Have you ever struggled with understanding native English speakers?
Do you feel like you don’t fully understand TV shows, movies, or even the cashier at the supermarket asking you a simple question like “would you like to have it delivered?”
There are several reasons why that happens (and it’s not necessarily related to your level of English)
1. The speaker is speaking a little faster than what you’re used to, so your brain is trying to catch up and it becomes overwhelming and unclear.
2. The speaker may have an accent that you are not familiar with and you don’t understand the sounds.
3. In English, words are reduced and grouped together so it sounds like the speaker is mumbling, making it harder for you to understand them.
4. What you hear sometimes clashes with what you expect to hear and as a result, you can’t make sense of the words.
The last reason has everything to do with the fact that spelling and pronunciation do not correspond, and that your English learning probably started with reading and writing. This is usually where the written representation of the word overpowers its pronunciation.
In this episode, I wanted to illustrate this gap by creating a short quiz in which I wrote some phrases PHONETICALLY (how they actually sound) and asked my audience to guess what the underlying sentence was.
Wuja like to chra-y’t yr-self?
Watch the video to hear me talk about each of the phonetic phrases and explain why they are so confusing 🙂
Want to keep practicing with these sentences? ->->
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8 Comments on “Why it is so hard to understand native English speakers | Quiz results”
Haddar teache me pronounce phrases without word’s reduced please. Help me pronounce phrases inside of regular speed.
Thanks
Perfect practice!!!
THANKS
Hai Haddar.
Ai apri shi ei iar cla sis
Shan ky uh sow ma tzha…ai am lar-nun na-lat
//yuwavdu-zavmt dee aedes taeyshen led-er
-you can make a game app for this, this is cool way to build and familiarize to an accent, i think
Hai, th’s ‘z chaalnjng bt n na fn wey. Smthng th’ help mi a lat ‘z t’wach ki’z’ misspelngz. k’z thei r clousr t’ haw thei acchali saunz.
Che’k th’saut
https://www.funnyexam.com/posts/113615-iwrony
i-w’s greit, ai luh-vdit!!
I passed on the “unusual image” 🙂
The rest was not that bed
Tray tu understand dis. Its riten foneticali. Im gud at it as my neytiv langwej ken bi rid foneticali. Dis is yor chalenj. Kayndli interpret it for mi. Teynk yu