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  • This is your final lesson in the 100 most common words in English series.

  • Here, we've been going over the pronunciation of the 100 most common words in American English

  • to see what we could learn, and I've been teaching pronunciation and accent reduction for over 10 years,

  • and even I was surprised at what we saw.

  • Today we're going to go over lessons that we've learned in the previous videos

  • and talk about how you can approach studying the pronunciation of American English.

  • I started this project

  • because I saw another teacher going over how to pronounce the 100 most common words in English

  • on YouTube, and I was surprised by what was being taught.

  • It was the full and complete pronunciation of each word, for example,

  • AND was taught to be pronounced AND but that's not how we pronounce it!

  • Let's hop over to Youglish to study Americans using this word in sentences,

  • without thinking about the pronunciation.

  • And, and.

  • And you have--

  • And with, and with

  • And that's

  • And so

  • And you, and you

  • And you, and you

  • So we're getting either and or an--

  • So you can hear, it's not AND.

  • It's 'an', or 'n', reduced, said really quickly.

  • So, I wanted to make you a series where we talked about this, the real pronunciation,

  • the way words are used in whole sentences.

  • AND is a stressed pronunciation, and.

  • But in English many words are unstressed, or even reduced, and this is what happens with 'and'.

  • We reduce it: that means we drop or change a sound.

  • And what I found as we went through the words together really surprised me.

  • Out of 100, there were only 25 words where I thought, that's never unstressed, and it never reduces.

  • We never change or drop a sound.

  • Wow.

  • Only 25 out of a hundred.

  • That means if you go by the book pronunciation,

  • the full, stressed pronunciation, you will not sound natural speaking English.

  • In the very first video, we played around with what English would sound like

  • if every word was stressed and fully pronounced.

  • The sentence was: This is for work.

  • This is for work.

  • It should be: This is for work.

  • This-- is for work.

  • We have the 'for' reduction.

  • What if every word was stressed?

  • This is for work.

  • This is for work.

  • Every word would have that up-down shape of stress, would be longer, and it sounds a little robotic, doesn't it?

  • It definitely doesn't sound like natural American English.

  • Let's look at one more sentence.

  • All of these words are in our 100 Most common words list.

  • Stressing, fully pronouncing each word sounds like this: I am going to get my first one.

  • I am going to get my first one.

  • Uh-uh-uh.

  • Up-down shape of stress.

  • Other than the stress, everything else is perfect English: all the sounds are right, everything is linked together.

  • I am going to get my first one.

  • I am going to get my first one.

  • I am going to get my first one.

  • It's hard to do that.

  • It's hard to make everything stressed.

  • It sounds completely unnatural even though placement is right, linking, the sounds.

  • It sounds completely unnatural because of the stress.

  • We have to have unstressed or reduced words for rhythmic contrast.

  • We have to have rhythmic contrast for natural, native English.

  • So in this series, we studied the real pronunciation, not the book pronunciation, not the full pronunciation.

  • But the pronunciations actually used in sentences, in conversation.

  • Let's draw some conclusions together.

  • We have two kinds of words in English: content words, which are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs,

  • and function words, which are all the other kinds of words.

  • Content words are generally stressed, and function words are generally unstressed.

  • Some of these words also reduce, meaning, we change or drop a sound.

  • And what makes American English sound good and natural is not fully pronouncing each word,

  • it's speaking with contrast between stressed, fully pronounced words, and unstressed, less clear words.

  • Don't be afraid of the less clear words.

  • The more you know about what they are and how they sound, the better your listening comprehension will be,

  • and the more natural you'll sound when speaking English.

  • When we began the list at 1, the most common word in American English, which is THE,

  • it took us until number 28 to find the first word that is a real content word that will not reduce,

  • that will not be contracted, that will not sometimes be unstressed.

  • So that means the 27 words that came before it, the 27 most common words in American English,

  • are either unstressed or reduced at least some of the time.

  • The conclusion here is, you can't just ignore this.

  • Basically, you can almost not speak a single sentence without using words that are unstressed or reduced.

  • We use them all the time.

  • Unless you're just going to use single words, and never speak in sentences, you should know about this.

  • The next conclusion is that, as we studied, we found that the words generally reduce one, maybe two ways.

  • So you can learn this.

  • It's not a mystery how to understand how we reduce words and how to practice them.

  • I have two playlists that I'll link to at the end of this video,

  • one is a playlist of videos that goes over specific words that reduce, like AND becoming 'n',

  • and also a link to a playlist of my Ben Franklin videos.

  • In these videos, we study conversation and find all of the function words that reduce,

  • and how Americans use them to link words together.

  • Those are great exercises.

  • Now, here's a part where I do want to make a quick plug for my Academy.

  • You may or may not know, I have an online school, Rachel's English Academy,

  • with a collection of online courses that contain lots of videos, but even more importantly, lots of audio files.

  • I've found that when you watch a video, you learn something.

  • But when you train with audio, repetitiously, you learn it with your body, you bring it into your habit,

  • and you make it something you can use.

  • So with all the videos you'll see on a specific reduction,

  • I have audio files that help you train that word, over and over,

  • in lots of common word combinations and sentences.

  • I really encourage people to learn with the body, not just the mind when it comes to speaking,

  • because we have to make these habits to improve.

  • If you're interested in checking out the Academy, there is a 30-day money-back guarantee,

  • you can see more by clicking here or in the description below.

  • Another thing that surprised me as we studied the 100 most common words

  • together was that there were quite a few content words where we did reduce or change something.

  • Normally I would have said we never do that with a stressed word, but that wasn't right.

  • For example, in 'just', 'first', and 'most',

  • we can drop the T if the word is followed by another word that begins with a consonant.

  • Just think about it.

  • Just think.

  • This is really common.

  • We drop the T between two other consonants.

  • Also there are some stressed words that combine in very familiar combinations and reduce,

  • like the verb 'go' in 'gonna', the word want in 'wanna', the word 'give' in 'gimme'.

  • Can you 'gimme' a second?

  • These are not reductions that I would write, but in spoken English, they're really common, and yes,

  • they're even good English.

  • An effective way to practice your English is to take the text from a video,

  • like a TED talk or your favorite TV show.

  • But make sure you have the transcript, preferably printed out.

  • I know that's very old-school.

  • As you listen to a phrase, circle the words that pop out, that have that up-down shape,

  • that are the most stressed.

  • You might have to listen to the same phrase more that once.

  • But as you focus on this, your ear will become more tuned to the stress.

  • Study the phrases.

  • You're looking at, not only the words you circled, but the words you didn't circle,

  • these are the unstressed or reduced words.

  • Most of my students need to practice making unstressed or reduced words more quickly and simply.

  • The contrast of long and short doesn't feel natural to them.

  • So as you study native speakers, pay attention to these unstressed words.

  • Pay attention to the reductions.

  • It's not a bad idea to watch this series again.

  • You're getting a lot of bang for your buck because you're not studying random words here,

  • you're studying the 100 most common words.

  • The ones you're most likely to use over and over in conversation.

  • In this series, you have the chance to study the shape of stress, the up-down melody of the voice,

  • and also the contrast with the flat, lower pitch, simply and quickly said unstressed or reduced words.

  • Make up additional sentences.

  • Practice them out loud.

  • If you feel really comfortable in all 100 of these words,

  • that could make a real difference in your overall speaking.

  • Earlier in this video I promised you links to a few playlists.

  • Here they are.

  • First, a playlist that goes over all the words that reduce.

  • I have a video for the 'to' reduction, 'then', 'for', and several more.

  • I'm also linking here to the collection of Ben Franklin exercises.

  • That's when I take a bit of conversation and study everything about it,

  • so we can pick out the reductions together and figure out how Americans use them

  • so you in improve your listening comprehension and pronunciation.

  • I'll also throw in a third playlist, that's going to be one focusing on real life English.

  • In those videos, we often study reductions, as well as idioms, interesting vocabulary words, and so on.

  • Enjoy these playlists.

  • That's it and thanks so much for using Rachel's English.

This is your final lesson in the 100 most common words in English series.

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