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Speak English FAST, like a native speaker: 3 methods

August 14, 2019


Hi, everyone. In this lesson we’re going
to learn how to speak fast like a native speaker. When you’re learning English and you hear
native speakers, why is it that they sound so fast and it’s hard for them to understand?
Are they really talking like: “Blub-blub-blub-blub-blub-blub-blub”, or is it something that they’re doing when
they pronounce sentences that makes it seem fast, but it’s not really? Let’s look
at some example sentences, and I’ll teach you how to speak fast like a native English
speaker. All my question phrases are questions with
“Do” or “Did”, and this is them written out in the full sentence, then I have in this
column what the sentence sounds like. If we don’t know how to read IPA transcription,
here, this is very useful for us. But the problem, when we write out the pronunciation
in this way, is we don’t have letters for all the sounds. We don’t have letters from
the English alphabet for all the sounds in English, so it’s helpful, but we can still
sound slightly wrong if this is all we know about the pronunciation. That’s why I’m
going to teach you little bits that we need to know from here, so that you get the correct
pronunciation. And this is what, altogether, will help you speak fast like a native speaker.
So, let’s start here, question phrase: “Do you like it?” That’s really slow. If you’re
a beginner in English, you can understand it. “Do you like it?” But this is not
how native speakers actually speak. It sounds something like: “D-you lie-kit? D-you lie-kit?”
What happens is the “Do” and “you” join: “D-you”, “Do you”, and the “like”
and the “it” change. The “k” goes to the second… The “k” joins “it”.
“D-you lie-kit? D-you lie-kit?” And we can see this also in the IPA transcription.
“Ii: kIt”, “də.ju: Ii: kIt”. What’s also happening, here, in the IPA
transcription, if you look here, this is “də. ju”, “də. ju”. This is schwa. “də.
ju”. When I write it here, we don’t have any letter in English that can… In the English
alphabet that can represent schwa, so that’s why I just put the “d” consonant: “D-you”,
“D-you”, “D-you”. Another… Now, you have to listen really,
really, really carefully to hear the difference. “Do you like it?” can also sound like:
“Jew lie-kit? Jew lie-kit?” I’m going to say the first one, then the second one:
“D-you lie-kit? D-you lie-kit? Jew lie-kit?” You have to listen really, really carefully.
So, I suggest you watch this video a few times so that you can start to hear the difference
between very similar pronunciations. Here’s the transcription: “dʒU: li: kIt”. The
same thing is happening, here, in the two examples: “li: kIt”, but the first part
is different. “də.ju”, “dʒU”, “də.ju:”, “dʒU”. “dʒU: li: kIt”.
Let’s look at the next example: “Did you see that?” That’s how a beginner would
say it. “Did you see that?” What does it sound like? “Did-yah see that? Did-yah
see that?” Am I speaking fast now—“Did-yah see that?”—or am I just joining up the
words so that they flow? “Did-yah see that?” If we look at the IPA transcription: “you”
becomes “jə”. Although it’s… It looks like the letter “j”, this is the sound
for “yah”, together with the schwa. “jə”. “did.jə si: đaet”. Don’t be scared
by this; we don’t use this IPA symbol that often, and this is the word “that”. “did.jə
si: đaet”. “Did-yah see that?” Can you hear the difference between the first
example and the second example? “Di-jah see that? Di-jah see that?”, “Did-yah
see that?”, “Di-jah see that?”, “Did-yah see that?”, “Di-jah see that?” “di.dʒə
si: đaet”. “jə”, “dʒə”, “jə”, “dʒə”. “Di-jah see that?”, “Did-yah
see that?”, “Di-jah see that?” You have to listen really, really carefully. This is
advanced-level hearing. If you don’t hear it, you haven’t listened to enough native
speaker pronunciation. What’s happening here is we are losing the letter “d” and
changing it to a “jah” sound instead. “jah”. “Di-jah see that?”
Next we’ve got a question and answer. -“I saw Jack last night.” -“Did you?” -“I
saw Jack last night.” -“Did you?” We’re actually just looking at: “Did you?” “Did-yah?
Did-yah? Did-yah?”, “did. jə”, “jə”. “you” becomes “jə”. “did. jə”.
Or I could also say… Here… Here, the emphasis is on “did”. -“I saw Jack last night.”
-“Did-yah? Did-yah?” “Did” is the bigger word. “Did-yah?” I’m surprised.
I can also answer the question like this: -“I saw Jack last night. I saw Jack last
night.” -“Di-jew? Di-jew?” There, “dʒu” is the bigger word. What we’re doing here,
when I underline this part, is I’m showing where the main stress is. Here, “did”
is the main stress: “did. jə”. Here, “dʒu” is the main stress: “di. dʒu”.
It gives us a different meaning when we change the stress in a sentence.
Another example: “Did you go?” Very slow: “Did you go?” All the words are very clear
and separate. “Did you go?”, “Did-yah go? Did-yah go?”, “did… did. jə gəʊ,
did. jə gəʊ”. “you” becomes “jə”: “did. jə gəʊ”. Another example: “Di-jah
go? Di-jah go?”, “di. dʒə gaʊ”. “dʒə”, “di. dʒə gaʊ”. More examples coming
up. Let’s look now at: “Do you want to go?”
I should have put a bit more space, there; a separate word. “Do you want to go?”
So slow, taking me forever to say it. Oh, let’s count the syllables. “Do you want
to go?” Five. “Jew wanna go? Jew wanna go? Jew wanna go? Jew wanna go?” If I say
this one really fast: “Jew wanna go? Jew wanna go? Jew wanna go?” So, there’s four
syllables here, but there’s five here, so I’m losing one of the sounds. “Jew wanna
go?”, “dʒu: wɒnnə gəʊ”. This symbol, here, which is like a backwards “a”, is
“ɒ”, “ɒ”. “wɒnnə, wɒnnə”. “Jew wanna go?”, “dʒu: wɒnnə gəʊ”.
Now, I can also say it a different way: “Juh-wanna go? Juh-wanna go?”, “Jew wanna go?”,
“Juh-wanna go?”, “Jew”, “Juh”, “Jew”, “Juh”. “Jew wanna go?”,
“Juh-wanna go?”, “dʒe wɒnnə gəʊ”. This part is all the same. The only different
was: “dʒu”, “dʒe”, “dʒu”, “dʒe”. Another example, here: “Do you know her?”
We’re talking about her. “Do you know her?” “Da-jah knowa? Da-jah knowa? Da-jah
knowa?” “də. jə nəʊ. ə”, “Da-jah knowa?” Schwa is here, here, and here. Here,
I’ve spelt it with “a”: “Da-jah knowa”, but if I wanted to, I could also spell it
like “duh”: “Duh-jah knowa?” The thing about schwa, although we have one symbol for
it here, here, and here, it slightly changes sound every time, depending on the letters
next to it. So, it’s a bit… If you’ve got a very sensitive ear, it can be really
hard to learn, because it always slightly changes. So, I spelt it with “a”, there,
but I could also spell with “u”; depends what you hear more. “Duh-jah knowa?”,
“də. jə nəʊ. ə”, “Duh-jah knowa?” Or I could say: “Jew knowa? Jew knowa? Jew
knowa?”, “dʒu: nəʊ. ə”. This part’s the same again. Difference is here: “də.jə”,
two syllables, “də.jə”; here, only one syllable: “dʒu”, “dʒu: nəʊ. ə”.
So, here I get three sounds: “dʒu: nəʊ. ə”. Here, I have: “də. jə nəʊ. ə”,
four sounds. “də. jə nəʊ. ə”, “də. jə nəʊ. ə”.
So, this explains why when native speakers are speaking, it seems like they’re talking
so fast, but actually what’s happening is the words are joining up in ways so that we
can pronounce them smoothly, and so our sentences can flow. And what this also shows you is
that there are so many differences in pronunciation; one person says this way, another person says
something different, which is why we can take one sentence: “Do you know her?” and we
get something completely different. One says this with four syllables, and the other says
with three syllables. So, this explains also why native speakers are so hard to understand
sometimes. What you can do now is the quiz on this lesson,
and I’ll see you again soon. Thanks for watching. Bye.

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