CONCEPTMind Your FutureInteractive pronunciation book
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CONCEPTMind Your FutureThese are the symbols you will see in a dictionary. Click any one to hear it. You do not need to memorize them.
The last unit told you function words go weak. This one tells you what they actually sound like, because the reduced forms are often unrecognizable from the spelling.
There are two payoffs, and the second may matter more to you than the first. Speaking: your rhythm becomes English rather than even. Listening: this is the big one.
If you have ever felt that Americans speak too fast, this unit is why. They are not speaking fast. They are reducing, and you are listening for the full forms that never arrive. Learning to produce weak forms is the fastest way to start hearing them.
Whatever your language does, the specific reduced forms are new information. This is less about correcting an error and more about learning what English actually sounds like.
You have been reading to as too and of as ov for years. The written form is strongly fixed in your memory, and the spoken form contradicts it.
A second obstacle: if you learned English mainly through reading and writing, your internal model of the language is built from text, and text does not show reduction anywhere.
You have read to as too and of as ov for years. The spelling is fighting the spoken form.
Reduce the vowel to a schwa and let the word almost disappear. To becomes tuh. And becomes n. Of becomes uv, or just v. For becomes fur. Can becomes kn. Was becomes wuz. Your becomes yur. The becomes thuh. A becomes uh.
The picture: these words are the mortar between the bricks. You should not be able to see much of them.
The way in. Say a cup of tea four times, making of smaller each time until it is barely a sound at all. Then check it still sounds like English. It will. It sounds more like English than the careful version did.
Then shadow the recording. Play a sentence and speak along with it in real time. This forces reduction, because there is no time left to be careful.
Say a cup of tea four times, making of smaller each time until it is barely a sound at all. It still sounds like English.
Pick anything above, then record yourself saying it. Your recording appears in red over the model in gray. You are comparing shapes, not chasing a score.
Why does learning to say weak forms help you understand Americans?