Name: ENGLISH CONVERSATION – GROCERY STORE
Uploaded: 2020-03-10T07:13:25.000Z
Duration: 19 min 43 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...

To-infinitive

They're one of the best ways for you to improve listening comprehension and

The comparative

learn tricks to sound more natural when speaking English, like using specific reductions.

This January, you're getting five all new Ben Franklin videos

where we do a full analysis of real American English conversations.

But you know what? At the end of the day,

At the end of the day, it's the students who matter.

Oh, and I was hoping that we wouldn't have to buy a huge bag.

The words that I hear being the most stressed there are just, weird, and look.

They're a little bit longer: So I just got my first weird look.

Let's talk about the pronunciations of T here. They're interesting.

This is how we usually pronounce an ending T when the next word begins with a consonant.

Got my-- So it's not: gah my-- gah my-- with a continuous flow of sound

but it's: got my-- got-- an abrupt stop for the word, then the word 'my'.

Got my- We stopped the air in our throat and that signifies the stop T.

The other two T's are also ending T's but now they're part of a cluster, the ST cluster

and it's very common when a T is between two other consonants, to drop that T.

So if you look, when we link the two words together, which we always do

with a thought group, the T's now come between two consonants.

So we will drop them. This is so common with ST ending clusters.

When the next word begins the consonant, we drop it.

So the word 'just' is a very common word and when it is followed by a consonant word, we drop that T sound.

So instead of 'I just got' it becomes 'I just got'

Do you think you've heard Americans doing this?

Just got- Just got- Just got my first weird look.

And for 'first weird', we pronounce that: first weird- firsts weird-

and this helps us link the two words more smoothly,

and we always like a smooth  line in American English.

First weird look. First weird look. First weird look.

But you know what? At the end of the day, it doesn't matter.

So even though she's speaking really quickly,

some of the  syllables are a little bit longer and that's what helps make it clear to a  native listener.

Let's just look at the first sentence: But you know what?

'Know' and  'what' both a little bit longer, we have a stop T at the end of 'what'.

The intonation goes up at the end, it's a yes/no question.

But you know what? But you know what? But you know what?

She pronounces that so quickly: but you- but you-

She actually drops the T which isn't that common in general

but  in this phrase, which is pretty common,

We say that quite a bit and in a phrase that's more common,

we tend to do even more reductions because of the familiarity.

We know that it will still be understood.

So it's very common to pronounce this phrase: But you know what?

These two words linked together, said very quickly, become just the B sound and the schwa,

then the Y sound, and the schwa, a common reduction  of the word 'you'.

But you- But you- But you- But you know what?

But you know what? But you know what? But you know what? At the end of the day, it doesn't matter.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter.

So those syllables are a little bit longer

which provides a little contrast with her very fast speech, her very fast  unstressed words.

And we do need this contrast of stressed and unstressed to  sound natural in American English.

So let's look at the unstressed words 'at'  and 'the'.

It's actually 'at the' and the vowel is so fast.

This can either be the whole AH vowel or it can be the schwa:

It doesn't really matter. What matters is that it said incredibly quickly.

We have a stop T so the word 'at' is cut off a little abrupt.

You stop the air in your throat and the E here is pronounced as the EE as in she vowel

because the next word begins with a vowel or diphthong sound.

If the next word began with a consonant sound,

then it would be: the- which is what we get here.

Here, it's pronounced as the schwa because the next sound is a consonant sound.