Name: FLUENT ENGLISH: Understand & Use Contractions like a Native Speaker
Uploaded: 2025-07-19T20:07:17.000Z
Duration: 9 min 26 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Do you have problems understanding people's questions in English?

And the reason is because we just kind of squish all the words together, we omit or don't say words when we ask questions, and it can be very confusing.

I've narrowed it down to one super amazing example that I ran into.

I was running, and over the weekend, my friend said, Ronnie, why'd you buy that?

So, in normal conversation, no one's going to say to you, excuse me, Ronnie, why did you buy that?

It works with our WH questions, which are who, what, when, where, why, and how.

So, when you're writing beautiful tests or when you're doing things in your classroom, you have to know that this is grammatically wrong.

You actually have to write the whole sentence.

If you want to call it a different name, that's fine.

You can call it, like, a dancing worm in the sky, D, that's fine.

But in proper English grammar, it's called Apostrophe D.

Usually, apostrophes are saying, like, hey, we took some words out here just to make it difficult.

And if they're grammatically correct, like these ones, they're called contractions.

But this is actually not a contraction, this is just how we confuse you when we speak English.

As I said, it's a homophone for something that is not thin, it's wide.

We don't say how did you do that, we say how'd ya?

And the D is so fast that you might not even realize that people are saying it, and they say, when'd go, huh?

Practice it, practice it, practice it, and then you can try and say it.

But remember with these things, it's more of your listening and understanding fast English than you actually producing it at the moment if you're a beginner.

If you're more of an advanced speaker, let her rip.

How'd, why'd, when'd, who'd, who'd, who'd, what'd...

But more importantly, listen when people speak.

Watch these amazing things called television and streaming services, anything you watch on whatever social media you're banging at the time.

Listen to when native people speak, and you're going to hear this, and you're going to go, oh my god, Ronnie's right, they didn't say did, they said do.

Now, the other one, as I said before, it's more grammar-based, I know, but it can be confusing, because we had...

We have I'd, they'd, you'd, she'd, he'd, and we'd.

But this doesn't mean did in this situation.

When we put it with a subject, it can be one of two options.

And how are you supposed to know which one?

Well, I'll tell you, that's why I'm here, Ronnie teaching you some stuff.

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FLUENT ENGLISH: Understand & Use Contractions like a Native Speaker

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