!
You're welcome Melissa and thanks for watching! :)
As a native english speaker, I didn’t actually have a problem distinguishing all three of them.. I even got the “wasn’t” distinct from the “was” guess. That being said, this is extremely interesting and is actually quite a common problem with other languages as well. When I first began learning spanish aurally, the hardest part of conversations was the fact that the way some words linked together made them sound like completely different words or other nonsense. Interesting video!
The fun part about English is there's so many ways one word can be used and that same word can mean many other different things in other context
Thanks for sharing Ziggy!
Makes me think of "Friends" when they were making fun of the way Chandler talks. "Can that report BE any later?"
I just LOVE how they were making fun of a way a CHARACTER speaks lol like is there an actual person they were making fun of too??🤣
I was able to understand each clearly the first time, however I don't think I represent the typical english speaker. I consume a high amount of media daily, podcasts, youtube, audio books, etc. often at X2 speeds or higher. I am also very interested in linguistics so it is possible that I pay closer attention to these sorts of details in general.
is more like a slang just like the internet has for example "i dont know" the slang is either "ion" or "i dunno" and "idk"
Same, I also listen to lots of audiobooks at 1.5+ speeds so maybe that has something to do with it.
I had no issue either, but I don't like listening to thi gs high speed. Some comments make me think it's a midwestern thing? or maybe she needs a larger sample size
@@lydialuton4402 I’m midwestern so I was able to understand it because this is how I speak
native speaker here!
1. "don't have to" - got it!
2. "wasn't gonna" - missed the "it"
what a great exercise! i never thought about how much we rely on context to help us understand the unstressed/reduced words in a sentence. this was fun to experiment with!
I got the first one right! You don't have to...compliment me but clearly, this makes me the greatest...
This happens with many other languages, but it's easier for non-native speakers to identify the reductions. As they're usually trained to expect clear sentences, when those doesn't happen even the full context may not be enough.
I've noticed this myself in my French classes. It puzzled me how they pronounced "Je ne sais pas" ("I don't know") in a movie as something like "shpa". I asked my teacher what "shpa" meant and she couldn't understand until she heard the whole context.
Same thing with Portuguese, British friend of mine struggled to understand me when I spoke with what I consider a natural pace.
With Spanish I feel like reductions are much less frequent, that's probably why I can understand Spanish better than native Spanish speakers can understand Portuguese. The vocabulary is similar, so as they speak clearly it's easier for me to figure out the context (with the exception of Chilean accent).
Lives in a household of “fast & slurred” speakers. Misses none of these. :’) However, as I follow & repeat the phrases out loud, I keep pronouncing every consonant. XD
Fascinating and makes sense! The same applies to Finnish to some extent 😁
Native speaker here, but have been living outside the English-speaking world for a while now… not to brag but I got every one of them! Glad I’ve not lost it completely haha
That's great Steven!
"You don't have to..."
Great video. I wish I had a French version of this! Same problem trying to understand native French. This has given me some insight.
"Je ne sais pas" => "ch'pa" 🤣
You can also watch this video : th-cam.com/video/pLH7rCiAoWM/w-d-xo.html
(yes, for some reason, I sometimes watch videos of people explaining how to pronounce my own language 😆)
As a non native English speaker, I guess I now know why it's so difficult for me to speak English despite being able to understand fast native speaks. Kinda fell into the exact trap of trying to speak clearly all the time.
ESL Teacher here, Ive also came to this understanding abd been developing my own teaching style around such things as this. My family coming from the southern states made me understand things like "yainna gonna gi'it ifyen don try hahda"
Thats very hard for people not from my area.
My guesses:
1. "don't have to"
2. "I wasn't going to"
3. "It's just a"
I definitely had to hear them multiple times and hearing guesses from your family helped too. Fascinating how it only takes a stressed syllable at the start of each sentence for these to make perfect sense to a native English speaker.
The "it's just a" (kidney stone) sounded super clear to me right away, but the rest I couldn't get without hearing them in context. I wonder if this type of thing is the same for all languages, because I feel like this was a major problem I struggled with as a native English speaker trying to learn Spanish. And then on top of learning to understand these things as a non-native speaker, I feel like it would be really difficult to figure out WHICH words should be clear and which words can be simplified. As someone in the southern U.S. I honestly think at least half of what comes out my mouth is simplified and shortened.
As a non-native English speaker I can tell you that the shortening starts to happen automatically at some point. The more you talk and especially listen to native speakers the more just mimic what you hear
do you think spanish speakers do that? i'm native in spanish, i've never thought about us doing that 😱
@@monoclinico Absolutely, you always notice those things more clearly when learning a language because that's what makes it harder to understand native speakers. Shortening and/or slurring words when speaking fast is done in every language I think, but it's maybe more common in certain dialects/areas.
@@monoclinico of course we do! I realize it specially when speaking to people from other countries or learning spanish and I try to use as simple and standard spanish as posible, don't know where are you from but for example, here in México is super common to say "nomas" in stead of "nada más" :)
this is really interesting. i feel like i can learn a lot from your video even though im a native speaker myself. and i do speak like this on a daily basis but this gives me a much broader perspective and i really appreciate that
Yknow tho, I think interpreting mush sounds like this gets easier when you personally know the person who’s saying it? Maybe it also just has to do with knowing the context, but I’ve noticed lots of times that I talk to my mom and what comes out of my mouth is literally just audible gibberish but somehow she understands me lmao. I barely pronounce the words but both my mom and sister understand. My dad on the other hand, who I don’t live with and see less often, doesn’t understand me as much and asks me to repeat myself a lot.
This overall isn’t really that surprising to me though. Something I learned very early on when I started learning languages is that people rarely ever actually sound like the books and audio clips and videos you use for learning sound where they speak slowly and clearly 😭 plus English is already such a mess both phonetically and in it’s grammar lmao so. Also, I’m studying Japanese and because of the way Japanese grammar works, I’ve heard that it’s often hard to understand what a conversation is about unless you hear the beginning of it, cause Japanese doesn’t repeat the subject as much as English or other languages do. I mean that happens in english too, where you hear a convo out of context and it doesn’t make sense, but I guess it happens more with Japanese?