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  • Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo.

  • What am I gonna make for dinner tonight?

  • Hey. James from EngVid.

  • Whaddya want to learn today?

  • Excuse me.

  • "Whaddya mean?"

  • Oh, sorry, he's saying: "What do you mean?"

  • What do you want to learn?

  • We're doing two quick pronunciation tricks.

  • When I'm saying that, it's a little bit different. When I say two different pronunciation tricks,

  • I'm going to teach you what's called relaxed speech in English or when we make...

  • We blur words together.

  • Sometimes we blur words, we make words, two words into one, sometimes three words become one,

  • so when you hear it you think you're hearing one word,

  • when in reality what you're hearing is three words and sometimes we drop the sound.

  • Today I'm going to give you two very common phrases, that if you learn to say it properly,

  • you'll sound like a native speaker, which is really cool.

  • Right?

  • So let's go to the board and take a look.

  • To start off with, Mr. E...

  • Hey, say, "Hi, E." Okay?

  • Mr. E is saying: "Whaddya mean?"

  • Try it. If you look in your Google Translator or your phone, you'll notice this word doesn't exist,

  • but it does for us English people, and in fact it's for two different things that are not related.

  • I'll show you a trick, so you know what it is you're saying.

  • Or when someone's speaking to you, what it is they mean.

  • Let's go.

  • First things first, this is real English, relaxed speech.

  • I have two statements.

  • The first statement is: "What are you doing?"

  • Right?

  • "What are you doing?"

  • Pretty clear and understandable.

  • And the second statement is: "What do you want?"

  • They're not the same at all, you can see with your eyes.

  • But when I say it, actually it's going to come out like this:

  • "Wad-da-ya doing? Wad-da-ya doing?" or

  • "Wad-da-ya want? Wad-da-ya want?"

  • The sound...

  • This is phonetic spelling, so I'm just trying to show you the: "Wad-da-ya", "Wad-da-ya",

  • basically sounds like this: "Whaddya", okay?

  • And it's when we've cut sounds, and there's reasons we do it and I'll explain here why.

  • When we speak very fast, especially when there's a "t" or a "d" involved in English,

  • we tend to either change the "t" to a "d", okay? Or we actually just get rid of it.

  • An example is "often".

  • In English you'll sometimes hear people say: "Often", "I often do this", but more casual is to say:

  • "I ofen", the "t" is just dropped.

  • It's understood to be there.

  • Okay?

  • "Of(t)en", but it's just dropped.

  • And a lot of times people have trouble saying the word: "Bottle", you saw my face, like,

  • "I want a bottle of Coke", it's difficult to say, even for us, so we say,

  • "I want a bodle", "bodle", and that double "t" actually becomes almost a "d" sound, so: "bodle".

  • "I want a bottle of Coke or a bottle of beer."

  • We tell you to say "t", but we don't even do it ourselves because we're lazy.

  • And speaking about lazy, I want to talk about the second reason this funny thing occurs

  • here where we have: "Whaddya" instead of the words that are supposed to be there.

  • When we have lazy vowels...

  • Lazy vowels we call the schwa, schwa.

  • I'm exaggerating because I open my mouth too much.

  • When you do the schwa, it's like an "uh", you barely move your mouth.

  • In fact, later on I'm gonna show you a test you can do to see the schwa for yourself. Okay?

  • Here's two examples for you because we barely say them, like the word: "problem".

  • It's not "probl-e-m", you don't say the "e" really,

  • you just kind of, like, make it fall with the "m", so it becomes "um": "problum".

  • Right?

  • And when you say: "family", do you say: "fam-i-ly"?

  • No. You say: "Famly".

  • It's "fam-ly", it just blends right in there.

  • Okay?

  • So now we've taken a look at this and "whaddya", and I just want to explain something, how it happened.

  • Remember we said the "t"?

  • The "t" gets dropped here.

  • Okay? We just take it out.

  • And the "r" we don't even say.

  • It goes from here, you see? There goes the "t" becomes a double "d" there.

  • Right?

  • "What are", "What are ya", and we just drop it right off.

  • Here it's even more obvious you can see it because we take the "t", and make that an "a" over here.

  • We do that a lot in English with "o", we change o's to "a".

  • Okay, so here are we.

  • We drop that, we put the "t" to a "d" here, once again that drops off, and we have: "whaddya".

  • Okay? So we have from: "What are you doing?" to "Whaddya doing?"

  • And: "What do you want?" to "Whaddya want?"

  • Now, there's a trick because I'm sure you're saying, and I would understand: "I don't see

  • the difference here.

  • It's the same."

  • I actually put it up on the board, but when we come back I'm going to show you exactly

  • what the trick is.

  • Are you ready?

  • [Snaps]

  • Okay, are you ready?

  • So, I want to go back to something I mentioned earlier on, which was the "uh" sound, that

  • schwa sound.

  • Okay?

  • There's a test to see if a word has a schwa or not, or something you can help to help

  • you practice the schwa because it's in a lot of English words.

  • We tend to be very lazy and just slur-our-words, just slur them, don't say them properly.

  • And here's the test: If you put your hand under your chin like so, and you say...

  • Let's say the following words, like: "freedom", "freedom", you can notice my mouth barely moves.

  • If I say: "free-dom", "I want my free-dom", my jaw drops down more.

  • There's very little effort when I say it normally.

  • "Freedom".

  • And "sugar".

  • "Can I have some sugar with my coffee?"

  • See? With "coffee", you see this movement?

  • "Sugar", almost no movement.

  • That's a schwa test.

  • This symbol is the schwa, and it's from the IAP system. Okay?

  • This indicates to us that the vowel is not to be pushed or said a lot; it's barely said.

  • And you'll see this in a lot of dictionaries or things that are translating from one word...

  • A language to another, if they use IPA.

  • Cool?

  • Now, we know what the schwa is, let's go back to the board and see how we can work on our

  • practice for pronunciation.

  • Now, if you recall rightly, I said this is for pronunciation, two pronunciation tricks,

  • but I also lied, it's for listening as well.

  • And I'm going to teach you the listening part in about two seconds.

  • All right?

  • Because when you hear: "Whaddya", if you don't really know what it means because I told you

  • there are two meanings, you're going to be confused and I want you to be like a native

  • speaker, understand how to use it and pronounce it like we do, but also to understand it like

  • we do.

  • And there's a little trick I told you earlier, and I'm going to show you on the board now.

  • Let's see if you can catch it.

  • Okay?

  • And even if after I'm finished if you're a little confused, go back to the beginning

  • of the video and you'll see I put it right on the board.

  • You'll go: "He showed me."

  • Of course I did.

  • All right, E's not here, but he's going to help me with a little dialogue for you so

  • we can practice our pronunciation.

  • First part of the practice, Mr. E: "James, what are you doing with that chicken?"

  • James: "What do you mean?

  • Can't you see we are crossing the road?"

  • [Clucks]

  • Okay?

  • You got it.

  • If we change it to how English people actually speak in the real relaxed speech patterns

  • we have, it comes off as this: "James, whaddya doing with the chicken?"

  • Notice how it just flowed: "Whaddya doing with the chicken?"

  • Oh, sorry, that was Mr. E, not me.

  • Let's try it again.

  • Mr. E: "James, whaddya doing with the chicken?"

  • Me: "Whaddya mean?

  • Can't you see we are crossing the road?"

  • [Clucks]

  • Right? Cool.

  • That's the first one.

  • Now, let's look at the second one.

  • I'm showing you the difference with: "What are you", stressing the appropriate vowels,

  • saying the "t" as I was supposed to, and when we blend them together to go through quick speech.

  • Let's see later on in the evening what happens when E and James meet back up. Okay?

  • E again: "James, what are you cooking for dinner?"

  • James: "Chicken."

  • E: "What do you mean?"

  • James: "Chicken, he never made it to the other side."

  • [Fake cries and laughs] Sorry, it's also funny.

  • Okay?

  • Let's try down here, let's go down here and move it over here. Okay?

  • So, E: "James, whaddya cooking for dinner?

  • Whaddya cooking?"

  • Pay attention to the end of that verb, it's an "ing" verb.

  • Remember, "are" is the verb "to be" and we're using a continuous form.

  • So if you want to identify what the person means, look for the continuous form.

  • If you see that, that is a: "What are you" statement.

  • Okay?

  • Cool.