WEAK FORMS: Why 'natives' and 'non-natives' sound different

[@Robert6P6M]

Stop that, you're making me think about how I talk, aaaaaaaaa

[@RooseveltCoopling]

hahaha! Meta-linguistics at its best!

[@BigFatWow]

You mean əəəəəəəəəə

[@astronemir]

This is really messing with my head today.

[@paper2222]

@@BigFatWowəːːːːːːːːːːːː

[@tomasbeltran04050]

​@@paper2222😂

[@timothynoll4886]

Lightbulb moment: that's why stereotypical AI voices sound so cold and robotic to us. They're not weakening certain words! I love this channel!

[@sirrathersplendid4825]

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

[@jonathangammond3019]

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

[@sirrathersplendid4825]

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

[@cosmosisrose]

@@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

[@ijustdocomments6777]

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

[@nothingEvil101]

To me as a German it’s pretty funny that your demonstration of pronouncing everything clear and strong sounded exactly like many Germans sound when speaking English

[@rogernichols1124]

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).

[@nothingEvil101]

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

[@timothy790110]

And exaclty like Swedish people speaking English

[@WGGplant]

@@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.

[@nigeh5326]

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

[@stephenmoylan7384]

This is just as educational for a native speaker.

[@murdo_mck]

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.

[@danielpitts6913]

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.

[@nunyabeezwacks1408]

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

[@medusa210562]

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

[@ruslbicycle6006]

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.

[@CitizenMio]

I find it extremely funny that in Dutch schools we are taught to distinctly pronounce "tHe" and "anD" to differentiate them from our own "de" and "en". Only to learn that natives shorten them most of the time and make them sound exactly like ours. Love how the two languages still share so many similarities even today.

[@sirrathersplendid4825]

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”.

[@geroutathat]

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.

[@cephalosjr.1835]

@@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.

[@geroutathat]

@@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

[@Kromiball]

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

[@AidanXavier1]

"Let's listen to Dame Judy Dench-" Okay very formal "Reciting Shakespeare-" Oh Very formal "To a large public audience-" Could this get any better? "In a church." Omg it got better

[@BD-yl5mh]

I’m a native speaker but was very interested by the example of “that that.” It always looks so wrong when written and if I ever do write it I tend to try and rephrase to avoid it. But I forget just how natural it is to say, and this was a great little demonstration of how English speakers subconsciously differentiate the two words as they say them so that the doubling up of the word isn’t so jarring. Very cool

[@ozymandeez]

normally i just use quotes

[@DadgeCity]

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.

[@TheGriffintatt]

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.

[@TheJasonbking]

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.

[@BD-yl5mh]

@@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

[@Acrolvm]

I think this also plays into why text to speech ends up sounding so stilted. Oftentimes it doesn't use weak form so everything just comes across as odd. Great video!

[@scintillam_dei]

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.

[@LastChanceHere]

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

[@alanjameson8664]

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.

[@CRT_sRGB]

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!

[@lacunalshadow]

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..

[@ianbruce6515]

A friend of mine when I was a kid had a very bad stammer. He received intensive training by a speech therapist, and lost his stammer--but then he ununciated so very perfectly that he sounded very weird to us eight year olds! He was speaking what used to be called 'BBC English'. Something we only heard on the radio. It made him sound old. It was beautiful to hear him speak--but very disconcerting.

[@lynnebattaglia-triggs1042]

Enunciated

[@georgeprout42]

As a native speaker and (ex) technical trainer this was fascinating. I now realise why my (non-native speaking) students suddenly understood when I repeated something very technical but slower. It wasn't the fact that I slowed it down, it was that by doing so I wasn't using the weak forms that otherwise came out so naturally and the last bit of your video was exactly how I'd have sounded.

[@johanponken]

@@subliminal_donkey 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.

[@chaos.corner]

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

[@chaos.corner]

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

[@RadicalCaveman]

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

[@GuildensternTube]

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

[@Barsookmik]

My beloved first English teacher taught me this and even as a child I was told by natives that I don’t sound like a foreigner. She didn’t explain this to me in details but simply trained me to link the words into one (the way you demonstrate in this video). She trained me to speak fast and I naturally started linking words and reducing the sounds that need to be reduced. I didn’t realise it, but I also speak with this Shwa sound, where necessary. I guess that’s why I’ve always received compliments on my pronunciation. My teacher passed away more than 10 years ago and I’m still fascinated by her

[@timschulze4162]

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 🤓

[@SpiffyPenguin]

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!

[@susie9893]

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)

[@tonycrayford3893]

​@@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.

[@goldilocks913]

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

[@Sponska]

Funnily, I am a non-native and this video made me realize that I‘ve been using weak forms all along. Since I learned English mostly through English media and not textbooks, I seem to have adapted the way of speaking unconsciously. Very fascinating video, thank you!

[@PC_Simo]

Same here. Regards from Finland 🇫🇮!

[@Brandanus]

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.

[@becnal]

Linguistic adaptation.

[@joeharris2659]

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.

[@Uselessansatz57]

@@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.

[@LincolnDWard]

I was trying to tell my parents about the difference between "that" and "that," but they didn't believe me that it was a real thing - they thought I was just formalizing my own "incorrect" or "sloppy" pronunciation. I'll have to show them this video!

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Please tell us what their reaction is!

[@crazybob75]

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

[@ShizuruNakatsu]

I always knew that that was a thing.

[@liveuser8527]

@@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.

[@janeblogs324]

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

[@SamPeabody]

I took Spanish in high school, plus one semester in college. The college class was very focused on verbal fluency. This reminds me of when the college professor told us “you don’t speak in words, you speak in phrases.” He demonstrated that we needed to stop enunciating every word on its own, and instead blend them together, which I think is mostly about de-emphasizing those weak forms you were talking about.

[@mackiexoxo8193]

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.

[@elsacacaca9033]

@@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

[@mackiexoxo8193]

@@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.

[@scintillam_dei]

@@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.

[@erynwald2164]

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!

[@SallySueSaywhatagain]

As a native (American) English speaker, I'm endlessly fascinated by all the weird little quirks of English that I was never taught because that's just how talking sounds, and it doesn't come up in grammar class, and this is a really cool little quirk! Thanks for teaching me a thing about my own native language!!

[@MsJavaWolf]

As a German who interacts with English more through text than speaking this has been really eye opening. I have been using some of those weak forms sometimes, but I realized I still over pronounce many words.

[@devenscience8894]

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.

[@julianmorrisco]

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.

[@martijn9568]

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

[@PrimeCircuit]

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.

[@mckenziekeith7434]

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.

[@trickygoose2]

The fact that these generally short words are so often pronounced in the weak form makes them quite powerful when they are spoken in full for emphasis. Such as stressing "can" for motivation "we CAN do this", "and" to show how much you have done "I've cleaned the kitchen floor AND I washed the car" or "that" to show disdain "look at the state of THAT".

[@SlavicCelery]

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.

[@henrykramer365]

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

[@lindaweaving8917]

Excellent point!

[@Arkylie]

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.

[@beetheimmortal]

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.

[@echopapacharlie]

The past 35 of my 50 years of life so far, I have been learning and speaking English. Today it's the first time I have even heard of the term "weak form." Now I see I am already speaking the "weak form" in some words but not others. The learning continues. Thank you.

[@tovarishchfeixiao]

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.

[@elenna_alexia]

As a non-native speaker I've never paid much attention to this and so now I'm trying to figure out where I use weak forms. I probably don't do it quite as consistently as a native speaker would, but it sounds quite unnatural to me not to use them at all.

[@redsalmon9966]

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

[@monad_tcp]

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

[@RadicalCaveman]

@@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.

[@Censeo]

@@RadicalCaveman it's not about time preassure really. It's about communication with the least effort to move your tongue and lips without being misunderstood. The written word gives hints to how english once were spoken. The "k" in knight and knot were used in speach, but it disappeared because nobody got confused when they sounded like not and night

[@BramLastname]

It depends how you learned the language. If you watched more British media than language exercises, You'll be used to hearing these weak forms. However language training will emphasize the strong forms, So you'll end up sounding like a robot.

[@VilmaHallikas]

"Surely there must be someone who can pronounce the Queen's English properly, like it's written?" This part made me chuckle as a Finn since we literally pronounce words like they're written which usually makes our english sound funny.

[@Noswiatel]

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.

[@angiebee2225]

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".

[@evilotis01]

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

[@janeblogs324]

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

[@horsepuncher95]

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

[@LaGabs86]

As a non-native English speaker, I found very challenging discerning the weak forms in the examples with so many short pauses. I think we could learn to spot the nuances in pronunciation after listening to the full clip, at least in some of your examples. Just a suggestion. Keep up the good work

[@lydieparmas357]

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 :))

[@mnsegler1]

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!

[@victorroque5667]

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

[@Serena-or7sl]

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

[@RickJaeger]

Cry about it

[@anonymouscrank]

Stephen Fry's ability to sound "conversational" as he's reading copy is remarkable.

[@RhythmAddictedState]

Truly the king of phonetics

[@wangxianbb]

love listening to any audiobook hes read

[@givemeabreak432]

This is a phenomenal video. I've been telling people for years that, in English, the "filler" words are kind of slurred, unemphasized. Often times I'll use Spanish as a counter example, where each word gets equal emphasis. It's nice to see it more plainly and formally written. Also, was not expecting the Final Fantasy victory fanfare.

[@MerkhVision]

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.

[@scintillam_dei]

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

[@katierasburn9571]

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

[@annakermode6646]

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

[@scintillam_dei]

@@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.

[@Rondo2ooo]

As a foreigner with a strong accent, I'll be looking for exercises to use weakened forms. You should never stop improving your skills. Thank you so much for these enlightening insides.

[@moritamikamikara3879]

As a native speaker, this was really eye opening. It sheds a lot of light on this strange behaviour we have of repeating ourselves to foreigners who don't understand us. We're switching to the stronger forms of these words because foreigners learning English are more likely to understand us if we use the sounds they use, even if the language is still entirely ours

[@MsMinoula]

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

[@evilotis01]

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.

[@bmolitor615]

I coached a Korean guy on this but I did term it a casual action, specifically "lazy mouth", all the vowels slumping into "uh"... he was fascinated - dunno if we got very far in him actually generating it himself, but I think it helped in listening comprehension...

[@abnab4134]

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.

[@MayaSharky]

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

[@hijodelaisla275]

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

[@zompired2998]

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

[@hijodelaisla275]

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

[@jlpack62]

Even as a native speaker (American), I find these videos incredibly fascinating, and they result in me having an increased appreciation for the effort learners of the language have to face.

[@garrysmith1029]

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

[@papadopp3870]

@@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!

[@veggiet2009]

I realize this is an old video, but I wish we'd heard the queen's line and hiddleston's delivery in full before going back and pausing to pay attention to the words. Good video, I am a native speaker of American English but I'm fascinated by individual accents. I'd almost as soon learn a new accent as I would like to learn a new language.

[@wsudance85]

I often refer to this as deliberate speech to my students. We tend to over enunciate every sound and use a monotone voice when we try to restate a word that someone doesn't understand, but for non-natives this can be very confusing, so I always try to speak with the same pronunciation that I normally use only at a slower speed.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

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.

[@nathanlonghair]

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.” 😅

[@wsudance85]

@@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 😂

[@michellebyrom6551]

@@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.

[@scintillam_dei]

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.

[@lillycastitatis6807]

SO MUCH SCHWA! When I finally realised just how much it occurs in English, my accent improved tenfold! Also, thank you for the little demonstration of the schwas in your own speech by the end of the video! It was extremely helpful!

[@johnpmchappell]

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

[@bnic9471]

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.

[@RTU130]

👍

[@JackPeterBentley]

Absolutely brilliant. I taught English at a Chinese school for a while (not very successfully, I was pretty underqualified and undertrained). I taught this without as much understanding of it and with pretty shaley lesson plans but it was the most influential lesson I taught and the kids loved it. They felt like they sounded English and surprised each other. Excellent concept to pick up on so thank you for this brilliant video. I expect I'll be coming back to it a lot.

[@jenrosejenrose7417]

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

[@B0K1T0]

@@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.

[@woodfur00]

@@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/.)

[@bacicinvatteneaca]

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

[@katharina...]

0:20 "Many just don't believe it." This is so true. I'm Polish, living in Ireland and apparently I speak with a very slight accent. Many Irish people think that this is some regional Irish accent. Years ago, when I tried to teach some Polish friends how to pronounce certain words, to make them sound more native, they genuinely didn't believe me. They said that there's no way you could just skip half of the letters in a word, and still be understood, this concept seemed ridiculous to them 😁

[@mattybrunolucaszeneresalas9072]

Did you give them examples in your native language?

[@anyascelticcreations]

I noticed this about French, too. You can't possibly speak French at a normal conversational speed if you pronounce everything. It seems to me that most of French is blended together. As a native English speaker who has mostly learned French from recorded lessons, I can understand very little that is spoken at a normal speed by native French speakers. Because, except for specific phrases, I learned the words pronounced fully. I would imagine that must be how non-native English speakers feel when they listen to native English speakers' speach. Because realistically we blend together and deemphasize a lot of our words. Edit: I should add that I don't actually speak French well. I know a little, but really very little of what's said in real life.

[@roxane1237]

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

[@anyascelticcreations]

@@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.

[@gayusschwulius8490]

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".

[@aegrant100]

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!

[@anyascelticcreations]

@@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.

[@GippyHappy]

The dinging sound during the Tom Hiddleston reading is making my brain thinking it's censoring out something and Mr. Hiddleston is cursing like a sailor.

[@yawenmo7774]

I think this feature is at least part of the reason why English is a stress timed language. Those not-so-important vowels got reduced. I believe Russian also share this feature. I’m from China and a syllable in Mandarin Chinese is strictly one consonant followed by one vowel, and when we speak, we generally give each syllable equal stress. And many of us brought this habit to when we speak English, and some even add vowels to syllables that end in consonants when we speak English, and this created the stereotypical Chinese accent. Luckily I somehow unknowingly overcame this. Although one weakness or inconsistency in my speaking is that I tend to mix British and American pronunciations in one sentence. I lived in the states for three years and I was made fun of when they heard me pronouncing the word “homage” the British way 😂😂

[@Yanchi_YT]

As a non-native speaker living in the UK for almost 15 years, this video randomly appearing in my recommendations lead to one of my fastest insta-subscribes.

[@williamgrosbach4237]

I'm always pleased, and often surprised, when I hear someone explain English as native speakers actually use it, rather than as someone thinks they should. This is especially true when the explanation is directed at people learning English or others who are not native speakers.

[@spamspam541]

Native speakers of many languages used simplified pronounciation when speaking normally which makes it even more frustrating when you ask them how to pronounce a certain word and they give you the textbook version only to say about half of it in their normal speech. Learners should be taught they should be as relaxed as possible while speaking.

[@sakuraheony]

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

[@scintillam_dei]

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.

[@wasmic5z]

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.

[@pinguman13]

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

[@tinnagigja3723]

Top tip: This is why it's easier to speak a foreign language when slightly drunk.

[@Puzzles-Pins]

I immediately understood and recognized everything he talked about, but as a native speaker of American English, I'd never really thought about it like this before. Really interesting to see it dissected.

[@mjsaedy6637]

The final few sentences (the telegraphic speech) were awesome. I always tell my students that stressing every vowel makes them sound like robots.

[@zlcoolboy]

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.

[@scintillam_dei]

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.

[@sarac.3259]

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

[@scintillam_dei]

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

[@seriouscat2231]

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

[@roarpar]

I was raised in the U.S. and as far as I knew, I was a "native" English speaker. I was taught how to speak Marathi at home, Spanish at school; I taught myself Hindi/Urdu. One thing that always stumps me at the beginning is understanding the flow that a native speaker has in common parlance. It never occurred to me that the same level of scrutiny toward flow and pronunciation exists in English too!

[@奇興好哲宙]

As an Indonesian, I find it difficult to reduce syllables to the schwa, which I believe it's because /ə/ is a phonemic sound in Indonesian, as in, words will change their core meaning based on the usage or non-usage of the schwa. Though, in casual speech, some words can have a syllable reduced to schwa (a minority). For example, teman /təman/ (friend) and taman /taman/ (park). We can reduce /təman/ into /təmən/ in casual speech, but (at least where I live) /taman/ can't be reduced. To be honest, when I first began learning English phonetics and IPA, I was kinda surprised that /ə/ is not a phonemic sound.

[@oirandochu]

This is gold. As a non-native speaker I just realised that I use weak forms like a native speaker and I‘m proud of myself as hell. 😅

[@w花b]

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.

[@thelightshineth8848]

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 😁)

[@Paul2377]

I'm a native English speaker, so I watched this more out of interest than anything else. It's pretty illuminating as I didn't even realise I spoke like that till it was pointed out. I suppose it's hard for a non-native speaker to learn and use weak forms, because they might apply them in areas where they wouldn't be used by a native speaker, thus leading to confusion.

[@hijodelaisla275]

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.

[@nikolaisedov2295]

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.

[@XLTBlarg]

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.

[@hijodelaisla275]

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

[@cheval63sg]

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

[@kebman]

I spoke to an English gent abroad once. He told me that I speak very well English!

[@fairekennings2347]

the biggest problem in using schwa's for me as for a non-native speaker is that I don't think in English so quick yet 😅 longer versions of words = more time to think

[@itskarl7575]

I find that the best way to learn pronunciation is to learn the melody and rhythm of the language. Once that's in place, it is easier to avoid stumbling over consonants, and vowels start to assume their right shape. So long as you stick with your native inflection, your mind will want to form syllables the way you're used to forming them. You are not a master of your craft until you know the short cuts, and the short cuts should be second nature. Every language has them, but the only way to pull them off convincingly is for them to happen naturally. And that follows from the flow of the language.

[@nicolesong6199]

Nice

[@scintillam_dei]

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.

[@richardnedbalek1968]

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

[@robscovell5951]

💯💯💯

[@robscovell5951]

Escaping the intonation of your mother tongue is very difficult and it especially interferes if you are learning a tonal language.

[@MyBelch]

Nice vid. I've lived abroad for more than 30 years and always slow down and weaken nothing when talking to marginal-English speakers. They always thank me.

[@coryjorgensen622]

As a native speaker, I had never thought about this. Excellent and enlightening!

[@prdoyle]

Native speaker here (from Canada). I really did not notice most of the weakening until you pointed it out! I can confirm that the examples you gave sound quite formal to me.

[@And3aPet]

I think this phenomenon is what makes it so hard to converse in foreign languages. I’ve been studying French and getting more fluent, but native speakers often throw me by swallowing (or weakening) certain small but important words. I’m sure I do this in English all the time!

[@FoxCitrus]

As a non-native English teacher, I find this is extremely useful! Thank you in particular for the examples with visuals.

[@77hodag]

I think that’s what makes written dialog so interesting - it’s a real trick to make scripted words sound natural because in real life we slur & mash our words so much it would be boring & dull, & normally we don’t even notice it.

[@rg3412]

First time I’m hearing about this weak form stuff in my twenty plus years in America. Thank you, I think I’m about to have a breakthrough in my ability to be understood.

[@valq10]

Stress and rhythm is very important in English in general and I've noticed as a native speaker, when speaking with non-natives, that this often isn't taught to people. For example, I remember trying to understand what my French-speaking uni housemate was asking for one time. Took me seven goes, and his English was good enough to be studing medicine at an English university. Turned out, he was placing stress at the end where you would in French: vacc-UM clean-ER. When in English it has to be VACC-um CLEAN-er. It's very hard to undertsand English if the stress is not correct, and can change the meaning entirely. My favourite example: com-BINE means to mix, a COM-bine is a kind of tractor.

[@kerrymartin7557]

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

[@tonycrayford3893]

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

[@peterc.1618]

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

[@cattymajiv]

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

[@huskytail]

I am Bulgarian and we not only reduce sounds but also use shwa quite a lot. We even have a letter for it "ъ". What we were taught in school as British English pronunciation though, was to not use shwa but less reduced vowels. I am glad I found your video. It makes it that much easier for me 😆

[@jameshitselberger5845]

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

[@Elderon37]

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!

[@huskytail]

@@Elderon37 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.

[@phantasmagore7991]

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

[@awlonghurst]

Wow! I have learnt so much about the English language in watching 3 of your videos than I learnt in years at school. I'm saying this as a middle aged native English speaker. Amazing. Thank you.

[@HyphenatedHistoryUK]

Stress-timed language! As a native speaker my mind was blown when I discovered this, and went through a brief phase where I couldn’t un-notice it. Thank you for this video!

[@Thereal_prettyinblack]

I took my first lesson of English at 12, now 44 and living in the UK for 16 years. I wish I could speak to someone like this gentleman and learn about how am I doing. People say I sound foreign but they can't tell where I'm from. And I'm Polish. Somehow, I lost central European hard accent and made myself the citizen of the world. 😄

[@stephaniecarrow4898]

Illuminating! As an American who's always been fascinated with both the English language and speech patterns, you've made me aware of aspects of my own speech I was totally unaware of! I now realize that I also pronounce "to" differently, depending upon whether it precedes a word beginning with a vowel or consonant. However, I always pronounce both "thats" in "that that" with almost equal strength.

[@QHiguchi]

Great stuff, in an increasingly well-produced video! The demonstration of not using weak forms (towards the end) is hilariously effective. I have always thought weak forms of English would automatically follow (in most cases) from the general rhythmic patterns of English, which are so obvious - and yet so elusive. Which means: we need more of these informative & entertaining videos! Thank you.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

I'm glad you liked it!

[@tarren452]

As others have said, as a native speaker (and who studied a degree in English Lit 😳) this is so fascinating and something I was never aware of before today, let alone having the technical terms to talk about it! Thank you for a brilliant video! 👏

[@SteveSilverActor]

I'm an adult ESL instructor, and I start teaching reduction to high beginners because it greatly improves their liatening comprehension of native soeakers. I also give them an overview of the general rules of stress in English and how it's closely related to vowel reduction. They don't need to produce it until they are in the advanced stages, but understanding it at the earlier stages makes it much easier to understand native speakers. I also use Rosie the Riveter's, "We can do it!" with Obama's "Yes, we can," to illustrate the weak and strong forms of "can" and how "can" always has to be strong if it ends a phrase or sentence. Also, "I have to fish," and, "I have two fish" illustrates stress and vowel reduction quite nicely along with the difference in pronunciation with "have" when combined with "to".

[@Hertog_von_Berkshire]

Yes, many non-native English speakers do what I call "overpronounce", but there is hope. I once met a German chap in his twenties who had spent a couple of years living and working in Essex. His spoken English was indistinguishable from native Essex. He's the one and only German I have ever (knowingly) met, to achieve this feat.

[@harbor.boundary.flight]

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

[@missano3856]

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.

[@lisas9123]

poor guy. did he recover?

[@Hertog_von_Berkshire]

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

[@SteelJM1]

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.

[@nahuelma97]

Loved this. I guess I understand now that part of what made me sound like a native to American customers over the phone even though I've never set foot there is how much I assimilated their weak forms into my speech patterns. There's also a lot to say regarding how much those weak forms can end up circling back to writing and modifying the way we even write stuff, either by creating deformed versions of the word, like how _'cause_ as a shortening of _because_ ended up being simply _cuz_ , or in the case of the omission of the "I" in sentences that would normally start with it. Saying "Just wanted to check..." or "Simply wanted to let you know..." without the "I", for example. I just love when you can pinpoint how a language is evolving around you

[@jessieo3351]

As a native English speaker, I'm so grateful for this! I'm struggling to learn another language and this is the sort if thing that is hanging me up.

[@jerrytracey6602]

Fascinating stuff. I remember doing some oral work in a language booth during my O Level French course, and the teacher came through my headphones. He sounded like he was chuckling a bit, and I soon found out why: I had been pronouncing "de la" as two separate words, and he helped my out by suggesting that I run them together, as "dluh", like we would in English, and this is very much the French equivalent of the Weak form being discussed here.

[@paranoidrodent]

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.

[@NaouakNawak]

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".

[@paranoidrodent]

@@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.

[@mjwemdee]

@@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.

[@Neotenico]

A similar parallel for me when I was learning Japanese is how in speech, the "U" or "I" vowel sound of a syllable is often weakened or even omitted between specific sequences of consonants. For example, the past tense of the verb *suru* which means "do" is *shimashita* , or *shita* in informal speech. In both cases, the vowel in the second to last syllable (shi) is almost always dropped, so it sounds like "shta." A really interesting case of this is in the English word "rickshaw" (a cart pulled by a human) which is derived from phoneticizing the Japanese word " *rikisha* ". The vowel in the second syllable is so consistently dropped by native Japanese speakers that the English spelling omits it entirely. Fortunately, these omissions are much more consistent than the weakening of words in English, so good pronunciation is a much easier skill to develop.

[@burt2800]

I'm a so-called continental English speaker, learnt it from my English dad growing up in Switzerland. I've been told by English speaker that I sound English but have a slight German accent. Now I know why; I often fail to use the weak forms! Fortunately, spending more time around English mates, i.e. drinking together, has helped correct that.

[@dougsundseth6904]

When I'm working on a language that is not my own, I like to watch KZbin videos in large part to see this in action. In videos intended for native speakers, most KZbin channels use a very conversational style, which can be helpful to acclimatize yourself to a native rhythm of speech in a way that is quite difficult with most spoken language intended for teaching. When you add in the ability to slow down the speech and often to also add subtitles, it's a brilliant tool for learners.

[@kaciewolverton2692]

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.

[@poisondartfroggify]

Your videos are an absolute delight, especially 1) your use of humor and 2) the varied ways in which you present your examples!

[@tengouku]

As an non-native speaker, I found this video mind-blowing! I start to notice all the weak forms and try to copy them into my own pronunciation. Thank you so much!

[@mamaani8350]

Loved this. As a Native Speaker, I didn't even think about it, but when you explained each one I immediately noticed it in how I speak and others speak around me. It's so natural to us as it's how we learn it, through hearing others use it. But without weak forms, yes, the difference is very obvious and makes it clear someone is a non native speaker, even if they have no other traits of it.

[@williamc6564]

Emma Peel ( the late Dame Diana Rigg) was another inspiration in the way she delivered her speech. I loved the way she began sentences with the word And. She said it with authority and skill. Listen out for it in the Avengers scripts with Steed.

[@aarondyer.pianist]

Really helpful, thank you! And I giggled the whole time at all the stops and starts.

[@luckyluckydog123]

wonderfully explained, as usual. KZbin has a new king of phonetics!

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Very kind! Thank you!

[@patrickmulder2450]

Not a native speaker, but I have noticed this. The end kind of proofs why it makes computer voices sound so unnatural. Those pronounce all words strong. thanks for giving me the words to describe this phenomenon! Today I learned...

[@catedoge3206]

Moved to California at 16 in 2016. It was fascinating listening to my classmates and teacher speak english completely different from the ones I've been taught and learned.

[@palikariatl]

FANTASTIC video! As a multilingual native speaker of American English. It is so sad that the schwa is not taught to students of English. I am also a fluent speaker and teacher of Spanish, who is often mistaken for a native speaker. It is because I have learned such secrets of the Spanish language, as the English secrets you teach here. (For example: the normal/general pronunciation of d in Spanish is ð (eth): ciudad = ciuðað; Madrid = Maðrið; madre = maðre. Only at the beginning of a word and after the leters n and l, is a Spanish d pronounced like an English d. Most students of Spanish are not taught this!

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

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

[@jpt3640]

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 ;)

[@Egilhelmson]

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. (-:

[@jpt3640]

@@Egilhelmson exactly ;)

[@palikariatl]

@@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.

[@MohamadAlb]

As an Arab who’s a fluent English speaker learning French and having an interest in linguistics, I never realized how common reducing vowels was in English. It’s pretty obvious in French, thanks to the extreme differences between its written and spoken forms (both informal and formal). I suppose having been taught how to speak English mostly due to watching American TV, it became second nature to speak it more naturally and consequently expect it to sound more “flow-y” as well.

[@DocEtan]

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

[@MohamadAlb]

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

[@BeetleBuns]

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

[@MohamadAlb]

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

[@BeetleBuns]

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

[@Frostbiker]

Some years ago I had a sort of a linguistic epiphany when I realized how restrained or subdued were some common words as spoken by native speakers. I began emulating that speech pattern from that point on and only now I've learned what it's called. Hooray, validation! It's wasn't just in my head!

[@johnmunozvo665]

I think those word are weak because we tend to focus on the important words that have meaning. Very well done! First mistake we do a second language speakers is to overly focus on connectors and articles.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

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.

[@paranoidrodent]

As a native speaker of both English and French, I find this fascinating because French has a similar phenomenon to English weak forms in natural speech but in French its thought of as contracting and letter dropping. My own Canadian dialects of both languages use a lot of weak forms and contractions/letter dropping and it's quite obvious when someone isn't a native speaker (or is speaking with a foreign but native accent - a few American accents like Northern California are trickier to pick out in English).

[@WolfgangDoW]

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

[@tookitogo]

@@WolfgangDoW 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”.

[@phantomkate6]

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.

[@paranoidrodent]

@@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).

[@phantomkate6]

@@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." 🤣

[@KoenigFranz]

Thank you very much. As a German I laughed tears upon your spelled greatings at the end of the clip. Very nice.. I'll try weaken ....

[@BariumCobaltNitrog3n]

By softening the connecting words, more significance can be placed on the words being connected, with clarity, tone and volume. Tom's pacing in the poem is beautiful, going from 3 quick beats to a clear, slow gem of a word.

[@thelightshineth8848]

Yeah this is a big part of why a lot of native speakers have trouble understanding non-native speakers... Too much emphasize on consonants and rigid pronunciation, which at least in American English we tend to soften quite a lot. All those extra over-pronounced syllables, filler words and hard consonants add a lot of clutter and noise that makes it more difficult to quickly understand the important parts. When everything is accentuated, nothing is accentuated!

[@BariumCobaltNitrog3n]

@@thelightshineth8848 Yes! Exactly. We may get meaning from the words, but I think we get significance from tempo and volume, the silence between the beats.

[@Mijzelffan]

It's funny how as a Dutch native this comes a lot more natural to me, as we do this in Dutch too, especially dialects from the major cities. The plural form of all our verbs end in -en, but in everyday conversation that -n is often dropped or weakened

[@NormanStansfield1]

Two of my favorite English actors with incredible speaking voices and diction are Mark Strong and Charles Dance. Mark's mother was Austrian and his dad was Italian. The father abandonded the family when he was a baby. Mark and Charles Dance were in the 2014 movie The Imitation Game. Mark also made a Jaguar commercial with Ben Kingsley and Tom Huddleston focusing on their English speaking voices. I would love for Dr. Lindsey to try to explain the upper class affectations like sniffing and stuttering by actors like Sir John Gielgud.

[@notanotherpyro]

I sort of stumbled into this, I play DnD and realized that one of the easiest ways to make a character sound like "common" isn't their native tongue is to place emphasis on words like and and the. Also stuff like not using conjunctions can help create a sort of stilted feel. Great to have the reason for why it works.

[@liliyakladkova-roy1172]

The same process in the Russian language is called "vowel reduction". It always gives non-Russian speakers/learners a lot of trouble because when they learn words, they usually learn the spelling (visual) and then they have hard time understanding spoken speech as it sounds nothing like the spelling.

[@jeffkardosjr.3825]

People often don't get how Х is used.

[@LunaJorgensen]

Fantastic explanation! For the longest time, I really needed subtitles to 'hear' the English spoken in British shows, and now I'm happy to say I need it far less (sound effects overwhelming speech and soft-spoken people kind thwart my attempts at going truly subtitles free). I'm a native Canadian French speaker, so the English I learned was the US' Midwestern Flat. Oh, and no one ever really taught me subject-verb agreement, so there's that little issue I have still.

[@MM-jf1me]

Very interesting video! As a native speaker I hadn't been taught or noticed these differences much before, but they're really obvious now that you've pointed them out. I'm also enjoying reading through all the conversations in the comments. I'm learning so much! This is the first video of yours I've watched; I'm looking forward to watching more of your work.

[@pdsnpsnldlqnop3330]

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.

[@MM-jf1me]

@@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.

[@pdsnpsnldlqnop3330]

@@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.

[@LeSpeederus]

Sometime during my teens i started learning english from the internet. Honesty, listening to native KZbinrs and imitating their way of speaking has helped my so much more than english classes aver could've.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

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

[@scintillam_dei]

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!

[@relax_enjoy_English]

Thanks so much. I am an RP Brit, teach EFL and have a regular flow of high-level students mystified when they have to deal with Brits speaking fast in business contexts. If you haven't done this already, it would be nice to see something from you about how we Brits can help non-natives understand us in business/international contexts if we just slowed down and spoke more clearly. The effort for us to do this is usually a fraction of the effort that non-natives have to put in to decode our difficult speech and shows a healthy level of intercultural awareness that can only be positive for our relations. Best wishes and thanks so much for the channel.

[@banderasz1185]

Hi, professor! At uni, it was our homework to watch this video of yours and you explained the issue in a very clear and helpful way. I got motivated to watch your other videos, too, as the titles seemed interesting. And you've got a great channel! Keep up the good work. :)

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Thank you! Which uni is this?

[@banderasz1185]

Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

@@banderasz1185 Thanks!

[@alejandromartinezmontes6700]

Great video! I start with weak forms from day one with my students; it's much easier to learn it from the beginning than unlearn use of strong forms. can /kən/ is particularly Important compared to negative /kænt/ (or /ɑː/ haha) which is often /kæn(ʔ)/. I generally present word stress at the phrasal level in three categories based on how predictable the word is, function words are weak stress, content words, negatives, and the final word of a phrase are all normal stress, and emphatic stress is used for intensifiers, like the prolonged "really" and "very" you often hear or an extreme adjective like "freezing" in "It's freezing, today".

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Good work!

[@shiraloli]

FF celebratory music caught me off guard 😂🎉 great addition! No, where can I hear Tom reading that again?

[@nirmalsuki]

When you speak like a native in an elocution exam in a foreign country, you get marked down.

[@alalalala57]

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.

[@R2Bl3nd]

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 KZbin 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.

[@scintillam_dei]

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.

[@Serenity_yt]

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.

[@scintillam_dei]

@@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.

[@zielonamalpa]

I'm Polish and started learning English in primary school. Sometime in highschool I started watching a lot of tv series, first with subtitles and later without them. I quickly learned a lot more that what I was able at school. I was able to understand both american and british English. I think that not having native speakers as teachers is slowing down the learning process a lot, because in conversations we expect the words to sound "as they are written" or as the teacher is pronouncing them, which often is very "hard". Nice to be finally able to understand why even with many efforts I sound different than native speakers. PS. I learned German as a small child and when I use this language more often I can pass as native speaker. But I learned it from TV and from my grandpa, not at school. So the process was different.

[@Woodman-Spare-that-tree]

😂. I can tell you’re learning American English! In British English we say “different FROM”, not ‘different than”.

[@TheCWMHALL]

Please note most of the TV newscasters today have a poor command of grammatical English , for that reason I do not have a television .

[@peterc.1618]

@@Woodman-Spare-that-tree Yes, but for how much longer. 'Guess' has now almost completely replaced 'suppose' and 'different than' is rapidly gaining ground (despite not making sense).

[@raphaellasne3609]

Very hear-opening. As a French, I struggle a lot to find a way to sound more like a native English speaker.

[@timhartnell2472]

I’ve only just found this, but it’s fascinating. As someone with little technical understanding, but a professional listening ear as dialogue editor, I’ve often found myself looking NOT for little clips of the same word to cover edits, but often a completely different word (or part word) with the sound that fits in the new edited sentence construction. Also, I’m always dropping the ‘d’ off the end of ‘and’ when closing gaps in sentences… it’s something that I instinctively do because it just sounds right. Occasionally there are edits which defeat me, but most of the time it’s more about editing the sounds and rhythm, than the ‘words’.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

I think many editors have a better understanding of the realities of speech than many phoneticians who are stuck in the fantasy world of phonetic transcription. I often change the wordings in my videos by finding totally unrelated words which have the right sound. And yes, 'and' usually loses its /d/ when it's weak, even in formal speech. Informal spellings like fish 'n' chips and rock 'n' roll simply reflect how we normally say 'and', even in 'Pride & Prejudice', 'War & Peace' etc., though you won't see Pride 'n' Prejudice on a Penguin Classic.