Hey guys what's going on! So in today's lesson I'm going to tell you the secret to being able
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so today we're talking all about connected speech so what is connected speech maybe you have heard
this term before but if you haven't it's going to really revolutionize your English so connected
speech is how we natives cut and connect our words together and really it's what gives English its
musicality it's what gives it its flow and rhythm and normally non-natives don't do this so what
non-natives what English learners typically do is they see a sentence and they think of it as every
single individual word in that sentence now when you speak like this it can sound really robotic it
sounds really unnatural now what do natives do we actually look at it more as units of words so like
which of these words actually come together and it makes a lot of sense once you start to focus
on it but when you're new to it it can seem really confusing but in fact this is so important because
a lot of learners actually say that we natives just speak so fast a large problem of it is not
just that we speak fast but it's that this is happening this connected speech is happening and
your regular traditional classes haven't really prepared you for it so when you encounter it it
just seems like a jumble of words a jumble of sounds and you really can't understand what
natives are saying now connected speech exists in every single accent of English
but today I'm just going to focus on connected speech in American English now I'm guessing
you're probably wondering why exactly does this happen why do natives do this and how can I know
if different units of words are going to connect to each other or if they're going to be separated
now this comes down to a principle called content and function words now we emphasize content words
while we de-emphasize the function words so what exactly are content and function words in case you
haven't heard about this before so content words really bring the meaning of the sentence they are
the verbs the nouns the adjectives and really just by looking at the content words usually we can
understand most of what the person is trying to communicate and then the function words are
kind of what links everything together so this is things like the articles the prepositions and the
other kind of smaller words that help to kind of give a little bit of extra meaning to the phrase
so I'm not going to go too much into this concept of content and function words here
because we actually did a lesson on our Learn English with tv channel that I highly recommend
that you check out if you haven't yet because it's a really fun way to learn about this concept with
some of your favorite tv series but just to give you a quick example so let's look at the sentence
I am going to go to the store now that's probably how you might hear an English teacher say it in a
really slow way or how a learner might even say this because it sounds kind of robotic it's not
how you would actually hear a native say this now how would a native say this a native would say I'm
going to go to the store now that probably to you sounded like just a really big jumble of sounds
right it's just not very clear what exactly I was saying if I hadn't said it slowly before
now it probably wasn't so hard for you to hear those content words like the verb go or the noun
store but all those function words in the middle probably if I hadn't said it slow before would be
completely lost to you so let's take a look at how this kind of breaks down so we have for example
the helper verb m and that reduces and connects to the I now this is actually a contraction
which we see all the time so we say I'm instead of I am and we also have going to now you probably
have heard before that we reduce going to to gonna then as I said we fully say go and store
but then we reduce the words that go in the middle to the now this is really common so we would say
the or if it has a vowel before it dada so instead of saying I am going to the store a native would
say I'm going to go to the store now as I said before if you don't do this if you don't reduce
your function words then your speech could sound kind of robotic and that's not necessarily a
problem because people can still understand you so really the most important part of learning
connected speech like this is that you're able to understand natives when we use it now if you want
to sound more like a native then of course you can practice this a lot and it will help you a
lot to have more of a native accent like that but as I said it's not a hundred percent necessary
now something else that we'll see where this is really common is with phrasal verbs
so usually we have in a phrasal verb we have of course a verb and one or two particles now
the verb gets emphasized that's a content word but the particles are function words so we reduce them
so for example if I say come over i'd actually connect that m to the next word so I say
come over or how about run out of now a native wouldn't say run out of a native would say
run out of or run outta and we could also look at another one catch up now that ch at the end again
we'll connect to the particle up so it becomes catch up catch up now this probably seems kind
of confusing up till now but we're going to actually look at some different principles of
connected speech that happen all the time and just by learning those they're going to help you a lot
in being able to understand natives and to start kind of tweaking your accent now you
probably already have noticed in these function words when they reduce that schwa sound is really
common and if you don't know it that schwa is that uh sound that's a vowel that is actually the most
common sound in american English actually I think in all accents of English but before we
move on to those principles of connected speech I wanted to tell you about a really fantastic way
for you to learn connected speech and to really make it a part of your own speaking and that is
with our real life native immersion course now with this course you will learn with real life
native conversations and with our pdf power lessons we actually break it down the entire
transcript of every conversation and show you every instance of connected speech and how you can
start identifying this better plus you also will learn about vocabulary grammar pronunciation and
so much more so you can try that for free with our power learning week and it's really simple just
click up here or down description below to learn more and sign up for that and we look forward to
seeing you inside all right so now let's look at some of those principles of connected speech
that are going to help you a ton in being able to understand natives when you watch tv series or you
listen to the radio or music or anything else like that so the first one maybe you've encountered
before so I'm not going to go into it in too much depth because we talked about it all the
time over on our learn English with tv series channel so definitely go check that out if you haven't yet
but this happens in American English when we have a t between two vowel sounds so we actually saw
an example of this before when I said run out of did you actually hear how I said that part out
of now I didn't say out of I said outta now this is how most americans will pronounce this that t
sound in the middle actually morphs to kind of a d sound now this is very similar to the r sound
in latin languages like spanish and portuguese so it's just a very quick flick of the tongue
at the top of the mouth so I didn't say outta I said outta and you can hear this in other words like
butter or cat and dog would become cat and dog so this happens even between words
so the next thing we're going to look at that happens all the time in native speech is what
happens to pronouns so pronouns that begin with an h like he his or her we will often drop that h
sound and connect it to the preceding word so for example if I say what did he do I would actually
drop that h sound in he and connect it to did so I wouldn't say what did he do i'd say what did he do
now you could completely miss the he there probably if you're not accustomed to this
and you wouldn't even be sure of like who are we talking about let's look at a couple more
examples so we could say for example he doesn't know her so did you see I drop the h sound and
I connected that w from no to her so he doesn't know her nowhere we could also say that with his
that what is his problem for example so I would say what is this problem so we have the american
t there happening because the t falls between wha and is so it becomes what is what is and then the
s or actually that z sound from is connects to the pronoun so what is his problem what is his problem
and this also happens with the pronoun them we will drop that th sound and we're just left with
um so instead of saying I will call them I would say i'll call them i'll column or similar to the
example we looked at before instead of saying I don't know them I would say I don't know them
I don't know them so moving on another thing that we americans often reduce is when we have an n
followed by a t so what happens in these cases is that we'll actually drop the t sound many times
so this can happen for example in the middle of words so let's take the word internet
and international what do you think happens here so instead of saying internet or international I
would say internet international but this doesn't just happen in the middle of words it can also
happen when we have a word ending in empty and the next word begins with a vowel and you would have
to have a content word and a function word here so for example the kind of common preposition if
we say that something is in front of something else we would say in front of in front of let
me give you another example so if I say I went out I would actually say I went out and another
expression that you might hear in american English is we say I can't even now we say this for example
when we just can't believe something that happened so we wouldn't say I can't even
we'd say I can't even and then finally with nt you probably already know that when we have the word
not we contract it often with the verb so for example we say does not doesn't and has not hasn't
but we don't actually say doesn't or hasn't we say doesn't hasn't so we drop that t sound once again
so next we're going to look at the sound of now we have this both in the preposition of
and we also have it when the verb have is part of a contraction so let's take a look first at
the preposition of so this will reduce simply to an uh sound that's the schwa sound once again so
for example if I say the queen of england I would reduce that to the queen of england we have a
popular breakfast in the us that's called cream of wheat but an american probably would say cream of
wheat or if for example I want to say I understand your point of view I wouldn't say point of view I
would say point of view now actually there that's interesting too because we have that nt that we
saw before so it becomes point of view not point of view or point to view but point of view now
as I mentioned the same exact thing happens with have when we reduce it and add it to a contraction
so instead of us saying could have would have or might have will reduce that simply to the
schwa sound again so I would say coulda woulda or maida now did you hear that american t in
might now when I just say the word might I say true tea but because it's might have and
we reduce that again it becomes mai da so that's that american tea once again okay so next we have
reductions with y now this is really common because the word u is often a function word
so we will actually have some sound morphing here now this happens in two cases with two
consonants the first one is when we have a t plus a y now this becomes a ch sound
and the same thing happens when we have d plus y but instead of it being it becomes
a j sound so it's j now I'm not going to give you too many examples here or anything because
I recently explained this in another lesson where we talked about school English what they
taught you at school versus real life English so I highly recommend you check out that lesson next
fantastic so we only have two more and the next one that we're going to look at is something
really funny that happens when we have two consonants together so what I mean by this is
when we have a word that ends in the consonant and the next word begins with the same exact consonant
so let's look at some examples of this to make it clearer so for example if I say that a store has
cheap prices now I wouldn't say both of those p's because that's kind of difficult for me to
pronounce in my mouth so this actually makes your speaking a little bit easier because you don't
want to get all tripped up by that you can just drop one of those p sounds so a native instead of
saying cheap prices would say cheap prices so we drop that first p and then we link them together
cheap prices so let's look at some more examples of this how about a place that you would go if
you have a car the gas station becomes the gas station so gas station and maybe you like reading
so you would join a book club but a native one and say a book club because that's really tricky
for our mouths again we'd say book club book club and then finally i've given you all examples of
consonants but this also happens with vowels so if for example I want to say we each have
a fantastic time learning English I wouldn't say we each i'd say which we each have a great time
we each have a great time so we're going to look at something else now the final principle
also has to do with when we have a vowel sound and that is the vowel u because we get
a really strange sound morphing there so when a word ends in a u sound and I don't just mean
the letter u I mean the sound u so that's that oo sound we will actually often transform it to a w
if the following letter the beginning letter of the next word is a vowel as well so for example
if I want to say who is it say I have someone just knocked in the door and I want to say who is it
I wouldn't say who is it I would say who is it so did you hear what happened there listen again who
is it now what happens when we have a u sound followed by another vowel is it becomes a
w sound so who is it that's a very strange sound morphing I know but it happens all
the time in native speech and as I said you notice that there who ends in an o but it's an
ooh sound so say you want to give a friend a compliment and you want to say you are the best
that's a really great alternative to saying thank you but you want to say you are the best you'd say
you are the best you are the best and you could also say you always do that maybe someone does
something that really annoys you so you say you always do that that w sound again
all right so I hope this has given you a little bit of clarity I hope you've taken notes and it's
really important that you start actually paying attention to this in anything that you watch
or listen to now something really great that you can do is when you're watching something
either with subtitles or without you can actually check yourself if you didn't understand something
go back and listen again and this is where the subtitles come in handy because say you watched
it first without subtitles you didn't understand something you go back you watch again with
subtitles what I want you to do when this happens is actually try to figure out what didn't I
understand here and why was that now was that due to some connected speech and you can actually take
a look at some of the principles that we looked at today and try to figure out what exactly was
happening here was there some sound morphing was a function word here reduced now if you start doing
this you're just going to see huge improvements in your ability to understand your favorite tv series
music the radio podcasts and so much more and another thing that can be really helpful here is
if you have a teacher or the guidance of a native so one way that you can do this of course is by
getting a really fantastic coach or teacher and make sure that it's someone who knows a little bit
about how natives actually pronounce things and that they can kind of coach you in this connected
speech whether you're wanting to actually speak that way or just be able to understand it and
another great way to do this as I said is with our real life native immersion course because I and
justin and another teacher chad will actually be the ones that are guiding you through the journey
of learning English so I hope you've had a lot of fun today thanks so much for joining me and i'll
see you next week now it's time to go beyond the classroom and live your English ah yeah so let's
look at some instances of this that you will find all the time so in school they probably taught
you to say these like serious sam let's see got to want to have to going to however it's pretty
uncommon that you will hear natives speak this way most natives will actually speak like my friend
street stan yeah man i'd say like gotta wanna gonna so maybe you already know about those ones