Hello everyone, I’m Susie.
Welcome back to my channel.
Do you find it difficult to understand British English?
You have no problem when there’s subtitles
but you find it hard to understand people in real life?
Today I’m going to explain some possible reasons.
First up, you probably don't understand British people
because we blend words together.
In Chinese, it seems like most of the words
are pronounced relatively equally.
That means it sounds like this to non-Chinese speakers.
The sounds are quite distinctive from each other
and not as blended as in European languages.
Have you seen this symbol before?
This is called a Schwa
and it's pronounced like:
not:
More at the front of the mouth and a relaxed mouth.
It's the most common sound in British English.
Within words,
there's usually a stressed syllable and an unstressed syllable.
For example, "water".
In UK English, it's pronounced: "water"
and not: "water" like in the US.
The first syllable is stressed
and so the second syllable becomes weak,
just like a Schwa.
How do we know it's pronounced like that?
You kind of just have to learn it.
But there are some rules,
like if the suffix "graphy" comes at the end of a noun,
the syllable before it is stressed.
Photography, not "Photography".
Cryptography, not "Cryptography"
and "Calligraphy", not "Calligraphy".
So there are some stress rules related to suffixes.
But most of the time, the rules aren't that clear
so it's best to just remember the stress.
Same as if I learn a word in Chinese,
I need to remember is it mā, má, mǎ or mà?
It's the same idea in sentences.
Important words get stressed
and less important words get weakened and sound like "uh".
How would you say this sentence?
Would you say,
Do you want a drink of water?
Question for you.
Have you noticed that when western people speak Chinese,
there's a kind of singing in the background?
Does their voice go up and down more than usual?
The other way around,
when native Chinese speakers speak English,
it can sound the opposite, like a robot.
Do you want a drink of water?
Very flat and not flowing.
To sound more natural, try blending the words together.
So "do you" becomes:
And "of" becomes:
Do you want a drink of water?
How would you say this sentence?
What do you do at the weekend?
How about
What do you do at the weekend?
Hear how "do you" becomes:
and "at the" becomes very close together.
What do you do at the weekend?
So that's the first reason, blending.
People blend their speech a lot in real life.
We also drop the Ts a lot in British English.
Do you want becomes:
No T.
Depending on the person's dialect,
they might even say:
instead of:
Got any water?
This has stereotypically been related to
how middle class or educated someone is.
The more posh and well off,
the more Ts get pronounced.
Like the royal family might say,
Would you like some water?
To be honest I'm hesitant to explain about this
because it's kind of a sensitive topic.
Besides that, the history of this country goes way back
and there's so many dialects for such a small place.
The English you've probably learned at school is RP,
Received Pronunciation.
That's all fine if you're listening to the news or watching TV,
but when you get here
when you actually hear people speak on the street,
you'll see that they've got totally different accents.
Mine is a typical southern accent.
But we've also got things like,
Do you want to go to a pub?
Not rightly.
Fancy a bit of chicken?
We've got the perfect Christmas pudding for you.
and so on.
Just like 普通話, the official Chinese.
There's lots of dialects across the country.
Different sounds, different accents
and a ton of different words and slang words to learn.
For example,
did you know "well" means really or very in British English?
It's a super common slang word.
That sounds well dodgy.
Dodgy is a UK way of saying creepy or scary.
You can even add a "mate" on the end
to sound even more British.
That sounds well dodgy mate!
All clear now?
Probably not, but that's okay.
I'm here to help you pick up more and more UK English.
I hope you found this interesting.
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to take your English to the next level!