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One of the keys to understanding natural fast English is to know more about reductions and linking that happen when native speakers are speaking quickly. | |
When you can understand these reductions, a whole new world opens up to you and you'll catch and hear words that you never heard before. | |
Well, when you know those reductions, you can improve your pronunciation too because you can use them in real life. | |
Actually, technically there are 14 because ironically I couldn't reduce this list to only 10. | |
In any case, a reduction means that there are some letters in common words that we just don't say when we're speaking quickly. native speakers don't talk like this. | |
In fact, we cut off sounds, we reduce sounds, we push words together, and that's what we're going to be talking about today. | |
Occasionally you're going to hear that in slower English, but in fast English, you're going to hear your. | |
You could say, I have your phone, but do you see how many more muscles that takes? | |
Let's reduce it and make it simpler for your muscles and say, I have your phone. | |
Exercise your speaking muscles, because at the end of this lesson, I'm going to be putting all 10 together in one big challenge sentence that I want you to be able to say. | |
You might hear this in kind of slower, clearer speech, but in fast conversation, it just sounds like the letter R. R. R. He has our dog. | |
Practice saying just the letter R. Forget O and U, just say R. He has our dog. | |
The third reduction is actually these three words because they kind of go together, three different pronouns. | |
I mean, when you're speaking clearly and maybe a little slowly, you might pronounce the H, but in spoken fast English, we're going to cut off the H and just say, I have his phone. | |
I mean, it's understandable because you're saying every sound, but like the previous two words, we're going to cut off that first sound and just say, I gave it to them. | |
Now, I want to let you know that with his, her, and them, we're typically going to cut off that first sound when there's other words before that pronoun. | |
If you said, his phone is on the table. | |
You're not going to cut out the H in his because there's no words before that. | |
Instead, it's used to link with the previous words, but if there's no previous words, then you need to say his phone. | |
But you can say, I have his phone because I have comes before his phone. | |
If you'd like to check out some more of these pronoun reductions, I made a video up here about how to speak English fast so you can check out some of those other tips. | |
Is that the best, most reduced way to say it? | |
Instead, the Y is just going to be kind of glossed over. | |
The Y is a little bit forgotten and it sounds the same as T-H-E-I-R or T-H-E-R-E. | |
If you said, I think they're, they're coming in the mail with that clear Y sound, it's okay. | |
Now really, you're just going to have to pick up on context clues to know if this is T-H-E-R-E. | |
Look over there or if it is they're eating all the cake because the pronunciation is the same. | |
But when native speakers are speaking quickly, you're not going to hear all of those sounds. | |
Instead, you're going to hear, wait for it, didn't, didn't. | |
It's really two cut short sounds, di, nn, and that nn is going to be in your throat. | |
Well, first of all, the second D, did, did, we're going to just stop that short in your throat. | |
But my tongue is at the top of my mouth because I need to form that T sound without any air passing through. | |
It's pretty essential to know if this is a positive word, did, or a negative word, didn't, which is pronounced didn't. | |
But it can be pretty hard to hear that final negative part because the T is stopped short in your mouth. | |
So, when you're used to hearing this reduction, hopefully after today's lesson, you'll feel a little bit more comfortable picking up on if it's a positive sentence or if it's a negative sentence. | |
Should you say that, that, with a clear ah sound? | |
You might hear, I think that it's sunny, but it's a little bit more difficult to create those muscles to make an ah sound. | |
And instead, reductions are using lazy relaxed style pronunciation, so we use an eh sound instead. | |
It's not exactly just one word that's reduced, but we often say this whole sentence together, so I want to help you. reduce it and understand all of the different reductions for it because in this situation, there's not just one reduction, there are multiple. | |
Listen carefully for the T sound, which makes this contraction negative. | |
You're not saying I don't instead, just I don't No. | |
These reductions are going to gradually get more and more casual. | |
You can just add three similar sounds and say, uh, uh, uh. | |
Unbelievably, every native speaker will absolutely understand if you say, uh, uh, uh, especially if you do that kind of gesture with your shoulders. | |
This is very casual, so don't say this to your boss if he says, when's the project going to be finished? | |
You are just moving your shoulders and using your intonation to say, I don't know. | |
We're cutting out that final D, but we can also simply say an. just the letter N. N. Let's look at some sample sentences. | |
He had cake and ice cream yesterday. | |
Do you see how that lets us link and ice cream? and ice cream. | |
Instead of and ice cream, you're just saying cake and ice cream. | |
To use simply the letter N here, I feel like it doesn't sound completely different than an, but you might hear people say, he had cake and ice cream yesterday. | |
But if we want to say just an, an, you can say, I bought bread and eggs, oh, and some chocolate. | |
So my mouth isn't widening that much because I'm not saying an, I'm just saying an. | |
You could say ta, ah, with an ah vowel, or you can simply say too. just that T sound, t. | |
I'm just saying t plus me, to me, to me. | |
You might hear some people say, it's polite to say, it's polite to say, to say, it's polite to say thank you. | |
But I feel like it's a little bit more common just to simply have to say to me, it's polite to say thank you. | |
And because we talk about the future, something that we're going to do in the future a lot, this is a super common reduction. | |
Let's take a look at some sample sentences so that you can practice a couple of different ways to reduce this. | |
This is every word, very clear and very understandable, but native speakers don't speak like that. | |
So our first most common reduction is to say, I'm gonna study this lesson. | |
Going and to together make gonna. | |
I'm gonna study this lesson again because these are a lot of reductions and I feel like I need to practice it again and again to actually understand them in daily conversation. | |
The most common are I'm gonna with that clear G or I'm unna with the G cut out. | |
Or you could say really quickly, when are you gonna go? | |
I feel like it's less common to cut out the G when you have you as the subject, because that's a lot of vowels together. | |
You wanna, you wanna go, but you will occasionally hear that. | |
Before we go on to our big challenge sentence, I'd like to give you three bonus reductions that I talked about up here in this lesson, but I feel like they needed to be included in a reduction lesson as well. | |
They are want to, have to, and have got to. | |
Well, we just talked about gonna, so let's say wanna, hafta, Let's take a look at some sentences. | |
That can be reduced to, I gotta study English. | |
Great work with all 10 or we could say 14 of these reductions. | |
Let's look at this nice long sentence that uses all of the reductions we just talked about. | |
All of the key words that we talked about are in yellow, so make sure that you note those ones. | |
Let's say this a little bit slowly at first so that you can pick up on all of the things we talked about. | |
I saw his note to my husband, but I didn't know that your dog and cat were also gonna sleep in our house. | |
So we can imagine in this situation that someone is gonna spend the night at your house, but they're also bringing their dog and their cat. | |
I saw his note to my husband, but I didn't know that your dog and cat were also gonna sleep in our house. | |
I saw his note to my husband, but I didn't know that your dog and cat were also going to sleep in our house. | |
Of course, if this was a lot to learn, feel free to go back and practice this lesson again. | |
Thanks so much for learning English with me, and I'll see you again next Friday for a new lesson here on my YouTube channel. | |
The next step is to download my free ebook, Five Steps to Becoming a Confident English Speaker. | |
Let's do it. Is it your? Your. | |
I have your phone. Nah. | |
I have your phone. Your boss. | |
So practice them step by step with me. I have your phone. I have your phone. Let's move on to reduction number two. | |
He has our dog. Our car broke down. Our car broke down. Our car broke down. | |
He has our dog. Our car broke down. Our car broke down. Hmm. | |
I have his phone. I have his phone. I have his phone. What about with her? I have her phone. I have her phone. Er, er. The H is gone. I have her phone. | |
That TH is gone. I gave it to him. I gave it to him. | |
I have his phone. I have his phone. I have her phone. I have her phone. I gave it to him. I gave it to him. How did you do? | |
No. We can say, there. There. | |
I don't know. I don't know. Did you hear it? No. | |
Let's go. Going to, going to. | |
You are in Asheville, North Carolina visiting me and we are about to meet at a cafe. | |
While you're sitting at the cafe waiting for me, you notice a newspaper sitting on the table. | |
You pick up the newspaper and you see an article and think, oh, this is so interesting. | |
I get the general idea, but goodness, there's so much in this that I don't understand. | |
You can click on the link in the description to download the free PDF worksheet today. | |
Alright, let's get started by reading this article that has to do with helping the homeless population here in Asheville. |
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