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  • Hi, Bob the Canadian here.

  • As you learn English, you'll want to sound as much like a native English speaker as you can.

  • One of the best ways to sound more like a native speaker is to use reductions.

  • Reductions are when we take sentences like, "I want to eat ice cream."

  • And we reduce it to, "I wanna eat ice cream."

  • You'll notice that we take the two words, "want to" and we kind of squish them together into a new word, which isn't really a word, "wanna."

  • So we say things like, "I want to eat ice cream."

  • But when we say them out loud, we say, "I wanna eat ice cream."

  • In this English lesson, I will teach you ten English reductions that will help you sound more like a native English speaker.

  • So the next reduction I wanna teach you takes the words, "let me," and it kind of squishes them into a new word, "lemme."

  • I know it looks kind of funny, but we do say this.

  • We take sentences like, "Let me show you how to do that," and we compress it into, "Lemme show you how to do that."

  • The next reduction I want to teach you takes the words, "going to."

  • And it squishes them into the word, "gonna."

  • Again, I do wanna remind you that the reductions themselves aren't real words.

  • They're just how we say it out loud when we say it quickly.

  • So I could say that, "Tonight I am going to eat ice cream."

  • And the reduced form would be, "Tonight I'm gonna eat ice cream."

  • Notice how I took the words "going to," and I squished them into the word "gonna."

  • So my son sometimes can buy lunch at school, but he doesn't always have money.

  • So sometimes he will say, "Hey, can you give me money to buy lunch today?"

  • But what he actually says is, "Hey, can you gimme money to buy lunch today?"

  • So another reduction is when we take the words, "give me," and we squish them together to make the word, "gimme."

  • So I hope you're enjoying the fact that I'm putting sentences on the screen and then pretending to squish them.

  • Because I could have just stood in front of a whiteboard to teach this lesson, or I coulda just stood in front of a whiteboard.

  • So the phrase "could have," we take the words, "could have", is another reduction when we say this in spoken English.

  • We usually say, "coulda."

  • So sometimes there are things that we must do.

  • There are things that we have to do.

  • Right now I have to make this video quickly because the sun is coming out.

  • But if I said this with a reduction I would say, "I hafta make this video quickly."

  • We take the words "have" and "to," and we squish them again into a new word "hafta."

  • Again, remember these new words are not words that you would write down.

  • They are simply how we say the reduction when we are speaking English quickly or when we are speaking as a native English speaker would speak.

  • So sometimes my students won't know the answer to the question I'm asking.

  • And they will say, "I dunno."

  • This is probably one of the most common reductions in English, "I dunno."

  • And it's probably one that you've heard before.

  • Sometimes they just use the contraction and say, "I don't know."

  • But rarely do they actually say, "I do not know."

  • They don't usually say the full and proper sentence.

  • Usually I hear "I don't know." or "I dunno."

  • Usually it's, "I dunno."

  • So, sometimes I will have a student come to class without a pen, and they will say they can't do any work because they don't have anything to write with.

  • And I'll usually ask them, "Don't you have a pen in your locker?"

  • But usually I'll use a reduction and I'll say, "Doncha have a pen in your locker?"

  • Doncha's kind of a funny one.

  • It's when we take "don't you" and we squish it into "doncha."

  • And it sounds a little funny even when I say it right now, but it is a reduction that we use all the time.

  • Often I will say to people, "Doncha have a pen in your locker?"

  • "Doncha have a pencil in your pencil case?"

  • So this next reduction takes the words, "got" and "you."

  • And it squishes them into either "gotya" or "gotcha."

  • So a full sentence would be, "I got you some coffee from the coffee shop."

  • Or if I reduce it, I could say, "I gotya some coffee from the coffee shop."

  • Or "I gotcha some coffee from the coffee shop."

  • So, sometimes people go and do something fun, and when they come back you might say, "Did you have a good time?"

  • But what you would probably actually say is "Didja have a good time?"

  • We take the words "did" and "you," and we kinda squish them into "didja."

  • A weird-looking word, but it is actually what we say a lot in English.

  • "Didja have a good time?"

  • Well hey, thanks for watching this video on English reductions.

  • I hope that you were able to learn a lot of them.

  • I hope me squishing sentences on the screen will help you remember them.

  • I'm Bob the Canadian, and you are learning English with me.

  • Thank you so much for watching.

  • Don't forget to click that red subscribe button if you are new here, and give me a thumbs up if this video helped you learn just a little bit more English.

Hi, Bob the Canadian here.

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