DON'T make this MISTAKE learning a new language

[@CharleneCTX]

I'm from the US and am a native American English speaker. I was at a conference in Italy and was speaking English with a German woman. At one point she said to me "you speak very good English." It took a bit to figure out what she meant. When I'm speaking with a non-native speaker of English I tend to slow down, enunciate, and try to avoid slang. Basically, I was speaking "text book" English.

[@mohammadmonjezi8154]

Can I have your number?

[@fariesz6786]

as a German speaker, her words make little sense to me.. but i have decidedly un-German sensibilities so maybe that's why

[@idraote]

you were being polite

[@Samuel-sg2iv]

What part of "you speak very good English." did you not understand?

[@africaRBG]

​@@Samuel-sg2iv Who taught you punctuation?

[@thedavidguy01]

My wife was a French major in college and a straight A student. When she went to spend a semester abroad at a French university she was quite confident about her French. And then she found that she couldn’t understand anybody during her first couple of weeks. It eventually clicked and she did very well in her studies in France, but she never forgot that shock over the difference between the language that she studied and the language that she heard from ordinary people.

[@dovesr0478]

Thanks for pointing this out, I think it's something that a lot of language learners don't realize. What's in your book is formal "nerd" speech, which often is quite different from how people actually speak. I make sure to double check overly formal sounding phrases with native speakers to see if people actually talk like that, and what I can say instead if they don't.

[@idraote]

I would be more careful about your "nerd speech". Books don't teach those forms to get an easy laugh out of your effort.

[@MazTheMeh16]

​​@@idraote It it definitely a good starting point - of course the 'textbook' way of saying things is important - but its also important to know that irl, people's speech isn't as strict and formal as that a lot of the time. It's more of a starting point.

[@snowangelnc]

@@MazTheMeh16 It's important to learn both. Rather than calling it "nerd speech" I'd say formal or maybe polite speech. I've had people ask me to help them with English phrases that they've picked up listening to casual speech, and there have been some that I followed with "Ok, now you know what it means, but remember, only say this with your friends. Never, never, never use it somewhere like a job interview."

[@afuyeas9914]

Excellent demonstration for "dû être", as a French speaker I wasn't even aware of that. It goes to show how much meaning we map from sometimes remarkably short segments. That said the woman in the sequence definitely shows she's an actress who learned a text because she articulates /r/ that very often drops in informal speech so in fact "dû être" can simply reduce further to [dyt] or even [dyn] because of the nasal consonant following. Fascinating stuff.

[@languagejones6784]

I suspected that r was liable to disappear too!

[@zak3744]

As an English schoolkid learning French (and being poorly able to reproduce any kind of French 'r' anyway), I think I intuitively recognised a kind of common "être" in connected speech that my brain processed as being a "t" with a tiny little "ch" on the end, but as soon as you started moving into the "ch" sound, you cut it off dead.

[@maxhatush5918]

@@zak3744that’s a German ‘ch’ not an English ‘ch’ as in ‘chocolate’.

[@TheMiliPro]

I noticed early on that the joined up rapid speech of native speakers would require ear training. However, my plan was to get quite advanced in listening to learner content and then jump into native content later. Are you saying it’s more beneficial to make that switch earlier? Like from upper beginner or intermediate- it would speed up the total time to acquire the lang so I’m open to it if it’s beneficial. I always thought if I get really good at learner content, I will go back to Netflix and comprehend maybe 50% rather than almost 0% despite not being a beginner!

[@camiilepeyre7689]

I'm French too and at first I did'nt realise she dropped anyting, instead I noticed her very parisian accent and the way she enunciates did'nt feel natural. In an actual conversation, she would definitely drop even more sounds.

[@BertaRS]

Thank you for the way you did the sponsorship. Being fair about the pros and cons is the best way to do it.

[@languagejones6784]

Thank you! I recognize that the letters behind my name mean my endorsements carry more weight. I turn down a LOT, and it’s important to me that for the ones I do take, I can be fully honest.

[@dyld921]

The French sound reductions are so cool and make perfect sense to me. It's like how the English "I don't know" reduces to /ajdənəw/, then /ajəõ/, then eventually you can just vaguely mumble in the same intonation and it's still perfectly understandable.

[@heinrich.hitzinger]

As long as you pronounce the stressed sylable (very often the dyphtong), clearly, you can just mumble the rest of the sentence. xD

[@UCH6H9FiXnPsuMhyIKDOlsZA]

Yeah -- you can just kinda hum the __^^__-- tone and people will parse that as "I do not know", and if you "enunciate" it a little harder it gains an expletive!

[@matteo-ciaramitaro]

mines more like /au. now/

[@aeolia80]

My husband is a native French speaker. It wasn't until I was around him 24/7 that it dawned on me that spoken French and written French are not the same thing, because duh, lol, of course they aren't, lol. Anyways, I asked him once to slow down what he was saying so that I coukd hear succinctly what he was saying, but he only enunciated in "correct" French what he had said, and I said "no, you did not say it like that, now repeat again fast", and he did it fast, and it was obvious it was different, and I told him so, and I said "act like a record player and just slow down EXACTLY how you said that", it took me 5 tries of explaining what I meant and giving examples of what I meant in English before it dawned on him then he did it, 😂😂😂😂😂 did wonders to help me, lol, I also turn the speed down on youtube for the same reason too, lol

[@marcelinebellafiore8695]

I'm very glad that my French professors actually taught us some of this stuff. I had no idea it wasn't standard.

[@SmokeyChipOatley]

My french professor at uni was a very nice, sweet older french woman and for all intents and purposes a good instructor but she was so "old-school" in her approach to that she never (EVER) veered from the text book/set lesson plan. No music, movies, real world conversations or slang (although she did cover verlan slang but again only because it was in the book). If it wasn't in the textbook it was effectively off limits. I remember even asking several times if I could pull up some french songs/videos for the class on the overhead projector that I found helpful but I was always shot down. At the end of the semester she pulled me to the side to tell me that I was by far her best and the most proficient student and that she'd love for me to take her higher level courses but I had to turn her down. You were very lucky to say the least lol.

[@Valtinho22he]

My dream is speaking english and french. But first, I have to focus on my English after I going to focus on french. This year, I will learn english and next year I’ll learn french

[@alaind9393]

Happens in every language. For example we shorten "il n'y a pas" into "y'a pa" which sounds like "yapa". Or "qu'est ce que tu fais?" Into "qu'ess'tu fais". Same tendancy in russian when we say "он г'т" instead of pronouncing "он говорит" meaning "he says".

[@totally_not_a_bot]

​@@Valtinho22heHow's the English coming?

[@Valtinho22he]

@@totally_not_a_bot I have stopped of studying english a little bit.... My life is kinda hard bro

[@sophialee8189]

I don't often leave comments but I have to say thank you - this video has finally put into precise words the struggle I'm experiencing! Looking forward to more videos

[@diogolsq5295]

hands down one of the best channels on the field. Thanks for that.

[@Jason_wojnar_ukraine]

My Ukrainian classes had a lot of "this is technically how it is said but people usually say it like this" or "This is the Ukrainian word but in Kyiv a lot of people might replace it with the russian word in casual speech" and that helped out tremendously.

[@Rationalific]

That's good that you got this kind of instruction that helps with actual listening. (However, they might be in the process of replacing that Russian word with the Ukrainian word again...)

[@Jason_wojnar_ukraine]

@@Rationalific Not really because it's not like it was a conscious decision on their part. That's just the way some people speak. Then there's Surzhyk which is without its own set of defined rules but is a combination of Ukrainian and elements of other languages (mostly associated with Russian but it can be Polish too if you are in the western part of the country). It's more that many people who mostly spoke russian in their day to day lives are now switching to Ukrainian. It's something that's been happening since 2014 but it accelerated rapidly once the invasion started.

[@Rationalific]

@@Jason_wojnar_ukraine I see. Interesting.

[@carefultreading]

great video. a few years ago, my reading comprehension in english was great and i could read relatively fast but i struggled really hard to understand any native speakers but i watched a video explaining how native speakers connect words and it was like magic. once i knew what to look out for, listening was a walk in the park to me. none of my teachers has ever explained that to us unfortunately:(

[@jdillon8360]

Yep, from personal experience living in a Spanish speaking country, what's in the book and what people say are very different things. One bonus of Spanish is that the 5 main vowel sounds are usually fairly consistent, so you can usually write a word correctly if you hear it correctly, and you can usually pronounce words correctly even if you've never heard them before, just be following the fairly strict pronunciation rules in Spanish.

[@SMCwasTaken]

And guess what Even Spanish Speakers struggle understanding each other because each country has their own slang, dialect and accent

[@jdillon8360]

@@SMCwasTaken That is sometimes true. Depends on which country and how fast the person is speaking.

[@la.zanmal.]

Above and beyond consistent pronunciation, simply *having* and sticking to a 5-vowel system is a big plus.

[@BlackDragon-tf6rv]

​@@SMCwasTaken We do understand each other pretty well, I'm from Argentina but i know some words from Chile, Venezuela, México and Spain. everyone has a their own accent but the language is exactly the same, the only difference being vocabulary

[@marshallh.7553]

@@BlackDragon-tf6rv as a Spanish learner who is most familiar with Mexican Spanish, I have to say that my Mexican-ish Spanish works just fine when trying to understand people from any other Spanish speaking country, with the exception of Chile, they're just something harder about their accent.

[@hopegate9620]

This was really interesting! As a French native speaker, that last extract sounded normal to me, and I was wondering what kind of thing you were gonna be able to find in it that wasn't textbook standard. Clearly I was wrong, it just goes to show how the brain works to translate what you hear

[@TheLaxOne]

Wow, having studied French in high school, the detailed break downs really blew me away. I would love more detailed explanations!

[@medalkingslime4844]

Yeah I been studying Japanese for about 8 months seriously. And only in the last month can I make anything out in native speech. I just started listening to podcasts and watching anime without subtitles regardless of whether or not I could really understand what was being said and wouldn’t you have it… those little bits of being able to understand one word start building up and I can actually make out full sentences.

[@blotski]

Re what native speakers think 2:38. I remember when I was learning Spanish I came across the rule that if a word ends in an 's' and the next word begins with an 'r' the -s will be lost. So Los Ríos is pronounced 'lorríos'. I told my Spanish friend Ana about this and she told me it was not true and I swear to God she actually said to me 'No, eso e-rridículo'. But native speakers trying to make you speak 'properly' is a curse. The Glossika Polish, for example, has three speakers making the final -ę of words always nasal resulting in a very odd, rarified pronunciation that will mark you out as a foreigner immediately. No doubt they were thinking they had speak 'properly' for foreign learners.

[@AmyThePuddytat]

I was taught that dropping _s_ before _r_ was an important rule to follow. It sounds absurdly non-native to pronounce the _s._ It’s just not a consonant cluster that exists in Spanish. Even _Israel_ is pronounced _Irrael._

[@Drazzz27]

Native speakers may be great performers but they're atrocious at understanding what they're doing. Their idea of their own pronunciation is often riddled with myths and received wisdoms that have nothing in common with the actual phonetical reality. If you want somebody to teach you pronunciation you better find yourself somebody who's trained in phonetics. I also find it funny how the native speakers often have this idea of the 'correct' pronunciation of the word (the dictionary pronunciation). They may say Irrael in regular speech without even noticing it but if they feel like they should speak properly (like if you ask them to pronounce the word) they will suddenly get self-conscious and try to pronounce the word in the way they believe it should be pronounced (Israel). > speakers making the final -ę of words always nasal I remember hearing native speakers pronouncing it like that as a joke (as in 'look at how ridiculously I enunciate').

[@Liggliluff]

(0:25) "speaking too fast" does not imply that the natives are speaking it wrong, and no one means that. What this phrase means is "they are speaking faster than I can comprehend at my current level of the language". (6:30) Of course you have an accent, everyone does.

[@pahko_]

"Leave me a comment if you want more detailed descriptions like this" hell yeah baby. For any language of course, but as someone who took 5 years of high school french (not that US public school language classes are particularly renowned), this is the kind of thing that they indeed never did go over. The clitic tidbit was also interesting. I also love that kind of "formal vs casual" analysis for English. My favorite example, half-covered in this vid, is how knowing "I am going to" can shorten to "I'm gonna" or "Imma" is a fun observation, but people know about those since both are written so much. Realizing that "imana/imunuh/[whatever]" is also common, possibly more than the others (at least personally), was a wild realization, because that one never gets written out and thus hardly ever consciously realized.

[@milanprolix2511]

2:41 I really appreciate a professionnel confirming to me that native speakers are often not aware of this themselves! People will deny pronouncing the same letter differently depending on the letters that comme before or after as long as the 'idealized sound' is the same. I could hear in Dutch that people pronounce 'ee' slightly differently when it was followed by 'r' and native speakers including language teachers were firmly denying it, telling me that I was imagining it and that it was exactly the same sound. I found one online source with a very detailed description of Dutch accents that described this phenomenon so I did not admit defeat right away. Finally, with friend who is a native speaker and was also convinced there is no difference, we experimented with two words that start the same until the 'ee' but end differently, with "r..." or with "n..." and not only could I 100% of the time guess which one he was going to say when he stopped at the 'ee' sound but he also admitted that at that point in the pronunciation of the word he could not switch to the other word anymore because it felt strange and sounded wrong if he tried. I am probably guilty of the same bias in my native language but I would appreciate it if more langage teacher were aware of these things or at least open about discussing it.

[@LisaHerger]

I love your analysis of casual speach in French! I'd love to see more videos about that.

[@willful759]

I'm gonna do my duty and ask for more detailed explanation of how words reduce in casual speech! that's super interesting!

[@jeewillikers]

I studied French throughout high school and was very "into" it; I spent a lot of time outside class listening to French music, reading in french, and using similar tools to the one you promoted today. That interest in language learning started spreading to other languages like Chinese and Ukrainian, but I lost interest in all of it after high school. Now, 8 years later, I ended up subscribing to your channel solely out of an interest in linguistics on it's own and have been studying things like generative grammar and psychology of language instead for the past few years. But details like the ones you included today and other tidbits that have popped up before in your videos have inspired me recently to get back into language learning as well. Just last night I was replaying segments of videos from French speakers over and over, trying to catch the minutia of more casual language use and pronunciation for the first time in years. Please, do not stop!

[@farelli608]

As a person who tends to notice the differences between spoken, taught and written language, I find this an excellent analysis of those differences in French. This gives a systematic approach to identifying the differences for faster comprehension. I've said for years, probably after in-depth kiosk forum discussions with LJ here, that we don't teach language how people naturally learn, and then we express surprise or disappointment when people don't learn the language. Approaches like these are what are necessary to level up learning 10x.

[@vladimir520]

Thank you for making this video! It's an incredibly important aspect of language learning that is often misunderstood. I actively studied the phonology of Greek, which has effectively made me understand how people actually say things and how some grammatical aspects work (like you pointed out for Hebrew in the last livestream!). I am now studying Turkish and the future verb forms are pretty much universally pronounced completely different to the written form, much like "Je suis". I'm obviously biased because I like Linguistics, but I think everybody should study the phonology of the language they're learning as in depth as they can if they're to properly make out what is being said in the language.

[@fantinchassagne8491]

/ʃɥi / is even very often reduced to /ʃy/ us very unommon. The most common orthographies are and I don't think her prononciation is casual at all. She's overdoing it. The normal pronunciation of is /ɛt/. /dytʁ/ just sounds plain weird to me. should sound /ɛloredyɛtmakije/ I don't think people drop the first syllable of very often but I'm going to pay attention today to know wether I'm wrong or right.

[@mikaelahobart8237]

Hot take: if language learning courses included *casual & artistic writing* - the ways people write on sticky notes for themselves/friends/family members & in text messages/tweets/etc. where you hafta write fast/with limited characters, in song lyrics that need to match the rhythm exactly how you mean them to, in comic/graphic novel & script/screenplay dialogue where you wanna communicate that a character has a very specific accent or just imitate natural speech cause it fits the Vibes™ better or whatever, etc. - it'd make it wayyyyy easier for learners to understand casual speech. I *know* English ain't the only language with written versions of words like “I'mma/I'm'na,” “wanna,” “gonna,” “gotta,” “lotta,” “hafta,” “kinda,” “sorta,” “prolly,” “innit,” “whassis,” “w(h)assat/whuzzat/wazzat,” “wussup/wazzup/'sup,” “bro/sis/sib,” “helluva/heckuva,” “w(h)addya/w(h)attya,” “d'ya,” “'em/'emselves/'emself,” “'e/'im/'is/'imself,” “'er/'ers/'erself,” “y'think,” “y'know,” “dunno,” “y'see,” “y(')all,” “you'uns/you'ins/you(')ns/y(')uns/y(')unz/y(')ins/y(')inz,” “shoulda/coulda/woulda,” “who'da/he'da/she'da/they'da/you'da/I'da/we'da,” “ain't/'tain't/y'ain't/y'ain'ta/y'ain't've,” “'tweren't,” “ya,” “-cha/-chu/-ja/-ju,” etc. etc. etc. that'd getcha a big, fat, red “F” if ya put 'em in a school paper, ROFL.

[@raina4732]

Great point! I’m a native English speaker living in a Slavic country and no one understands me unless I speak textbook English (except my husband who studied in the US). I can’t say or write: I’ll, let’s, you’re, etc. they don’t even learn that in school here which is pretty important because no one in English speaking countries says I will (unless you’re trying to emphasize it). And they don’t really do that in the Slavic language here. Everyone writes it all out and pronounces it all. Informally when texting no one uses accent marks, but formally there are a ton of them on each word. So it’s hard to read emails or texts because the words all look empty and more confusing to my non native eye.

[@mikaelahobart8237]

@@raina4732 My gosh lemme tell ya English was always one of my favorite/best subjects in school but transitioning from home study to college it was suddenly REAL frustrating tryna write papers cause of the whole "not even Acceptable™ contractions are allowed in Textbook English" thing, LOL! I could avoid things like "hafta" just fine but half the time I didn't even notice I'd written the "I'll, let's, you're" type & had to have like three different family members proofread the same page to find 'em all. 😝 That was almost exactly my frustrated muttering every time I saw those pencil circles pointing them out ROFL “literally *no native English speaker* ever avoids contractions *to this EXCESSIVE extent,* dang it! ‘They have got to’ is *LITERALLY* more incorrect English than ‘they've got to’ OR ‘they've gotta,’ why would you do this to people…??” 😂

[@L.Spencer]

Everybody speaks differently, which means we have to adjust our ear to understand them. That's a lot harder when it's not your native language and the speaker is speaking very differently. The funny thing is the person speaking will think that you don't understand the language if you don't understand their way of speaking it. Continuing to watch your video, that could help with my understanding Spanish languages where they drop sounds. I don't get to listening to them much, but when I do, I can barely make out what they're saying.

[@GwenWinterheart]

ive been listening to loads of casual speech in japanese and i don't have the impression that most people speak particularly fast, so i feel appropriately smug about that, but wow the french stuff blew my mind, i had to study french in high school and obviously i knew i didn't learn much but this really puts into perspective how little chance i had at understanding any sentence of actual spoken french based on that ^^;; there's something wild about memorizing all the conjugations of être without ever knowing how any of them sound when spoken.

[@fariesz6786]

really? i feel that if japanese _want_ to speak fast, they speak perversely fast. on the other hand the way they speak in like interviews or in yt videos and such is almost like they naturally adopt a textbook language speech style.

[@GwenWinterheart]

@@fariesz6786 i mean i'm sure i might have trouble if someone was deliberately trying to talk faster than normal or was like really excited but i think most of the time when people are talking casually and i know all the words they're using it's not difficult to understand? (assuming they're talking mostly standard japanese or MAYBE a kansai dialect) once you get the patterns of how sentences go in your head you can kind of anticipate where it's going a bit. one of my main listening practice sources is a vtuber who's known for speaking somewhat quickly, so that probably helps

[@simonsmatthew]

I learned Japanese and French. In many ways I find conversational French harder, especially listening. I find the French speak very, very quickly and they drop a lot of syllables. It becomes a blur, where it seems there aren't any consonants! I find watching documentaries or formal French easier to follow. People say Japanese is a hard language, but funnily I got that to a higher level much faster than French. I lived for many years in both countries, but I would definitely recommend homestays. It was a big reason I got good at Japanese relatively quickly. Having said that I would not say Japanese is harder than French, it is just that the problems are different. Also written Japanese is not as insurmountable as many people say.

[@DominoPivot]

I'm going to say it only once... but your accent when speaking French amuses me quite a bit. It's an interesting blend of European French and American English whereas I'm Canadian and most of the content I watch in English is British or Australian. I should try joining vocal chats with people from around the world, I bet my accent would make other people smile too! In Québec we often simplify "je suis" into "chu" and "tu es" into "té", and we might even drop the vowel sound entirely. When that creates a phrase so short it's inaudible, we'll throw in an adverb before the verb. So the line "je suis pauvre" in a script might be pronounced "ch'trop pôv" by an actor with a thick Québécois accent. Some of our shortcuts are so creative we don't even know where they came from. When you combine this with our tendency to write interrogative sentences with a subject pronoun both before AND after the verb (instead of just performing subject-verb inversion), we get phrases like: "Es-tu allé à l'épicerie" > "Té-tu all'à l'épsrie?" (Did you go to the grocery store?) "Veux-tu que je m'en occupe? Je vais te régler ça vitement." > "Veux-tu j'm'en occupe? M'a't'régler ça vite." (Do you want me to take care of it? I'll fix that for you quickly.)

[@peticabogar]

Except the "tu" in your examples is not a pronoun but more like a question tag, c'est-tu clair? 😉

[@jplamarre]

M'a t'arranger ça

[@Gredran]

The biggest thing I’ve noticed in Spanish is when people say, you don’t need to specify a verb conjugation, like yo tengo, tú tienes, etc. you can just say tengo, tienes, and it’s understood who you’re talking to. But you’re so right. Native Spanish speakers will ALL say the same thing, but the more I’m actively listening(they’re native speakers so just don’t realize it) I realize I hear a lot of them specify A LOT the “yo tengo” And maybe that’s thinking, but it also teaches you like you say, to just get out there in addition or even in replacement of some of your academic stuff lol

[@marshallh.7553]

An interesting thing I've noticed while talking with Spanish speakers from the Caribbean is that they seem to use pronouns like tu a lot more than Mexicans for example. I believe it's because in their accents they tend to aspirate their S's so that a word like tienes just becomes tiene', so you have to say tu tiene' to specify that you mean tienes and not tiene. My Dominican friends will say things like como tu e'ta, instead of como estas, like it would be in a textbook. Btw I don't have any evidence for this, it's just an anecdote I've taken note of.

[@TheSpiv]

I met some Scandinavian business associates and they said they learned English the easiest by listening to American country music songs. The singing was slower paced and the lyrics were clear and not blocked by heavy music. Thank you for explaining why my high school French left me completely unwilling to try and speak French in Paris after my first two trips there years ago. I wonder if language translator apps have become acceptable or just the latest crutch for "ugly American" tourists abroad?

[@choco1199]

😂

[@tech6hutch]

Did they have a rural American accent from listening to all that country? 😂

[@alexhruzewicz]

I also found that listening to music while working (with the lyrics printed out somewhere so that I could look at them later - basically casually trying to memorize the song) was a great way to improve my understanding of native speech.

[@arnulfotorresvalladares9680]

I find this kind advice to be something that needs to be repeated as many times as possible. For those who know it's pretty obvious, but a surprising amount of people underestimate the importance of listening and analyzing speech patterns and sound reduction in their target language for better understanding and faster speech. This is also why many people have very noticeable accents despite living in the country and being surrounded by native speakers. Nothing wrong with having an accent, but some people do want to get closer to a native-like pronunciation. I also warn my students though, and this is something my professor during my master strongly adviced, that they should have a good command of proper pronunciation before starting to go for more natual speech. It's easier to just learn what to drop or modify once you can speak properly than to have to undo bad speaking habits caused by not listening to target language properly. Native speakers will always understand if you speak with a slow and clean pronunciation even if it sounds "too perfect" and unnatural, but they might struggle to understand if you drop the wrong sounds or pronounce something wrong in an effort to speak more quickly and sound more natural. Some interference is bound to happen from your native language, especially if it's very phonetically different from your target language too, and knowing the underlying ideal sounds can help prevent learning things wrong. I basically all boils down to awareness and knowing what to listen for.

[@eurovicious]

Fantastic comment Arnulfo.

[@eugenetswong]

Also, something that probably never gets talked about is how native speakers clarify what they said. Sometimes it's just a matter of more context. Other times, we need to articulate/enunciate, or rephrase.

[@clement5260]

As a French, this video was incredibly fun to watch and made me feel a bit better about foreign languages I'm learning There are MANY more examples of these shortcuts in spoken French, that are not slang at all, and not "informal" (at least I feel like). I never thought it could be so confusing lol. Another example: "Je suis peut-être en retard": "I'm maybe late" the verb être can be cut in "êt" sometimes, and the word "peut-être" (maybe) can be cut to "p'têt" (note that the "t" in peut is originally silent unless you do the liaison, like in that case, when the following letter is a vowel). Finally, "retard" (late), can be pronounced "r'tard". So really, if you wanted to pronounce this sentence very quickly it would sound like "chui p'têt en r'tard", and it would look horrible in written French but people would naturally pronounce it like that if they read the formal sentence Thanks for coming to my TED talk

[@Mrmonkeydog74]

I'm curious about register in relation to this topic. There are so many ways to use language and it's often forgotten that language books and apps are just teaching you the formal language. It's always going to be a bit different when conversing, making a speech, presenting educational material, texting a friend, writing an email, or even talking to a boss or professor. I'd love a deeper dive into register and how it changes language. Excellent video!

[@andreanewell628]

It will be very helpful if you do more of this!

[@tokoonz_00]

7:20 "For the last two decades". I'm french. It's been more like 50 years that it's like this :)

[@juliens2979]

Very good point made. However, I have a few points to make here and they kind of lead into eachother. One issue I have with the French examples in the video is something I see frequently on KZbin. You portray these tv shows' pronounciations as though they were just "How French is spoken". In reality, this applies to France. While European French is what many people learning French want to learn, it by no means represents a standard for the language or represents a majority of the language's speakers. For example, I'm from Canada and much of what you said does not apply to how I speak. If you were British and you were speaking in a European context, it wouldn't be as big of a deal that you didn't explicitly specify what dialect you were talking about, but you're American. Your context is North American, and so many people could easily get the wrong idea that you're describing tendancies that apply to the varieties of French in this continent, when you are not. It would be like a Mexican talking in Spanish about colloquial english and then presenting London speach as just generically "How English is spoken", when in fact all varieties of French close to them work very differently. I can easily see someoene from New Oreleans, in the USA itself, who's interested in local francophone culture watching your video, replicating what they learned and then being confused when Cajuns don't understand them. All in all, I agree that it's very useful to learn how a language is actually spoken, but an important consideration you left out is that before doing this, you need to decide what region or dialect you want to focus on. If you're learning French, it's perfectly fair to choose European French, but don't expect the lessons you learn to be accurate for everywhere. This is actually a really big benefit of making sure you have the textbook speak down as well. If you learn Parisian pronounciation but then aren't understood in Cameroon or Montreal, you can always switch to your textbook pronounciation and be understood. You won't sound like a local, but you'll be understood (side note: If you learned European textbook pronounciation, you'll have learned what I believe is textbook pronounciation around the world, but still with the very notable exception of North America, where the textbook Canadian variety still has many more and different vowel sounds and other diffeences. Still, there's enough immigration here that textbook European French should be well understood). More generally, this speaks to how you want to use the language. Many people learn English to talk to people while travelling or doing business, and not necessarily in anglophone countries. A Norwegian speaking to an Argentinian in English doesn't need to care about how English is spoken by native speakers in Toronto or Cape Town or anywhere. For their purposes, textbook English is perfect. If you want to learn French to travel through the very diverse French speaking world, you'll need to fall back on textbook pronounciations very often, and you may not find it worth your while at all to learn the colloquial tendencies of any country if you aren't staying in any single one for much longer than the others. In summary: 1) If you're talking about non-textbook pronounciations, I would always suggest you cite what dialect or region you're talking about. Otherwise, it seems implied that you're stating things on the language as a whole, regardless of your intent. 2) Learning how people speak is very useful towards many people's language learning goals but you need to decide what region/accent/dialect you're going for before you embark on that quest. 3) Not everyone cares about how native speakers talk normally. As with many things about learning languages, the things to focus on really depend on your goals with the language. Not to rag on you too much. I really like your channel. Thanks!

[@stratospheric37]

Dr Geoff Lindsey has a lot of videos talking about various ways which English dialects and speakers don't conform to the literary language or prior expectations of English, such as on his weak forms video. To give a more unknown example of what you describe: in Albanian words which end with schwa (represented by the letter ë) mostly being indefinite feminine nouns such as vajzë (girl) and ujë (water), the schwa at the end is dropped and is not pronounced, at least in dialects close Standard Albanian. Schwa dropping does not occur in some other dialects.

[@Veriflon88]

This is great, as I am refreshing my secondary school French right now. I love your content

[@Liggliluff]

(7:55) Normalise "13 o'clock" or just write "13:00" in the subtitles. If English is going to be a global language, 24 hour speech needs to be normalised.

[@fguerraz]

Chsui français et ske vous dites et tellement vrai. J’ai trop dmal à expliquer aux gens que personne parle comme dans les livres, c’est quasiment deux langues différentes.

[@languagejones6784]

It’s even worse when you’re assigned « La chute » par Camus et on pense que tout le monde parle comme son personnage ki utilise l’imparfait du subjonctif eksetera. They really try to tell us we need that before we can even make small talk!

[@fguerraz]

​@@languagejones6784Mind you, there are people who actually use the Imparfait du subjonctif, and it's a defining class feature. The bourgeoisie does distinguish themselves in this way (and many others) by speaking "proper French" (le bon français). I recommend this very short video on the subject kzbin.info/www/bejne/omKviKOdoJqGnbs . Si tu ne connais pas « Les inconnus », je recommande vivement que tu les regardes, c'est de l'humour bien français :D

[@irgendwieanders2121]

Teach people German. Send them to Austria (larger city...) Laugh at their incomprehension... If you tend to fall on the cruel side: Send them to Switzerland...

[@mobo7420]

Even standard German is pronounced quite differently from the way it is written, though some language teachers in Germany who otherwise only know English and French think it's spoken as written. For example, I pronounce 40 as "föahzich" (spelling is "vierzig") and I'm from Southern Lower Saxony, where people are not even supposed to have an accent.

[@alicesenz6374]

With Chinese this is very important as well as learning the different accents. The most famous is Beijing accent wich often turns ending ns into rs (yi dian -> yi diar in Beijing dialect). When I started watching content from central and south China I noticed that a lot of times the x sound is pronounced closer to an s. A lot of this is just immersing yourself in native content. It takes a lot of time. One thing Ive noticed is after listening to native content in a language it will sound slower (even if I still cant understand what theyre saying)

[@xyzpiggywigsxyz]

I love the explanation of why the words get squished together!

[@alexhruzewicz]

Loved this video. Hated the title. Too clickbaitish. What you said at 1:10 would have been a much better title for *me*: “how to analyze spoken language so that you can better understand casual speech.” That sentence is pure gold. The clickbait title actually made me cringe every time I saw it and I consciously avoided clicking on it. I actually had to convince myself “his content is usually good and I’m interested in the topic.”

[@fernandoteitelbaum]

Excellent video. I have no "productive comment" except saying that your stuff is amazing. And FOR SURE I'd want more examples, if possible in excrutiating detail hehehe. Congrats!

[@LeftToWrite006]

Once the video got into the LingoPie section (about midway through the video), it fell off the rails somewhat and lost its focus. I'm not sure exactly what is being suggested for "better" listening in this video in no small part because of that.

[@matteo-ciaramitaro]

I think his point is to disregard the written form partially and look at the sounds speakers are actually making. He uses the lingopie clips to demonstrate that while your teacher may say a word is pronounced one way, they may neglect to tell you that most of the time what you need to listen for is very different. By analyzing for what sounds actually show up when they say the word, it gives you the key that you're listening for a much smaller piece of information than the entire word. To some this may come easy, but I probably wouldn't have thought to do this, and instead I usually assume they did say it but I missed it

[@wohlhabendermanager]

The thing with most languages is the vast amount of dialects and slang. No textbook and no teacher can keep up with this. Just a few examples that come to mind from my native language: Standard German says that the translation for "I" is "ich", with the 'ch' being a voiceless palatal fricative [ç]. But in the south, people tend to say just "i" (just like the English 'e'). In Berlin, people say "ik" or "ikke". In the north, it's sometimes shortened to just "ch" at the beginning of a sentence. I really don't see how a textbook or a teacher can always give all the possible pronunciations for all the words. And sometimes words are just used in a certain region. I doubt people from the south will understand me if I call them "Dösbaddel" or ask why they are "mucksch", or complain that I have too much "Tüddelkram" in my kitchen. Again, it's really hard for teachers/textbooks to go into that much detail. Instead, they will point out that "Dummkopf" is an insult, use "being offended = beleidigt sein" instead of "mucksch" and will say "many small things = Kleinkram", instead of "Tüddelkram".

[@heinrich.hitzinger]

Yiddish also shortens 'ich' to just 'ch' at the beginning of sentences.

[@frafraplanner9277]

This is why I love Chinese's use of logograms. Each logogram has a defined pronunciation for each regional dialect of Chinese

[@heinrich.hitzinger]

@@frafraplanner9277 Can't all dialects of Chinese be technically written the same way but have words pronounced differently? 🤔

[@alexwgee]

​​​​@@heinrich.hitzinger"Can't all dialects of Chinese be technically written the same way but have words pronounced differently?" Sort of yes... but no, not really. Here's the thing. For many Chinese dialects, the written form of Chinese does not match the spoken form, and I don't simply mean that the characters are pronounced differently. I mean different words are used and there may even be some different grammar depending on the dialect. Chinese dialects can potentially be that different from one another - as different as say English and Spanish are for example. The standard way Chinese is written today matches spoken Mandarin Chinese. That means that if you speak a dialect that is very different from Mandarin, then you're practically learning two languages as you're growing up in China: your home language and Mandarin. Or alternatively, if maybe you grew up in a place like Hong Kong before it was returned to Chinese administration (a time and place when spoken Mandarin wasn't as common and maybe wasn't emphasized in schools), then you grew up speaking Cantonese at home and at school, but you learned to write in standard written Chinese which happens to match spoken Mandarin even though you pronounced the characters using Cantonese pronunciation. Again, practically two different languages. Common words might be different and there might be some grammar differences as well between the spoken Cantonese and standard written Chinese (which, again, matches the words and grammar used in Mandarin). I kind of imagine that it might be a little bit like how it was in the distant past in Europe where educated Europeans wrote in Latin even if Latin wasn't what they spoke in their home and communities. So, a Cantonese speaker could read a passage of written Chinese aloud using Cantonese pronunciation for each character, but it still may not match how that sentence would be constructed if it were actually in Cantonese. Only Mandarin speakers (and speakers of dialects closely related to Mandarin) have the luxury of writing in the same way they speak. Addendum: Even though I described it as "practically two different languages," I think probably in the native Chinese speaker's mind, I'm guessing they probably don't think of it as two different languages. They probably think of it as the same language: Chinese. But for any given sentence, they probably think: This (A) is how I would speak it in a conversation, and this (B) is how I would write it. And A and B would be different.

[@CaptainWumbo]

I think it is less your ability to hear the actual sounds being made (it can vary tremendously especially by accent, not that realistic to just memorise it) and more your familiarity with what is normally said. Language is unavoidably partly prediction. We are not just machines taking in words and turning them into meaning, we are already working with meaning and expecting it to be built on in a fairly predictable way. This includes environmental clues like where we are, what someone looks like, what time of day it is, etc. As learners we need those clues to be a little more obvious, as fluent speakers we can pick them up just from the first syllable of a word.

[@artugert]

I completely agree, but we also do learn to map the sounds made by others to those of our own. For example, New Zealanders say “head” similar to how I would say “heed”. So my brain will naturally start to substitute sound for sound, making it less of a mental burden to understand that particular accent. It’s even more so for people learning English as a second language. And as you implied, it’s also harder to predict what they might want to say, due to cultural differences and perhaps because their grammar is not perfect, etc.

[@Joe-b6j]

SUCH an important point, great video!!

[@Fania973]

I'm a biochemist and I speak 5 languages...so you could say this scientist has a bit of a passion for language learning too! I love your videos so much - the solid linguistics prospective is exactly what I always felt was missing with a lot of the popular language learning content out there. I will check Lingopie out to do my own little experiment, and I can't wait for more videos from you. Thank you!

[@misteryA555]

I noticed this same thing while learning Irish. Because there's aren't a lot of resources for Irish, the only listening practice I could find (unless I wanted to spend 500 dollars) was free episodes of shows on the TG4 website, and I noticed that entire halves of sentences could be reduced down to one or two sounds, which was also frustrating because I couldn't tell which part of which words were dropped or kept. Eventually, if I ever achieve my dream of making a language learning website dedicated to Irish specifically, I plan to include a breakdown like this for as many phrases as I can.

[@Heggsabee]

I've been learning Brazilian Portuguese and I struggle so much with listening, and I'm sure this is a major reason why. Although it tends to be a slower language, they not only drop the pronouns but there are a ton of contractions and shortened words in informal speech. Eu estou ➡️ tô Você está ➡️ tá Não é ➡️ né

[@renatam.r.6762]

As a Brazilian, I can say that another reductions are: Você - cê Cant(ar) - fala(ar) cantā, falā

[@CocoaRaquel]

😢 I'm crying, but I'm still interested in further breakdowns, esp in Mandarin or Spanish

[@JonathanSchoreels91]

In fact, I don't know if there are even french speakers without a specific accent. For example, I'm belgian. Most french people will detect it quite easily after a few words. "Huit" in my case will sound "Hwit" (A bit like the "u" in "queen"), but for a Parisian it will be like "hUit" (very sharp U, the proper U). You go to the South of France, complete different accent. You go to the East of Belgium, completely different, etc etc. So if someone wants to speak french without any accent, I don't even know what it means. Best way to do it would be to look at a specific french accent you want to replicate. But note that Parisian Accent is not really a popular one amongst french speaker :D

[@CP-rc9sw]

Yes, please. May we have some more?

[@scarlett_0001]

These kinds of things are super interesting to me! Can you make a video about other language's common shortcuts? I'm learning Korean, Persian, Italian, and Turkish as a hobby (here and there) at the moment.

[@sonicart1808]

This was an excellent explanation of the "Real spoken" French compared to textbook French. I would love to hear more of these examples as it confuses me quite a bit sometimes....thanks.

[@bruno.stehling]

Getting here 11 months later to say that OH YES, I WANNA MORE DETAILS LIKE THESE!!!!!! 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

[@StonkeyKong]

Hey thanks for the curated new content. I know you started streaming more, but I usually don’t catch the streams, so I was hoping you wouldn’t stop making this style of content. You’re my favorite linguistics channel around!

[@StonkeyKong]

Also, first. 😉

[@languagejones6784]

Thank you so much! I’ve been experimenting with streams, but I’ll definitely be continuing with regular KZbin videos. I just took time off for an edutuber accelerator, and I’m finally back to being able to make content - hopefully it’s a little snappier and more engaging, and better packaged, but I’ve got a lot of videos in this niche that I want to make that don’t lend themselves to live streaming. And live streams aren’t everybody’s cup of tea anyway

[@oshahott2532]

This is mainly why I feel like I'm learning German a lot faster than Spanish, even though I work entirely with Hispanic people and use Spanish daily. German doesn't have nearly as many instances of vowel dropping or combining as Spanish does, so when I'm listening to a new song I can actually hear each vowel and syllable. Sometimes I learn words from just listening because of the way the language is set up both spoken and written. Yet Spanish has a lot of mixing together. So you really have to study it and know why to keep an ear out for.

[@Drazzz27]

The author of the videos presented an example of du être shortening into something like /dytʁ/ which, imho, doesn't happen in colloquial speech in French that often, so when it comes to such syllable-dropping - every language exhibits it from time to time in very informal language, and informal/casual German is no exception. There's textbook pronunciation, there's trained narrators' pronunciation (audiobooks, documentaries, etc.), there's more or less informal, but not too shabby regular spoken pronunciation, and then there's the kind of pronunciation where people just throw some sounds at you and hope you figure it out from context or something.

[@oshahott2532]

@@Drazzz27 Oh absolutely. Like when people drop the "e" at the end of an "Ich" verb. Like instead of "Ich warte" they may say "Ich wart". I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I'm able to understand it a lot more. In Spanish, they'll literally mix words together if they end then start on the same syllable. I feel like I have to see it spelt out correctly and formally to really understand it when I hear it. Of course, they're two extremely different languages as well. Also, German is a Germanic language like English, so the structures are going to be more similar to each other.

[@Drazzz27]

@@oshahott2532 Overall, it's just a question of getting used to. In German they like to reduce small and functional words (articles, particles, prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns and possessives) and many affixes in colloquial speech. Vowels change, consonants and entire syllables drop. English has the same pattern, so it's more of a general Germanic thing. Quite a pain to get used to. Romance languages have their own patterns of sound change, and vowel reduction in unstressed syllables is not that prominent. Spanish instead likes to simplify clusters of vowels, and when it happens on the word boundaries, with the typical for Romance languages resyllabification, it becomes difficult to parse when one word begins and the other ends. When the vowels are the same one of them is just dropped (lo olvidé - lolvidé, la presa hace - lapresace, el aire entra - elairentra). Even when the vowels are different one of them turns into a quick glide (approximant), similar to /j/ or /w/, but weaker (se ha notado - [sjanotað̞o]), and in very fast speech, for functional words, just drops altogether (la esposa - lesposa, me iba - miba). Since the vowel clusters reduction happens very often even in normal, non-casual speech, it may throw a learner for a loop, but I personally found it not that hard to get used to (once I learned about this phenomenon and listened to it attentively). In casual and uneducated (and dialectal) speech there are many more simplifications (great number of consonants weaken, debuccalize, disappear, and the resulting 'consonant-less' vowel clusters simplify) that turn the listening task into a nightmare. I've watched some Colombian crime shows (like El Rastro from Caracol Televisión, can be easily found on youtube), and when they interview people with criminal/poor background you literally can't hear half of all the sounds (because they just don't pronounce them). French is another one that causes a lot of trouble for the learners (it has a great initial hurdle). The main culprits are enchaînement (which is basically the French version of resyllabification), liaison (which inserts an unexpected consonant between words, that can throw you off) and 'e muet' (the French schwa that likes to disappear from a word where you least expect it). It creates the same effect of the words running into each other, so that it becomes impossible to tease them apart without knowing the words in advance. And the disappearing 'e muet' often creates consonant clusters which heavily assimilate (the infamous 'Je suis' turning into 'Shui' /ʃwi/, or with nasalization 'un petit peu' - /ɛ̃mtipø/) and in some cases drop (like the end word clusters '-ble', '-tre', etc. pronounced as just '-b', '-t'). Most of that stuff is essential even in formal speech, and it produces a strong negative impression on the first-timers, but it's, again, just a question of getting used to. Beginning learners also make quite a fuss of the fact that French orthography writes too many letters compared to what is actually pronounced, but this is a complete non-issue, in my opinion, especially coming from the native speakers with the horrifically inconsistent English orthography. Just learn the right pronunciation (from a pronunciation dictionary) from the very beginning and don't let yourself be intimidated by all those silent letters. Once you get used to the regular pronunciation, of course, you're going to have to come to grips with the colloquial speech with all their simplifications and syllable droppings. Learn some common stuff (like "c'est-à-dire" - "sta-dire", "il y a" - "ya", "peut-être" - "ptet", "seulement" - "sment", "plus" - "pu", "mais alors" - "m'alors" and countless others) and prepare yourself to encounter even more, less common surprises. It will be a blast ;)

[@Zoxuk]

I love the "textbooks are wrong listen to me" philosophy, liberally interspersed with praise for your sponsor.

[@danielweiner7251]

beautifully done video, I'll admit, I'm a native speaker of English and you don't know how many times language learners have chastized me for speaking too fast even though from my point of view I'm being very careful---smile Thanks for all of your videos.

[@BjörnSöderström-k3o]

More of this please, it is very helpful.

[@artugert]

I downloaded Praat a while back and I found it a little difficult to figure out how to use it, so I never ended up using it. This just reminded me I should probably look up a tutorial on it.

[@matteo-ciaramitaro]

I really like this type of analysis video. If you do any french study streams ill tune in

[@leocomerford]

2:02 it’s all about the sounds they DON’T ideate

[@CuriosityCore101]

This is a super helpful video! Please do make more!

[@kippen64]

You just fried my poor brain. I would struggle to understand your shortened version of 'I am going to' and it's my first language. The idea of trying to understand shortened versions in other languages now horrifies me.

[@Ithirahad]

Yeah... "I'm gonna" is one thing; seems natural enough. Then there's this i'mggn!'a monstrosity. I'mggn!'a is a fucking beast of a word that uses sounds we don't even usually think about existing in English or... really any language I can think of outside Africa.

[@eurovicious]

⁠@@IthirahadAbsolutely love this 'mggn!'a point. It's so true.

[@calumoconnor7794]

I want more detailed descriptions like this!

[@iavv334]

Acoustic forensics rising in language pedagogy! Phoneticians love to see it!

[@Glassandcandy]

Would you ever consider doing episodes breaking down and giving tips on specific languages you’re familiar with? Like an episode where you breakdown useful tips and common misconceptions about languages like French or Persian or Hebrew etc.?

[@sberfield]

Thanks for this. I have been wanting to start watching shows in Italian to get used to how people actually speak, but I hadn't heard of Lingo Pie. I will check it out.

[@mindycurtis2404]

Absolutely more breakdowns of native speaker reductions please 🤓💯 in French or English or whatever strikes your fancy!

[@barcher]

Thanks for saying this. We teach and learn languages based on the written form, but that's not how language works. Ask any musician. Sheet music is just a guide.

[@hglundahl]

1:00 I just had a shock when seeing the transscript of a video featuring "aumonier" (in the now most usual sense of chaplain) transscribed as "omier" ... obviously recognisable, but I had never thought this could be the actual phonetic outcome. When I arrived in France in 2005, I said "je parle un peu lentement, parlez-moi en Suisses, s'il vous plaît" c. half the speed I was hearing them use. Some did, some didn't, but both together helped me get over it, now I'm at usual speed. I never suggested it was a fault on their part, more like a handicap on mine.

[@broccoli9308]

"parlez-moi en Suisse" lol 🤣

[@hglundahl]

@@broccoli9308 it translates like "as a Swiss person" ... not "in Swiss" as if it were a language.

[@kyleh4354]

Um, I for one want more nerdy explanations. I don't think I could've/would've caught the du etre contracting to [dyt(R)] but little things like that are sooo helpful in comprehension!

[@Ben-kv7wr]

French exchange students taught me a lot of colloquial pronunciations my freshman year and after that all of my classmates said I spoke too fast

[@jenniferhunter4074]

We do this in our own native languages too. I always keep in mind that whatever happens, people will choose the path of least resistance. That means dropping the d and the t and every hard "closed" sound as much as possible. At least that's my experience. It's like skimming over waves and punctuating once in a while with the opening of the sentence or the hit of the phrase.

[@languagejones6784]

Exactly! Mark Liberman once pointed out to me that on words with multiple sounds like t,d,n,l, and r, American English speakers almost never pronounce all of them. I can’t I hear it. Especially things like “saturni live” which is only “Saturday night live!” when they yell it in the cold opens.

[@jenniferhunter4074]

@@languagejones6784 It's also present in choral singing (and probably other forms). It's all about keeping that sound open. So it's "powah", not "power" . It sounds pretty and it's less work.

[@frafraplanner9277]

It's like how most English speakers don't pronounce the H in "come here"

[@chandie5298]

Brilliant, amazing, valuable video. Instant subscriber!!!

[@AstroSandee]

More detailed descriptions like this 🙏

[@japanese2811]

This was excellent. One of the most classic examples of this is watching kids shows in your target language. Despite people often recommending to start with kids shows when learning a language, the irony is that the way kids characters tend to pronounce words in these shows is often extraordinarily different from what you'd see in a textbook. To some extent listening to adults speak is actual easier 😅 maybe its just me!

[@sheranlanger247]

Yeah, I worked with a Polish kid who studied English before he came to the UK. To make things worse, central England, where we were, has a specific accent and dialect. He said he had to "learn English" all over again.

[@jasonjames6870]

Eh up duck, you wanna cheese cob for ya tea

[@noelleggett5368]

The problem for learners that you describe - of the difference between the French you learn in a class and casual colloquial speech - takes on a whole new level for the language I teach: Irish (Gaelic). The proportion of Irish to English speakers in Ireland drastically reduced in the 19th century (due to the Great Famine, starvation, emigration, and migration to eastern cities, etc.). This left only a tiny population of native Irish speakers, mainly scattered in small isolated communities along the west coast. During the 20th century, there was a well-meaning but problematic effort to keep the language alive through the education system. A board was established, which created a national curriculum, and resulted in an Official Standard form of the language - taking simplified aspects of two (but mot all) dialects - and creating a new ‘dialect’ that bore only passing resemblance to the varieties of the language actually spoken by the native speakers. A similar thing happened with Italian. But, as everyone spoke their own dialect, the Italians learned a new standard dialect, used for government communications, and it can be used to communicate with each other and with foreigners. But in Ireland, where the vast majority of the population, now spoke English, and had to learn their national language as a second language, often from teachers who barely new it themselves. This has resulted in a majority of (non-native) speakers who only know and speak the official ‘written’ language - without the contractions and elision used in the ‘Gaeltacht’ (Irish-speaking communities). The Irish people who learned the language at school have little understanding of how the language actually works at a phonic level, and have difficulty understanding the native speakers on the West Coast. The native speakers can understand the official standard, of course, but to them, many non-native speakers are so halting and precise in their enunciation that they sometimes sound like they are scolding (or spanking) children. 😆

[@weopdurdegenes6598]

Doctor House is teaching me languages

[@derred723]

i totally realized this difference in casual speech when i was trying to explain english to a non native speaker and realized how hard it would be to deal with all the slang and how people dont' fully pronounce words and speak in fragments. I have been a huge hip-hop fan and a part of the culture most of my life. We used to create new slang all the time. Plus some was regional.

[@jvphilip]

Need more of this! ❤

[@chrisbeale100]

Interesting quirk of Lingopie is if you grab text from a Netflix show you can't reply the video in the flashcards, just the audio for the single word you selected. I'm also watching Call My Agent (love!!) and I was confused as to why I couldn't loop the video as you did with 'Je suis pauvre'. So I assume that came from a video within Lingopie rather than Netflix. I wish I could do it with Call My Agent. Please let me know if I've missed something! Anyway, I don't know if you noticed this. Love your work! 😀

[@hglundahl]

5:53 It would probably be spelled "ch'uis" but it shocked me it was more pronounced like "chu" ...

[@lynette365247]

I love the detailed breakdown. Thanks

[@marktubbs8033]

Great video. Extremely helpful!

[@sambeawesome]

This is similar to when I'm making guesses for kanji reading in Japanese. Each character can have multiple ways of being read, but I've found if I speak the options out loud, like 90% of the time, the one that rolls off the tongue easier is the correct reading of the kanji. Humans crave convenience, we'll shorten, slang, slur, and blend everything we can when we can. English does this a ton as well, we drop or squish together a LOT of stuff when speaking. It's pretty neat once you can start to pick up on it :)

[@bryan143]

Love the detailed explanations. Interesting stuff.

[@ekmatteau]

"Chui"? Come to Québec, we only say "Chu" over here. OK, there's a lot of things we say differently over here. Anyway, very nice video!

[@DJ-nw2ef]

I have made heavy use of the Basic Spanish Course from the U.S. Foreign Service Institute, which was developed over sixty years ago, and which is more than a little old-fashioned in some respects. However, the course does use a fairly precise phonetic notation for transcribing many thousands of the sentences in the course. This notation is not IPA, but is very similar, and with much the same utility and precision. Also, the speakers in the recordings are using somewhat casual pronunciation, and they are speaking at normal conversational speed, as opposed to slowing down and over-articulating to make it easy for students, which many courses (mistakenly) do. So, unlike most language courses that I've seen, this course does do quite a decent job of preparing students to deal with casual conversation, because the phonetic transcriptions do give quite an accurate representation of the contractions and other changes that actually occur in less formal speech. In other words, the phonetic transcription gives a very nice bridge between the spoken forms and the conventional written forms. It still takes a very long time to fully master the spoken forms, but at least with this course you know very precisely what you should be trying to do.

[@B_g651]

I'm learning ASL. No speaking at all. I'm struggling with finger spelling because some words don't have an actual sign for it. My brain knows how to spell a word in English but in asl i struggle even though i have all the alphabet figured out.

[@BanaiFeldstein]

My problem with they speak too fast is that most language learning is: here is a sentence in English, say it in the other language. My brain can't translate words I wasn't expecting fast enough to understand them.

[@VinlandAlchemist]

More detailed descriptions like this, yes, please! 😊

[@languagejones6784]

You got it!

[@strabe]

Definitely more like this! Thank you.