Name: Taylor Swift "Calm Down" (Learn English)
Uploaded: 2020-03-13T05:40:08.000Z
Duration: 23 min 38 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...

It's finally here. Today, we're learning English with song. That is Taylor Swift's 'Calm Down'.

Present continuous

Calm down. A phrasal verb. In this video, there's a lot of fun stuff happening with language,

a fun play on words, and of course, we'll also do an in-depth study of the pronunciation.

The imperative

Future simple

So one of the reasons why i've sometimes hesitated to use music

to teach English is that when we sing, we sometimes do things differently.

She stresses: You are somebody-- She  stresses the last syllable

and that is not how we stress that in spoken English.

You're somebody that I don't know. Is what we'd say.

You're somebody. So we would very likely make this a contraction when speaking, but she doesn't, she says:

you are, and then she stresses the final syllable.

So just know that in spoken English, it's not somebody, but it's somebody, stress on some.

Because if you're wanting to know how to sing it like her,

then you'll definitely want to be stressing that last syllable.

But the rest of the sentence is exactly like it would be in spoken English.

That I don't know. That I, that I. That I-- linking with a flap, so it's not that, it's not a true T, but it's a flap.

That I, that I, that I. That links right into the AI as in buy diphthong for the letter I. That I, that I, that I.

And then 'don't know'. With N apostrophe T contractions, there are several different ways

that we can pronounce them. One of them is by totally dropping the T, and that's what she does.

So we have an ending N, a beginning N,  the K is silent of course,

and she links them together with a single N and that is a common pronunciation.

So in both 'don't' and 'know', there's an OH diphthong.

That can change. Don't can be reduced to something more like the UH as in butter, or the schwa.

But it also doesn't have to be, she doesn't do it: don't know, don't know, do oh oh, know oh oh.

But you're taking shots at me like it's Patron.

But you're taking--  Okay so many times in singing, ING words get turned into IN words.

So that means they go from the IH vowel plus NG, which actually sounds like the EE vowel plus NG,

to the IH vowel, N. Takin' Takin' Takin'.

So that happens a lot in music, and we can write it with this apostrophe symbol, instead of the G.

Let's look at the first two words. She does a reduction here. What are you hearing?

The T plus Y this can get turned into a CH  and that happens.

If I was going to pronounce it more clearly, I would say: But you're-- But you're-- ch ch ch--

the contraction 'you're' which can be reduced to yer and she's actually dropping the R sounds completely.

I hear that just as the schwa. But you--  But you-- But you--  I would even write the first syllable 'but' with the schwa.

Buh, buh, But you--  But you-- But you-- So T and Y combined to make a CH

and both vowels there are a schwa, it's said really quickly, not too clearly,

definitely doesn't sound like 'but your',

but that's not how we would say it in spoken English either, we use reductions all the time.

I think it's not very common to drop the R sound in spoken English, I would definitely say,

And I would make more of an R sound in speaking,

but R do get dropped in some English, and that's what's happening here.

So 'but you're' reduced, less clear, take, we have more stress there, that's a true T.

The T at the beginning of a stressed syllable is always a true T, unless it's part of the TR cluster,

then it might be a CHR sound. Train-- but for just a plain T, tay-- taken, taken, it is that true T sound.

Notice that's the first true T sound that we've had in this sentence, and there are three T's before it.

There's a T sound in 'that' think it turns into a flap T, there's a T sound in 'don't', that gets dropped,

and there's a T sound in 'but' that combines with the Y to turn it into a CH.

We're talking a lot about T pronunciations. If all of these terms, flap T, stop T, are new to you,

check out the video playlists that I have on T pronunciations,

you can click here or in the video description.

Our other stressed syllables here: but you're taking shots at me like its patron.

Both of those have a little bit of a stressed feeling.

'Shots' and 'at' less stressed, and this ING or IN ending always unstressed

in spoken English, and it's unstressed  here in the song too.

Shots at me-- shots at me-- shots at me--

Stop T: shots at me-- at at at me, at me. It's not: at me-- it's not released, that would be a true T.

If you take all of the times, you'd see the T sound in a dictionary,

less than half of the time is it pronounced that way, it's either a stop T or a flap T or maybe it's dropped

I don't think she reduces the vowel here, I do think it's: at, at, at me, at me, at me.

Also let's talk about the word 'shots' quickly, we have the letter O. Don't let that fool you.

It's the AH as in father vowel. Sho-- shots, shots. No lip rounding. A little bit of jaw drop. Shots. Shots at me.

Shots at me. Shots at me. Shots at me like it's patrón.

Okay so did you notice the TR there? It was not tttron, but it's chch chron.

That's really common with the TR cluster, it gets turned into a CHR. Patrón. Patrón.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Taylor Swift "Calm Down" (Learn English)

sort

pronunciation

phrase

content