hahaha! Meta-linguistics at its best!

You mean əəəəəəəəəə

This is really messing with my head today.

@@BigFatWowəːːːːːːːːːːːː

​@@paper2222😂

The newer AI voices do use weakening, but it’s pretty hard to get the duration of those schwas exactly right.

One day, the geeks will get AI to sound real and then we will be royally stuffed.

@@jonathangammond3019 - Won’t be long now. Skynet is almost ready to boot up.

@@sirrathersplendid4825 interestingly, when skynet does speak (which is rare tbf) it has that typical robotic voice. I imagine the next time it’s portrayed it will have a way more human sounding voice, since we know that’s very feasible now

@@cosmosisrose Matt Smith doing a dodgey American accent = "typical robot voice" 🤣🤣🤣🤣

I am a native English-speaker who speaks and taught English in Germany to German kids. I was constantly telling them to prounce words in their context, with a flow and not as in that jerky stereotypical way many Germans do, heavily using glottal-stops (Kehlkopfverschlusslaute).

@@rogernichols1124 interesting. These glottal-stops are something you don‘t even recognize you’re doing as a German native speaker.

And exaclty like Swedish people speaking English

@@nothingEvil101 We use them in English to, but we only use them in preparation to enunciate certain sounds in the next syllable. We basically only used them on certain consonants before a stressed vowel, and even then, not all speakers do it. When we listen to people with a heavy glottal accent like German, it's one of the first things we notice about that person's accent. I think that might be one of the reasons why Germans are so stereo-typically seen as "super serious" by English speakers. As we associate that speaking pattern with AI. And one of the reasons Germans tend to think English speakers (especially NA) "mumble" their words together. As the RP accent is more glottal than the Canadian and Yankee accents are.

I live in the Black Country region of England and the local dialect spoken by older people uses some early and middle English words that came from German. It’s one of the oldest English dialects still around and to people outside of the area it can be hard to understand. Wikipedia has an entry about it

You’d still need to know how to clearly pronounce “THe” in places where the strong form is normally used, as in the “that THat” example spoken by Stephen Fry. But you’re spot on, in many British dialects these days even the strong form seems to be pronounced “de”.

The english will still point out youre doing it wrong. like they point out when Irish people use weak forms. Irish people dont even bother with the th sound at all most of the time. The say three as tree, thirty as turty. That that would be de dat. If you were to totally forget about trying to speak with an english accent sure you wouldnt sound like a native, but people can understand a proper dutch accent so it wouldnt hurt.

@@geroutathat It actually really depends on dialect. Some Irish dialects pronounce th as t/d, but others retain the dental fricative pronunciation, and a few have dental t/d for th, contrasting with alveolar t/d corresponding to t/d outside Ireland.

@@cephalosjr.1835 the only people who do th properly in ireland are descended from anglo-irish. So its true some irish do, inside ireland they are not considered irish accents. The point i was really making was the irish accent is always voted as among the sexiest in the world, if not first, then second. Unless an irish person goes very strong, very fast, mumbles and uses weak forms, then english people have no problem understanding any of the dialects. Like irish people have no problem understanding a brunmie, unless the brummie is being tricky on purpose. Some people even fake their accent worse on british TV. Gino makes his italian accent worse, everyone understands. Fred sirieix hams his french accent up. Benoit blin, cherish finden etc english is one of the few languages that does not pubish people for having an accent, as long as youre in uk or ireland and not the usa

@@geroutathat Aren't there some British accents that pronounce "th" as /f/ and /v/?

I had no idea we do this but the point is well made, this pronunciation is normal. Through the whole video I was wondering what non-weak forms would sound like - maybe just a bit formal? When he demonstrates it sounds ridiculously stilted and wrong.

It’s one of those unspoken rules of speech that we native speakers don’t think of but use instinctively. I very much enjoyed this video, despite being a native English speaker.

All this time I thought I was too lazy to speak properly, and it turns out I was just using weak forms.

No, This is too advanced for non native speakers. Diction at this level is usually for native speakers. Non natives wouldn't care.

This makes a lot of sense. I'm in my 40s and now finally venturing forth and trying to learn another language. I am learning Spanish, it is very slow going for me. I really notice how so many of the Spanish words are shortened and hard to hear in normal, fast speech. There is some formal recognition of this in Spanish "a el" becomes "al". It is like contractions but it's more of a rule like "an" in English always before a vowel. The Spanish give more formal notice of this I think, though they still, like English, leave the non-native speaker struggling to hear the weak/short words. Thank you for this. Understanding how this is also in English gives me some confidence in my hearing Spanish - to realise it isn't just me - that it is another level of the learning and fluency.

normally i just use quotes

I'm aware that repeated words can look wrong but they are reasonably common in English and I prefer to embrace them rather than avoid them.

Two actors had conflicting scripts. Where John had had "had," James had had "had had". "Had had" had the writer's blessing in the end.

I always liked 'that that is is that that is not is not is that it it is'. When you know how to say it, it makes perfect sense, but written (especially without punctuation) it just looks wrong.

@@TheJasonbking man… can you please punctuate that to give me a chance lol, my brain just leaked out of my ears all over the floor

Same here. Regards from Finland 🇫🇮!

When I left school I took some pride in speaking "Oxford English" and not having a German accent. Today I'm in a company using English as business language, mostly written and among non-native speakers. So I just learned why my spoken English "devolved" a German accent. I need to _listen_ to BBC news more often.

Linguistic adaptation.

I hate to be picky, but if you’re a keen English-learner then you might appreciate that one weird mostly unwritten rule (although I did see it in a book once) is that native speakers never say just ‘funnily’ - it’s only ever ‘funnily enough’. No idea why that should be, but as an adverb ‘funnily’ only seems to remain in that one construction.

@@joeharris2659 As a native speaker of American english, I start phrases with "rather funnily" sometimes, but this seems to be a wacky idiolect thingy because I can't find it online anywhere.

Machine translatiion will not beat human, because language has truly limitless possibilities, and no programmers can prepare robots for all situations possible, nor can robots actually think. They are mere puppets whom fools judging by mere appearances consider to be sentient, in part because they are easaily manipulated by Hellywood fiction promoting the degenerate atheist paradigm of materialism where it is assumed that only nature exists, something science never says. Logic is actually above science, because the latter is subject to the former; not the other way around. Logic is also invisible if defined as reason itself. It cannot be measured by empirical means. IQ tests are pseudo-science for racists who believe blacks aren't equal, as they confuse familiarity with intelligence, and a one-sizee-fits-all decontextualized approach, with a scientific or rational one.

Yes, even google translate sound so odd in English, I just thought it was because of the robot but apparently it's the over pronunciation

Speech to text also works imperfectly. In US courts martial the clerk, who doubles as reporter, now often (or usually?) uses computerized speech to text transcription. I am told and reasonably believe that learning how to speak so that the computer prints it out well enough to be understood and corrected is very challenging.

Agreed, it clicked for me at the end. Now if I ever want to imitate text-to-speech for laughs, I'll know where to begin, ha ha!

It makes me wonder if that's also why Newscasters have such a different sound too? I don't watch the news anymore but they always have that distinctive sound and I can't remember it well enough to tell if it's because they don't use weak words or not..

@@TorbenCASchwartz Even mushier is Peter Hitchens' posh (university?) way of speaking. Pushing up the volume at the start and subsiding into mumbling the rest. I usually have a hard time hearing him. Even Douglas Murray does this, but to a lesser extent.

@@TorbenCASchwartz Pretty sure all classes of people do it. Th's trouble 't mill.

@@TorbenCASchwartz For sure. There's even a stereotype of upper-class mumblers (think the fast show)

@@markdavis7397 You need to live your life over again and listen more carefully!

Yes, and somehow I got British speakers better than US Speakers and I believe it is because British weak forms contribute more to the overall melody

I thought it will be about grammar and conjugation. 😆 Like as in case of some language you will hear the "weak form" term in grammar context if you learn the langauge as a foreign language.

There are rules on how to stress words. Eg: Most of the time in disyllabic words, when there is a stress on the first syllable (for nouns or adjectives) the second syllable is weak and it's the contrary for verbs etc. But as a French speaker for me it's enough to make me tear my hair out, so I try to do my best without stressing :))

Yes I also wanted to listen without the jarring breaks or to have a shorter sentence contrasted with a native and non native but clear pronunciation!

He likely does it for copyright reasons and can't just show the whole clip

@@victorroque5667What about when he does it to its own phrase? No, it's just a difficult to follow format.

Cry about it

This is exactly what good teachers did to German students. As in our language we pronounce every single word for itself it was important to let certain world flow together to make it sound less robotic. Also the trick of using an f instead of an s when someone isn’t capable of doing the th 🤓

My Chinese teachers similarly taught me this for using tones in Mandarin. Strings of words often sound different in tone than each individual word when native speakers talk. Your English teacher was smart for making that distinction with you!

Exactly. For us native speakers that process occurs intrinsically - partly through mimicry and partly through adjusting to speaking at speed. My French teacher taught us this technique but with French it is a far more acknowledged rule in the language (we just haven't formalised our 'unspoken' [pun!] rules)

​@@timschulze4162 I'm native English and words like brother and mother lose the th sound and it becomes more like a v. As in muvva or bruvva and the number three sounds more like free. Estuary English is the dialect I use.

Hopefully not still fascinated by her in a Heathcliffe and Kathy way..

Consequently, I've seen the sentences/comments, written out in that manner online. I never thought about how it's emphasizing the strong form of the word verses the weak form.

Your last example is different - "that" would be pronounced with the strong form no matter what, just probably with less emphasis.

Excellent point!

What I find interesting is that in my dialect (Pacific Northwest), I pronounce at least a couple of the homographs in different ways based on meaning. "I can get the can of soup" might indeed be "k'n" or "kun" in normal speech, but if I stress it, the words are still distinct: "I KEN jist git th' kan of soup." The that/that is similar -- "that one" has its natural vowel, but "the one that we're discussing" is closer to "thet". There's a few others I've started to notice with this pattern -- differentiation even when stressed -- and one I've picked up deliberately: "room" (noun object) vs. room (noun space, or roomy etc.), the latter takes its full tense OO while the former gets lax oo (of "wood"). I picked up the lax oo version from Markiplier, but started using the distinction on my own (no idea if he uses such a distinction). Ergo, "the room has a lot of room" has a stronger vowel in the second version than in the first.

I'm lucky enough to have learned this as a non-native speaker, even if only subconsciously. Still, hearing the actual logic behind it was fascinating.

Most common vowel in spoken English, by a huge margin in some accents.

Russian does something like this with its unstressed vowels, and that makes it a very comfortable tongue for me, a native English speaker, to pronoumce.

Please tell us what their reaction is!

When I was in first grade and first learning to write, I instinctively *knew* that they were two different words, "thet" and "that," and got quite upset when "thet that" was marked incorrect

I always knew that that was a thing.

@@DrGeoffLindsey The most annoying thing, as a scotsman, when I lived in England they would always pick up on how I deviated from the English Language.. But I could notice them doing it too but they were not aware of it themselves. It became like Gaslighting because I would point it out to them and they would deny it.

These days the British just say things like "bran noo" instead of "brand new"

As a native Spanish speaker, I decided to read aloud that comment in Spanish and though I already knew we did that, it was still fun to see it in action. This is why phonetic syllables are such an important part of poetry in Spanish. You never count the syllables as they are in text, but as how they interact with each other. "Mi amigo" has 4 syllables when written, but only 3 when speaking. And you might also drop the g so that it's "mia-mí-o" rather than "mia-mi-go". "Lo olvidé" could be "L' vidé". "Qué haces?" could be "k'azs?". Sorry I just really like this topic. And I'm glad they taught you about it in college, even if not applied to poetry! :) Wish they'd've taught us that in English too.

@@mackiexoxo8193 Creo que eso depende demasiado de el tipo de español que hables. Por ejemplo, acá en Argentina esas abreviaciones de las palabras suelen relacionarse a la clase baja "villera", pero en general, al menos fuera de una conversación casual, está muy mal visto no pronunciar bien las palabras, ya que se lo considera una señal de poca instrucción, aun así, los argentinos tenemos una gran tendencia a ignorar las "S" o las "D" finales. Habiendo dicho eso, si tengo conocimiento de que hay regiones como Andalucía en España donde se habla mas o menos como vos describiste recien

@@elsacacaca9033 Claro, pero también depende de la velocidad en la que uno habla. Tipo, cuando hablo más lento, enuncio más las sílabas, pero si estoy hablando de corrido, se me suelen mezclar. Pero sí, depende mucho de donde uno viva. En mi país se le considera más habla de calle, o eso he visto por lo menos. Mientras que no le hablaría así a alguien en un ambiente profesional o de ese estilo, sí lo haría con amigos o gente de la calle.

@@elsacacaca9033 El paisa es el mejor acento en español cuando una mujer lo tiene porque la hace más femenina. Soy hondureño pero sin un acento hondureño. Estoy muy feliz por haber salido de Miami hace unos años porque no tengo que oír el cubano, el peor, aunque hay cubanos que hablan perfectamente sin decir una L donde es una R.

Four months in Andalucia taught me to drop my ‘d’s such as “he preguntao” instead of “he preguntado”. Another four months in Provence taught me to pronounce French words such as “lundi” a bit like “landy”. My language tutors were not pleased!

It doesnt sound funny to any other foreigner, trust me. We're as confused as to which accent is the proper one I dont think it even makes sense to call any a fair. The English either evolves or remains ridiculous, as there's no way the Anglican world will settle on phonetic standardization.

As a fan of the NHL and a watcher of player interviews, Finns have a distinct accent, sure, but they don't sound any worse than any other non-North American players. Some are better than others at capturing the sloppy English rhythm. There is some trouble with English words with "th" sounds. The problem with English and pronouncing it as it is written is also choosing which spelling standard to use, and then figure out which regional vowel habits you want to emulate. Even within the United States there are very distinct dialects. Funny thing, though, that the Dallas Stars had a video of players wishing Roope Hintz a happy birthday, and the other Finns on the team all pronounced his name slightly differently, leaving fans wondering which was actually "right".

yeah in English pretty much the last thing you ever want to do is pronounce things as they're written :)

These days the British just say things like "bran noo" instead of "brand new"

In Polynesian languages we are also completely phonetic, how it's spelled is how it's said

One of the big things I notice Germans have a hard time doing (a small thing that prevents a natural native sound) is pronouncing the end "s" on English plurals. The great majority of the time, it's a "z" sound (our "z" sound, not your "z" sound [as in your "s" at the start of a, oh fuck it, you know what I mean, haha]), but Germans often use a soft "s" on all plurals. Playssss. Toyssss. As opposed to playz, toyz, boyz, etc. Just a small observation.

I love the accent native German speakers have when they learn English. It sounds so precise, so controlled. It’s charming but probably results in some of the stereotypes arseholes in the UK have about Germans.

​@@julianmorrisco Be glad that it isn't a pure Dutch English accent😅

Amusingly, Germans (and likely all native speakers) use reduced words just as much in their own language but tend to be hyper precise when they speak English. I guess it just comes from a fear of not doing it well enough to be understood that makes them over-do it.

While over-pronouncing might mark you as a non-native speaker, it also might make your spoken English easier to understand if you have an accent.

True. Some vowels disappear completely which also changes the surrounding consonnants. Think of "je ne sais pas" which becomes "chais pas" when talking.

@@roxane1237 And I didn't realize that it was shortened that much! 😅 I learned even the shortened version with the "n" still there, just mushed in with everything else. Realistically, we probably do as much mushing of words in English. Funny enough, I find myself mushing words and dropping consonants and vowels to a greater or lesser degree depending on who I am speaking to. Because some of the native English speakers where I live right now can't understand me without my dropping or deemphasizing bits. They learned English highly deemphasized. Much like I (partially) learned French highly emphasized. It's almost like a different language at either extreme.

Actually, as a non-native, English is rather tame in that regard. I never had major problems understanding spoken English due to the differences in what I learned about pronunciation in school and how it's done in reality. In contrast, I have been studying Mandarin for the last four years, and while I've reached about B2 level in reading comprehension, my listening comprehension is still barely A2, because it's such a nightmare in terms of "slurring".

The enchainement and liaison used in French is usually what makes it harder to understand. No glottal stop. Where a word ends and the next begins is hard to hear. As well, syllables are broken up differently than in English. “Ils écoutent un homme qui parle en irlandais.” When spoken, that phrase might sound like only 3 words to an English ear!

@@gayusschwulius8490 You may have a much better aptitude for learning forign languages than I do then. Lol. I admit, when I started learning French in my 40s I did wonder if I would pick it up very well. And, at least with recorded lessons and no real human to speak it with, learning French has turned out to be enjoyable to me, but also more difficult to learn than I had hoped. Still, I do find it interesting that you found English easy to learn as a non-native. Though, I'm not surprised that Mandarin is proving to be more difficult. I have heard that is a hard one to learn.

As a native speaker or a English from the US I appreciate how I know this consciously because of this video.

@@garrysmith1029 I discovered this channel about three hours ago and love it! This and many of the good doctor’s videos are incredibly enlightening and informative for English speakers of all dialects. I found this outstanding teacher this morning and I’m am on binge with these videos… even though they make me feel like a slovenly and lazy speaker. I’ll do better! I swear it!

Truly the king of phonetics

love listening to any audiobook hes read

Yes, as not using them at all results in every syllable being the same duration, and the voice sounds robotic

I guess if you immerse yourself in an environment that’s full of native speakers, you’ll eventually pick them up unconsciously

@@redsalmon9966 yes, because environment influences people, well said

when you are in a business setting where time is crucial you automatically starts using them and can never go back

@@monad_tcp It's not to save time. It's simply the natural rhythm of English. A native speakers uses them even when in no hurry at all.

I teach young Korean students and I've noticed that their Korean teachers have taught them schwa but NOT that the schwa is used to compact language. As a result, they say things like "I want UN apple" but place equal weight on every word. They then also get confused when I say "an" very clearly when speaking slowly. "Teacher, 'an' is pronounced 'un'." I'm still working out ways to combat this.

This is literally something I discovered by living in England. At some point I realised to sound more native I needed to be really lazy when speaking xD

@@SerrinTheElf Oh, please stop saying "literally."

@@hijodelaisla275 'literally' is perfectly accurate in this context.

@@zompired2998 Is that what you think? Then use it. Use it all the time. I promise I won't try to stop you.

Spanish is not a great counter example at all! They do the same de-emphasizing thing as English does, probably even more so! At least native speakers do, maybe not if it’s your second or third language. But of course it’s intensity depends of dialect as well. Maybe whatever dialect you’re referring to doesn’t do it so much as others do.

Emphasizing is inevitable because some words matter more than others, so they will get better treatment. Probably all languages have variations in emphasis.

French would be a better example i think. While it doesnt all have the same emphasis there is a rhythmic emphasis that doesnt depend on the word but where is it. Its why Shakespeare cant be french haha

In French, all syllables of a word have the same emphasis.

@@annakermode6646 Your comment about French coincided with my having just seen "French Goes on a Date" by Loic. Worth a watch. He's hilarious, doing linguistic jokes.

I agree. I need to make another video about how important weak forms are for understanding, e.g. the two "that"s. Any non-native who wants to understand native speech (and I admit, that might not be a universal goal) will be helped by being taught to expect weak forms from natives.

In my experience as a non-native speaker who moved to Nottingham, people tend to just shout the same words louder if you tell them you don’t understand something they said 😂 “I said I didn’t understand the particular word you just used, but my hearing is fine, thank you.” 😅

@@nathanlonghair I know what you mean. As teachers, we're usually sympathetic interlocutors, so we will adjust according to the needs of the student/speaker, and it's hard for us to understand people who do completely unhelpful things like shouting 😂

@@DrGeoffLindsey this affects the deaf/hard of hearing who rely on lip reading. Full pronunciation exagerrates lip and mouth movements. Conversely, running all words together means that the lips hardly move. Natural clear speech, which slows speaking slightly, means that key words are mouthed while the weak əəs are run together but understood. For those who don't know. Besides slow but normal speech, don't cover your mouth when speaking and ensure your face is clearly lit. Lip readers will appreciate it and you won't have to repeat yourself.

When I speak fast, I say things like "dunno." When slow, I would say it "properly" like "don't know." People are lazy so they tend to take shortcuts, except people who want to sound intellectual.

The language is originally yours but not 'entirely' yours, in the sense it's second to many. I feel for your pain, though.

it's true. the whole "I'LL JUST REPEAT IT LOUDER AND SLOWER" thing that obnoxious tourists do also involves switching to strong forms, and i'm sure they're not even doing it consciously.

Yep, it's literally reading while accounting for the spaces, but we skip some spaces in normal speech. It makes sense that there are breakpoints where there should not be any.

Heavens! Thy manner of conveyance doth behoove mine person to-wards the prompted consequence of remarking upon the veritable entity of existence concerning thine impudent patronizing indubitably of exceeding likelihood to impress upon the unlearned audience the sentiment of inadequacy producing forsooth discouragement and forlorn ambition.

@@scintillam_dei Do you hail from Canterbury or Stratford perchance? 🤣

@@sarac.3259 I hail from Tegucigalpa. :-)

@@scintillam_dei, for me it was quite the opposite. English as a second language but we take these in from the get go.

I mean in Chinese so many of the vowels get so incredibly shortened, so I think that's an explanation that should resonate.

@@jenrosejenrose7417 On the other hand though, proper intonation of vowels is crucial in Chinese, since using a different tone (like rising, falling, neutral etc.) could mean pronouncing a different character and can therefore change the whole meaning of a word. So I can imagine for people used to tonal languages, the concept of weak forms could be quite counter-intuitive. I see that with people who have spanish as their native language already, where there is a more direct connection between what you read and what you say.

@@B0K1T0 Chinese does have some unstressed particles, so I can imagine the concept transferring reasonably well. (The possessive particle 的 is nominally dè, but in practice it's basically /də/.)

@@B0K1T0 one should make a parallel with the allophones of Spanish and the tone sandhi of Mandarin, to help learners.

yeah i understand the problem, but it's really difficult to pronounce them on purpose 😅 most of us don't realise we're doing it

I plan to learn like 40 languages (crazy, I know), and I'm aware that this requires learning different levels of every single sound and word for every possible combination and... oh..... I'm digging my own grave, but I love languages from Aramaic to Zulu. There are connotations some dictionaries don't cover. There are new words in English especially which I am not updated to understand yet. In every language, fields of technical knowledge are full of obscure words no one normal would ever use.... Language is deep and endless.

The problem is really that people are rarely taught pronunciation beyond the bare minimum when learning a language. These sorts of weakened/softened forms happen in almost every language - but they happen in very different ways! For example, Japanese also often weakens its u and i vowels, if they're not next to a voiced consonant. However, whereas English weakens a sound by turning it into a schwa, Japanese instead weakens them by making them voiceless - the syllable ends up sounding like it's whispered. Example: 人 (hito, meaning person) is pronounced with the i being whispered, without the vocal chords vibrating. The vocal chords only kick in once you reach the o. But if you ask a Japanese person to pronounce 人 slowly and clearly, they'll voice both vowels. Also, all Japanese words that do not have a pitch accent are supposed to be pronounced in a monotone manner, and that's also what happens when speaking slow and clear. But when speaking normally, they're actually pronounced with a steadily rising pitch.

@@scintillam_dei lol at this 14 year old who thinks he can learn 40 languages

The thing is: what is “relaxed” to an English speaker is different to what it is to others.

The key is listening and imitating. It goes for every language but sometimes people tend to see languages as a logical thing similar to math when it's not. You can't just learn to speak properly by barely listening to native speech.

lol, even that phrase "proud of myself as hell" even though there is something grammatically awkward about it, sounds exactly like something a native speaker would put together on the fly (source: am native speaker, would say something like that 😁)

Very kind! Thank you!

Nice

It's funny how Japanese is so static but then across the sea you have Chinese with Cantonese being like a rollercoaster in melodies. One time a Cambodian said that Japanese is like no European language. I corrected him, and he dropped his smile when I pointed out that Japanese pronunciation is much like Spanish. Terremoto Miyamoto. Tu casa, Mikasa. Maybe Portuguese is even more similar.

Singing is a great and fun way to master a second language’s rhythm and pronunciation. 🎵🎶

Yes, that mystery sound in Bulgarian that does not exist in Russian

The interesting thing about Bulgarian pronunciation which often isn't thought (we had to specifically ask our teacher about it) is that "every unstressed wide vowel is reduced to its narrow counterpart when speaking". So А becomes Ъ, О becomes У and Е becomes И. So the proper way to pronounce "telefón" for example is actually "tilifón", which is what incidentally we consider as having an "eastern" or "soft" dialect. A quick way to "westernize" your dialect is to stop reducing the Es into Is. Language is fun!

@@LPfan95 it is interesting to study the differences in the dialects 🙂. But if we speak about the official language, the reduction is not at all unstressed open vowels. It is indeed a dialect thing and you can hear it in Plovdiv for example. I used to speak like that 😁 and didn't even realize it until my late teens when I met my husband who was originally from Sofia. "Aidi", "tilifon", "pipiruda" 😂. Anyway, in the official language the reduction is mostly at the end of the words, for example "благодаря" is properly pronounced blagodaruh, and not what you can hear often blagodarYA, which is a reversed reduction made by people who want to sound knowledgeable, serious and "official" but actually pass as a bit illiterate. As for the western dialects, they don't reduce e but they still reduce a and o, just a bit less often.

bulgarian too here, i was thinking throughout the entire video about how the british's love for the schwa mirrors our ъ-tendency

Idk. I usually get marked up. If someone tries to do the opposite, they're usually not taken seriously, thankfully. Even when they don't promote the way I speak, they can acknowledge its accuracy.

There's a great example of this if you look up the video "when a Japanese teach English". I don't know if you can put links in UKposts comments without them getting held for review. Anyway. A Japanese instructor is teaching English to a room full of white Americans but he chastises them for pronouncing things like a native, and forces them to pronounce it as Japanese as possible. It's hilarious. Instead of saying "uncle" he makes them say "uncuru" for example.

Because it is non-free-thinking fools who rule schools, and non-free-thinking fools who are the majorty of customers, and they believe you can't be smart unless you have a paper saying you are smart, and they believe published academic books can't be wrong. One time I told my boss with my manager present after being summoned due to her bitching about me telling her that a method she wanted me to use, was unnecesssary and that I didn't like it because it was stifling, that the kindergarten book saying I must teach kids to write a letter from a particular angle in a particular direction as if it were Chinese, is WRONG! I learned to write in that way 'cause i was in public schools most of my life, but also in my own way I would write. You don't need their way. And when the manager or boss told me the book said it needs to be done, I said "The book is wrong." My manager was flabbergasted, as was my boss. How could someone think for himself!?" was what they were probably thinking. The feminazi manager has since quit because she disrespects every foreigner who works in that school. The first day I met her, she avoided eye contact when I said hello. She hated me because she had to do the schedule all over again when I showed up and got hired. And, of course, it's east Asians who are the most resistant to going against the current of society, and free-thinking. PS They always say it's wrong to begin a sentence with "And," but I just did, and there's nothing wrong with it.

Did actually happen to me once. I was not amused when my english teacher told me I'd get a B instead of an A because my accent was just too english for my classmates to understand during a presentation ... Now keep in mind Im not a native speaker and my accent doesnt sound native either I just sometimes slip into a slightly more english sounding accent and the teacher had a quite noticeable romanian accent herself (My native language is German and the school was also in Germany) that made it hard to understand her sometimes. I asked my classmates later if it really was that hard to understand and all of them told me that it wasnt, so there's that too. An Austrian friend of mine got marked down in exams because her english was apparently too American after an exchange year .... her teacher proceded to "correct" the spellings/pronaunciations not with the BE ones (as you'd expect) but with completly made up wrong versions.... . You can choose if you use BE or AE btw you just have to be consistent.

@@Serenity_yt In high school Spanish in Miami, my Cuban teacher said I was wrong when I put "chancletas" instead of "sandalias" for sandals. So Honduran Spanish doesn't count, but Cuban does. At the time, I didn't complain further, but I should have, 'cause she was a jerk saying Honduras doesn't matter. I also put "faja" for belt insted of "cinta" or whatever they call it, and "chancho" for "cerdo" (pig). Language snobs.... By the way, in Germany, is it illegal to signal a bus to stop for you, because when I do it, it's always practically a Nazi salute. :-) Deutsch ist gross! Ich liebe Deutsch! Aber Ich weisse nicht.

Yes!!! I find this kind of thing fascinating!

I never call it a vacuum cleaner, it's always a hoover regardless of what brand actually made it.

Perhaps the most common example would be to perMIT someone to do something by issuing them with a PERmit.

Yet another aspect that I hadn't considered! Bravo for thinking of it!

People often don't get how Х is used.

Great point. I'm sure many feel this way.

I hate seeing Spanish speakers using "man" instead of "hombre" and names like "Walter" instead of "Paco." They try to be "cool," so they try to use English more than their own language. Meanwhile in England, they use "Mohammed" instead of "William." LOL!

I'm glad you liked it!

I think that's unlikely. This is more about awareness and mimicry than randomly changing vowel sounds. Many people here have said they're native English speakers and didn't realize they used diminished vowels (schwa). Second language learners are confused by the pronunciation as it compares to the spelling of a word. To tell them that vowels (usually the unstressed syllables) are frequently diminished (schwa), clarifies for them what's happening, so then they can listen for it and imitate what they hear, with more confidence in what they're doing.

As a non-native speaker (although English has almost outcompeted my mother tongue by now) I agree it may be confusing for those learning the language. It is an interesting observation, but I think the only reasonable way to master pronunciation is practice. Excessive theorizing will only bring confusion.

I was expecting this to be specific to you brits across the pond, but talking to myself just now I realized us Americans do in fact use weak forms without realizing. Mind indeed blown.

@@XLTBlarg Us Americans have some difficulty with subject and object pronouns, too.

not true. the thing is foreigner must understand why to use weak forms instead of simple imitation. there's nothing difficult here.

Naturally spoken French contracts and letter drops extensively. It's all about maintaining a pleasant flow of speech (French is all about cadence rather than word stress). Most simple words can be contracted down to a simple consonant sound. Canadian French and some northern French dialects (from which the Canadian dialects evolved) are especially prone to doing this extensively.

French has this as a rule, you must accord words to each others when it makes sense and so when a native speaker speaks with french equivalent of weak form, they will add some accord between words and so some usual words get pronounced together. It can even end up with some words being directely dropped entirely from speech. For example, "this is not" would be "ce n'est pas" in regular french but would be pronounced "c'est pas" and even sometimes as "spas", the "c'est" being directly contracted into the "pas".

@@NaouakNawak Absolutely. In my own French dialect, even the "c’" could be dropped or the "pas" weakened/contracted to a more ambiguous vowel sound or simple P if the emphasis on the following word (such as "vrai"). "C’est n’est pas vrai" could be a casual "c’pas (weakened to an uh rather than an ah) vrai" or even "c’p’vrai" or "pas vrai?" to give a "you aren’t serious?" (basically alternative to "t’es pas sérieux?" so the figurative sense in English is closer to "you’re joshing me" or "that can’t be true, can it?"… basically expressing surprise at some unexpected information)… or you can start stressing words to make it a clear negation. You could stress the "pas" (to get "that’s NOT true") or stress the "vrai" (to get "that’s not TRUE"?) or stress both distinctly for added emphasis (and likely carrying across an upset tone). Much like in English, subtle shifts in emphasis can totally alter the meaning.

@@paranoidrodent Yes, the French do drop syllables and elide a lot, particularly in rushed speech, but the French language differs mainly from English in that it is syllable-timed, not stress-timed. An English sentence may have any number of stresses (e.g. 'She WANTS to GO to the PAR-ty' - three beats) but in most cases the placement of these stresses is not changeable, unless for special emphasis. In French, the syllables are much more evenly weighted. So, for example, the syllables of a lyric in a French song are not so bound to musical beats. 'DONN-ez LE prix À Mi-NER-ve, MI-ner-VE l'a MÉ-ri-TÉ!' is a lyric from La Belle Hélène, with strange syllable stresses that would be impossible in English, but don't cause any problem to the French ear.

I have a theory that if you know what a "past participle" is, then you know nothing about speaking English. The same goes for "weak forms", if you know what a "weak form" is then the same applies. My five year old niece instinctively and intuitively can do all of these things without having a clue what is going on. Just her mum asks her to speak clearly once in a while. And it is always the 'mother's tongue' not 'daddy's tongue' - let that sink in... I am joining you on watching more.

@@pdsnpsnldlqnop3330 I think your assertion is silly; someone has to know a great deal about a language to be able to describe and then explain what past participles, weak forms, etc. are in a clear, easily understood way. Just because someone understands how to do something through intuition or based on experience doesn't mean they understand why what they're doing works. For instance, people have been using sunlight to clean things for hundreds (thousands?) of years, but germ theory and UV radiation weren't understood until very recently -- people putting items in the sunlight to clean them knew it worked, but they didn't understand the principle of sunlight = less ick better than we do today. Edited to add: Mother tongue probably either comes from personifying a national culture like we do with calling countries "she" or it could simply (and more probably) come from the fact that babies and small children have historically spent more time with their mothers than their fathers just because their very lives depended on their mothers for food; I don't think the lack of "daddy's tongue" means anything disparaging towards fathers.

@@MM-jf1me I do a certain amount of work that needs translation and it is only my foreign friends that have the slightest clue what a 'past participle' is. If you were to ask anyone English in an English town they wouldn't have a clue what you were on about. Sure there are Oxbridge educated scholars and people that have studied English Literature at university that know these things, but the typical Brit has no idea. Not sure what you are trying to say about 'Father's Tongue'. Shouldn't they be out working, to come home early evening to collapse on the sofa, tired, with no time for the kids? All children get their language skills from their mum, except in rare circumstances but not many women die in childbirth these days, do they? Daddy might be given the duty of reading the bedtime story but it is always the mum that is the teacher of those early language skills, daddy is just in a supporting role.

And most Spanish native speakers don't know it either.

How exactly do you pronounce an eth? Do you have any example? I usually turn most of the s into th, because that's what makes the Spanish sound Spanish (for German natives at least because we don't use the th sound?) You have to be careful though to not turn into a parody ;)

I assume that you mean the schwa is not taught to non-native English students, since it certainly was taught in my high school English class in Pennsylvania back in the 1970s. (-:

@@Egilhelmson exactly ;)

@@jpt3640, 𝙨 is NEVER a 𝙩𝙝 (θ) sound in Spanish. 𝙕 always, and 𝙘 before 𝙚 and 𝙞 has the 𝙩𝙝 (θ) sound in Castilian/Peninsular Spanish, and only the Castilian Spanish of Spain. In Latin America and in southern Spain (Andalucía), z and c before e and i have an 𝙨 sound.

I’m not sure that, as a society, we’re ready for a German/Essex speaker 😂

I met a Canadian guy's French girlfriend who spoke pretty much perfect American English, I talked to her for quite a while without even realizing she was a ferner.

poor guy. did he recover?

@@nofatchicks6, sounds nightmarish but he was a decidedly OK, working out his "zivildienst" in a youth hostel; IIRC, it was Prien (which no longer exists).

When I (American English speaker) was in Poland several years ago for a cousins wedding, I met a Polish girl that learned English in Glasgow. I had the hardest time trying to guess where she was from (until she spoke Polish). To say that her English accent and pronunciation was very strange is... an understatement for sure.

"learning french" 5 years later:moves to france 10 years later: Allahu akbar🤖

@@AndT101 I never said I was Muslim by the way. Not everyone named Mohamad remains Muslim into adulthood, but nice display of prejudice.

@@MohamadAlb but how do you know you're not a sleeper agent lol /s

@@BeetleBuns Fair point. I shall upload 2 videos of me burning the Quran or something. Lol😂

@@MohamadAlb wait wouldn't that just be proof that you're suicidal?!

Thank you! I'm kicking myself because I filmed a bit about the way weak forms highlight the content words, but then it got left out of the edit. Not to worry, I'll include it in the follow-up video on weak forms that I have to do.

You could argue dropping the end of words is a universal french weak form? Cos they did used to be pronounced

@@kimarna And they’re still pronounced when the words ligate with the following word. E.g. how the t in “c’est” is silent in “c’est moi” but pronounced in “c’est une”.

I went to Paris about 10 years ago and had some Parisians 'correcting' my French. I let it slide but I was just pronouncing things like we did in Montreal--things that wouldn't have been considered errors there.

@@phantomkate6 New World French dialects are as different from European French as American English is from British English. Correcting you was as ignorant as a Londoner correcting a New Yorker. Sadly, some people do live up to the negative stereotype of rude Parisians. I've met plenty of lovely Parisians too to be fair. Historically, it's European French that mutated wildly while Canada and Louisiana were rather linguistically conservative (hence all the "archaic" words and phonemes in those dialects, like souliers and breuvages and the preservation of the old vowels and older consonant drops). Both dialect families are littered with anglicisms but they're just different ones (we do have somewhat more but they're less weird - just straight borrowings or calques of an English word usually - we don't go footing while wearing un jogging... we just go jogging). To a Parisian, we have too many dropped consonants, we contract very aggressively (and spoken French is already heavily contracted) and we have vowel sounds they aren't used to hearing. To a French Canadian, a Parisian has prissy sounding consonants, sounds like he's speaking with duck lips and has atrociously indistinct vowels. Seriously, they're down to 14-15 vowel sounds while we still have up to 23 depending on the regional accent. They've completely lost the French long vowels and their nasalized vowels all sound alike - brin/brun, pattes/pâtes... those are unimaginable as homonyms in Canadian French but they are homonyms in Paris).

@@paranoidrodent Yes, the history of Canadian French is interesting and knowing a bit about it did keep me from feeling bad while I was abroad. Very true about Parisian stereotypes. 😂 I met a few lovely ones but many did fit the description. At a post office, being 'served' by a particular piece of work, a British woman behind me in line came to my defense, loudly saying: "He knows exactly what you're saying; he's just being difficult." 🤣

This is my technique too. Super effective. Native speakers often find it easier to understand you if you pick up these unspoken behaviors, even if your technical grasp of grammar isn't that good.

I found surprising how much easier was to undersand a text-to-speech (classic TTS, no IA, I mean) talk than a native saying the same thing. TTS has been incredibly useful for me as a way of "training on the easy level" before getting to understand (somewhat) some native speakers. Sad how hard all this ends up being.

😂

So you guys started this trend!

@@Alresu Yeah, but the thing about radio ad copy is that nobody outside the station ever sees it.

That's interesting. At the time, was that explained as just being a radio intelligibility issue, or did your director just have a stylistic idea that the word should be pronounced strongly in general?