Hi, everyone. In this lesson we’re going to learn how to speak fast like a native speaker.
When you’re learning English and you hear native speakers, why is it that they sound
so fast and it’s hard for them to understand? Are they really talking like: “Blub-blub-blub-blub-blub-blub-blub”,
or is it something that they’re doing when they pronounce sentences that makes it seem
fast, but it’s not really? Let’s look at some example sentences, and I’ll teach
you how to speak fast like a native English speaker.
All my question phrases are questions with “Do” or “Did”, and this is them written
out in the full sentence, then I have in this column what the sentence sounds like. If we
don’t know how to read IPA transcription, here, this is very useful for us. But the
problem, when we write out the pronunciation in this way, is we don’t have letters for
all the sounds. We don’t have letters from the English alphabet for all the sounds in
English, so it’s helpful, but we can still sound slightly wrong if this is all we know
about the pronunciation. That’s why I’m going to teach you little bits that we need
to know from here, so that you get the correct pronunciation. And this is what, altogether,
will help you speak fast like a native speaker. So, let’s start here, question phrase: “Do
you like it?” That’s really slow. If you’re a beginner in English, you can understand
it. “Do you like it?” But this is not how native speakers actually speak. It sounds
something like: “D-you lie-kit? D-you lie-kit?” What happens is the “Do” and “you”
join: “D-you”, “Do you”, and the “like” and the “it” change. The “k” goes
to the second… The “k” joins “it”. “D-you lie-kit? D-you lie-kit?” And we
can see this also in the IPA transcription. “Ii: kIt”, “də.ju: Ii: kIt”.
What’s also happening, here, in the IPA transcription, if you look here, this is “də.
ju”, “də. ju”. This is schwa. “də. ju”. When I write it here, we don’t have
any letter in English that can… In the English alphabet that can represent schwa, so that’s
why I just put the “d” consonant: “D-you”, “D-you”, “D-you”.
Another… Now, you have to listen really, really, really carefully to hear the difference.
“Do you like it?” can also sound like: “Jew lie-kit? Jew lie-kit?” I’m going
to say the first one, then the second one: “D-you lie-kit? D-you lie-kit? Jew lie-kit?”
You have to listen really, really carefully. So, I suggest you watch this video a few times
so that you can start to hear the difference between very similar pronunciations. Here’s
the transcription: “dʒU: li: kIt”. The same thing is happening, here, in the two
examples: “li: kIt”, but the first part is different. “də.ju”, “dʒU”, “də.ju:”,
“dʒU”. “dʒU: li: kIt”. Let’s look at the next example: “Did you
see that?” That’s how a beginner would say it. “Did you see that?” What does
it sound like? “Did-yah see that? Did-yah see that?” Am I speaking fast now—“Did-yah
see that?”—or am I just joining up the words so that they flow? “Did-yah see that?”
If we look at the IPA transcription: “you” becomes “jə”. Although it’s… It looks
like the letter “j”, this is the sound for “yah”, together with the schwa. “jə”.
“did.jə si: đaet”. Don’t be scared by this; we don’t use this IPA symbol that
often, and this is the word “that”. “did.jə si: đaet”. “Did-yah see that?”
Can you hear the difference between the first example and the second example? “Di-jah
see that? Di-jah see that?”, “Did-yah see that?”, “Di-jah see that?”, “Did-yah
see that?”, “Di-jah see that?” “di.dʒə si: đaet”. “jə”, “dʒə”, “jə”,
“dʒə”. “Di-jah see that?”, “Did-yah see that?”, “Di-jah see that?” You have
to listen really, really carefully. This is advanced-level hearing. If you don’t hear
it, you haven’t listened to enough native speaker pronunciation. What’s happening
here is we are losing the letter “d” and changing it to a “jah” sound instead.
“jah”. “Di-jah see that?” Next we’ve got a question and answer. -“I
saw Jack last night.” -“Did you?” -“I saw Jack last night.” -“Did you?” We’re
actually just looking at: “Did you?” “Did-yah? Did-yah? Did-yah?”, “did. jə”, “jə”.
“you” becomes “jə”. “did. jə”. Or I could also say… Here… Here, the emphasis
is on “did”. -“I saw Jack last night.” -“Did-yah? Did-yah?” “Did” is the
bigger word. “Did-yah?” I’m surprised. I can also answer the question like this:
-“I saw Jack last night. I saw Jack last night.” -“Di-jew? Di-jew?” There, “dʒu”
is the bigger word. What we’re doing here, when I underline this part, is I’m showing
where the main stress is. Here, “did” is the main stress: “did. jə”. Here,
“dʒu” is the main stress: “di. dʒu”. It gives us a different meaning when we change
the stress in a sentence. Another example: “Did you go?” Very slow:
“Did you go?” All the words are very clear and separate. “Did you go?”, “Did-yah
go? Did-yah go?”, “did… did. jə gəʊ, did. jə gəʊ”. “you” becomes “jə”:
“did. jə gəʊ”. Another example: “Di-jah go? Di-jah go?”, “di. dʒə gaʊ”. “dʒə”,
“di. dʒə gaʊ”. More examples coming up.
Let’s look now at: “Do you want to go?” I should have put a bit more space, there;
a separate word. “Do you want to go?” So slow, taking me forever to say it. Oh,
let’s count the syllables. “Do you want to go?” Five. “Jew wanna go? Jew wanna
go? Jew wanna go? Jew wanna go?” If I say this one really fast: “Jew wanna go? Jew
wanna go? Jew wanna go?” So, there’s four syllables here, but there’s five here, so
I’m losing one of the sounds. “Jew wanna go?”, “dʒu: wɒnnə gəʊ”. This symbol,
here, which is like a backwards “a”, is “ɒ”, “ɒ”. “wɒnnə, wɒnnə”.
“Jew wanna go?”, “dʒu: wɒnnə gəʊ”. Now, I can also say it a different way: “Juh-wanna
go? Juh-wanna go?”, “Jew wanna go?”, “Juh-wanna go?”, “Jew”, “Juh”,
“Jew”, “Juh”. “Jew wanna go?”, “Juh-wanna go?”, “dʒe wɒnnə gəʊ”.
This part is all the same. The only different was: “dʒu”, “dʒe”, “dʒu”, “dʒe”.
Another example, here: “Do you know her?” We’re talking about her. “Do you know
her?” “Da-jah knowa? Da-jah knowa? Da-jah knowa?” “də. jə nəʊ. ə”, “Da-jah
knowa?” Schwa is here, here, and here. Here, I’ve spelt it with “a”: “Da-jah knowa”,
but if I wanted to, I could also spell it like “duh”: “Duh-jah knowa?” The thing
about schwa, although we have one symbol for it here, here, and here, it slightly changes
sound every time, depending on the letters next to it. So, it’s a bit… If you’ve
got a very sensitive ear, it can be really hard to learn, because it always slightly
changes. So, I spelt it with “a”, there, but I could also spell with “u”; depends
what you hear more. “Duh-jah knowa?”, “də. jə nəʊ. ə”, “Duh-jah knowa?”
Or I could say: “Jew knowa? Jew knowa? Jew knowa?”, “dʒu: nəʊ. ə”. This part’s
the same again. Difference is here: “də.jə”, two syllables, “də.jə”; here, only one
syllable: “dʒu”, “dʒu: nəʊ. ə”. So, here I get three sounds: “dʒu: nəʊ.
ə”. Here, I have: “də. jə nəʊ. ə”, four sounds. “də. jə nəʊ. ə”, “də.
jə nəʊ. ə”. So, this explains why when native speakers
are speaking, it seems like they’re talking so fast, but actually what’s happening is
the words are joining up in ways so that we can pronounce them smoothly, and so our sentences
can flow. And what this also shows you is that there are so many differences in pronunciation;
one person says this way, another person says something different, which is why we can take
one sentence: “Do you know her?” and we get something completely different. One says
this with four syllables, and the other says with three syllables. So, this explains also
why native speakers are so hard to understand sometimes.
What you can do now is the quiz on this lesson, and I’ll see you again soon. Thanks for