Hi, students.
Hope you're well.
My name is Jade Joddle, and in today's advanced pronunciation
lesson, you are going to practise pronouncing some
of the most difficult words to pronounce in English.
And the reason they are so difficult for us to pronounce
is because there are examples of what's called 'complex codas'.
A coda is a term from phonetics, which I'm going
to explain for you simply now.
Look at the word, 'text message'.
In the word 'text', we have the vowel /e/.
And following the vowel, we have a string
of three consonants together--
/k s t/.
All of these sounds are in the same syllable,
and in the same word, 'text'.
But the coda refers to the sounds
that come after the vowel.
So in the word, 'text', the coda has three sounds in [it].
This is a complex coda because we have
to put three sounds together.
So say it with me.
'Tekst'.
Tekst.
Difficult for the tongue to produce these three
sounds together.
Most of the examples that we're going
to look at in today's lesson are even more
complex than this example word because we're
going to be looking at words with four sounds in the coda.
But the reason I wanted to start off with the example of 'text
message' is because when we get a complex coda, it's usual,
it's very normal for native speakers to simplify it.
Instead of saying all the sounds,
we make it easier on ourselves, which is why lots of people say
'tex' /teks/ message.
'Tex', like Texas.
Instead of saying text message, they say,
'I sent a tex message'.
This is an example of elision.
So what they're doing is they're dropping the t there:
'Teks message'.
Some people will tell you that this is a mistake.
It's an error.
You should never say 'teks message', it's like
you're stupid.
However, it's a very common form of elision
to drop one of the sounds in a very complex coda.
So we're going to go through more examples of the same thing
in different words.
Here we have the word 'texts'.
Let's look at the IPA.
Here's the vowel, /e/, and our coda is 4 consonants long.
So we already handled 'text' up here.
Now, we have to add an extra /s/ on the end.
Let's say the word together.
Texts.
You'll hear lots of sss, s sounds because all of these
sounds in here are voiceless: /teksts/.
However, because it's so difficult to say,
once again, we apply elision to make it easier.
So we reduce it to 'tex'.
Tex.
'I sent a few texs earlier'.
Not everybody is going to simplify it like that,
but that is one common way.
Only in very careful speech do most people put in the effort
to articulate all those sounds.
So once again, the sounds that get
dropped are these two sounds.
They've dropped the t and the s.
So we just say texs.
Lots of texs.
I got lots of texs earlier on.
But of course if you want to say it perfectly, then
you should say every sound.
I've got lots of texts earlier on.
Let me explain the meaning to you first.
When you glimpse something, you see it suddenly and briefly.
I glimpsed over the hedge and I saw my neighbor was naked;
not wearing any clothes.
And so if we look at the IPA, we've got /glɪmpst/.
We have a coda of four again.
Glimpst.
But you have to listen and concentrate very carefully
to be able to hear the /p/ because we don't release
the /p/.
We don't say glim-p-s-t.
So the /p/ is a quiet /p/.
Glimpst.
And we get the air release on the /t/.
Glimpst.
To make it easier, we apply elision,
and we'll just say /glɪmst/.
Glimst.
Because, as I said to you earlier,
that 'p' is quite hard to detect in there.
Glimst.
I glimst what was happening.
Oh, I only glimst it.
It means I didn't see it properly.
And our next example, a tiger relies on its instincts.
/ɪn stɪŋkts/.
/ŋkts/.
Complex coda again.
Four sounds.
Instincts.
That one is a real mouthful to say all of them.
So we can apply elision and simplify it.
And it's like we're saying, 'in stinks'.
In stinks.
The Tiger relies on its in stinks.
The sound that we dropped there is the t.
Some more examples coming up.
The first word is 'attempts'.
Attempts.
A complex coda with four consonants in it.
To simplify it, we can drop the /t/ to say 'a temps'.
Many a temps were made to climb the mountain.
The next word is 'prompts'.
Prompts.
This word is going to be hard to use.
But to give an example, someone standing
at the side of the stage.
They have a job, which is to prompt the actor on the stage.
So this person prompts the actors.
He tells them what their lines are when they forget.
Again, four consonants in the coda; prompts.
But we can simplify it by dropping the /t/; 'promps'.
He promps the actors to remember their lines.
The next example is 'lengths'.
We use this word when we're talking about swimming.
How many lengths did you swim today?
/ŋkθs/.
Put it all together.
It's quite difficult to say.
There are four consonants in that coda.
Surprisingly, you may think, there is a /k/ sound in there.
/leŋkθs/.
If you want to simplify the pronunciation,
you can use elision and remove the /k/ sound.
So to do that, it's easy if you say 'leng'.
Leng.
Lengths.
Ss.
Lengths.
But the careful pronunciation does have the /k/ in it.
The next example word is probably the one
that you'll use most often when talking about your strengths
and weaknesses.
Your strengths are the things that you're good at.
We have a full consonant coda here.
And it's an unusual word in English because we also have
a complex consonant cluster at the beginning of the word
in the onset before the vowel, /str/.
There are three sounds there.
So overall, strengths is one of the most complex words
that you can pronounce in English
in terms of articulation because there's
all of those consonant sounds.
But to simplify it with elision, we can drop the /k/.
We can throw that away, and we can say /streŋθs/.
Strengths.
So like we said leng, if you say streng first, strengths.
And that's how you can get there.
The next word and the one after are
what we would use if we were talking
about equations in mathematics.
These are here just to show you how complex codas
can be in English.
We're very rarely going to ever use
these words in natural speech.
Let's look at the word 'sixths'.
Wow, there's a lot of sss s sounds in there.
Like a sss snake.
That's going to be very difficult for you
if you have a lisp.
/sɪksθs/ If we want to simplify this,
we can in fact remove two sounds from this word because lots
of people say siks.
Imagine when you're not feeling well, I'm sick.
If we plurals that, sicks.
Like two sicks.
Then we have twelfths.
Two twelfths in mathematics.
The first part of the word is twelf followed by /θs/
Twelfths.
If we want to pronounce this word with elision to make it
easier, we remove the /θ/.
So we just say twelfs.
Twelfs.
If you say that, it will sound quite cockney to lose the /θ/
sound.
Cockney English.
And our last example word is a word with five consonants
in the coda, /ŋ k s t s/.
But some people will say about this word,
that it is a cheat word because it's not really
an English word.
This word entered English from German.
When you feel angst about something,
you feel emotional pain.
And we have to create an artificial sentence to use it.
So I could say he is, 'He angsts about modern life'.
He feels pain.
And the reason the /k/ is in brackets is that,
only in some accents or some dialects will people pronounce
the /k/ here.
This is an example of something called epenthesis,
which in pronunciation, is the opposite of elision.
This means the insertion of a sound that shouldn't be there
because there is no /k/ sound in the German pronunciation.
Angst.
However, for British speakers, it makes them think
of the words, 'lengths', 'strengths', so they add a /k/
in where it shouldn't be.
And if that does happen, then we get the most complex cluster
that's possible in English.
So there you go.
Thank you for practicing your advanced pronunciation with me.
Please come back to my channel for more lessons like this.
And what I would also like to do now
is invite you to take a look at my British accent training
course where you will also get advanced pronunciation training
like we did in this lesson.
Thank you for watching, and be sure to come
back again for a future video on my channel.
I'll see you then.
Bye.