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Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

youglish.com

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Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#171

Post by zubspace »

adriand wrote: post #154

This is also an amazing tool for anyone making electronic music that is looking for samples! I've been looking for something like this for quite some time: a tool to find audio clips on YouTube that match a particular phrase. Nothing like "lose your mind, get out of control" [1] to enhance a techno track! 1. https://youglish.com/search/lose%20your%20mind/all

Don't want to rain on your parade, but the next passage comes straight out of their TOS:

User acknowledges sole responsibility for obtaining required licenses. YOUGLISH.COM grants you permission to display, copy, distribute and download the Materials on this Site provided that: (1) both the copyright notice identified below and this permission notice appear in the Materials; (2) the use of such Materials is solely for personal, non-commercial use; and (3) the Materials are not modified in any way.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#172

Post by jakubp »

wyclif wrote: post #127
noja wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the American pronunciation of "communal" correct there? https://forvo.com/search/communal/en_usa/

No, this is wrong. It sounds like it's being mispronounced by a native German speaker. There is no hard initial vowel sound; the first syllable is not emphasized like that. There are three syllables in the word: com-mun-al and it's pronounced "kəˈmyo͞on(ə)l,ˈkämyənəl/" so the stress is on the second, not the first syllable.

She does put the stress on the second syllable.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#173

Post by jumelles »

MRD85 wrote: post #153
hombre_fatal wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You chose an example that is ubiquitous in USA, like "gonna".

It's not just going. It's nearly any word ending in a g. Ending = endin Surfing = surfin In Australia "Gonna" = "Going to"

USA too.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#174

Post by mikekchar »

grumdan wrote: post #120
SilasX wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So ... can you accept "Ratten raus vom Rathaus" as a pun? Like, I can understand if it's too low-effort or obvious, but is it still a pun?

The two vowel lengths sound too different to me (native speaker) for this to really work. The difference is the difference between aː vs a in IPA. I'm struggling to find a similar vowel length example in English and Wikipedia only has examples with an Australian accent. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_length#Contrastive_vowel...

Yeah, it doesn't really exist in English. I'd even argue that the Australian pronunciation doesn't change the vowel length as much as it adds a chain shift [1] (similar to the Canadian/Algonquin "ou" pronunciation).

It's one of the most difficult things to pick up when learning Japanese as well. There are lots of words that are basically homophones except for vowel length and tone. To an English speaker they tend to sound identical, but to a Japanese speaker if you get it wrong the result is unintelligible. For example "地図" (in romaji: chizu and pronounce cheezu with a short "ee") is "map" and "チーズ" (in romaji: chiizu and pronounced cheezu with a long "ee") is "cheese" (though they have the same tones... I'm struggling to think of an example with different tones as well as vowel length).

The thing that helped me the most for this was singing songs. Once you understand that there is a necessary rhythm to the words, it makes it much easier to use that rhythm in speaking. Or at least it did for me -- YMMV.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_shift

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#175

Post by wonnage »

Apparently every English student in China learns the following exchange: How are you doing today? / I'm fine, thank you, and you?

I've had trouble explaining why this is a weirdly formal response that native speakers would probably never use. So it was somewhat amusing to find zero search results for this! (not counting partial matches). It seems like the first phrases you learn in any foreign language reliably turn out to be phrases nobody actually uses.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#176

Post by ptah »

wonnage wrote: post #175

Apparently every English student in China learns the following exchange: How are you doing today? / I'm fine, thank you, and you? I've had trouble explaining why this is a weirdly formal response that native speakers would probably never use. So it was somewhat amusing to find zero search results for this! (not counting partial matches). It seems like the first phrases you learn in any foreign language reliably turn…

I guess they would only use English in formal situations like when you go to shops etc. in those cases that is a normal exchange in UK english

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#178

Post by ghostDancer »

wonnage wrote: post #175

Apparently every English student in China learns the following exchange: How are you doing today? / I'm fine, thank you, and you? I've had trouble explaining why this is a weirdly formal response that native speakers would probably never use. So it was somewhat amusing to find zero search results for this! (not counting partial matches). It seems like the first phrases you learn in any foreign language reliably turn…

I remember many years ago in Spain the most used book to learn English the first sentences were pretty much those and in one of the first lessons there was a sentence that became widely known: "My taylor is rich", it was synonym with studying English.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#179

Post by trosi »

wonnage wrote: post #175

Apparently every English student in China learns the following exchange: How are you doing today? / I'm fine, thank you, and you? I've had trouble explaining why this is a weirdly formal response that native speakers would probably never use. So it was somewhat amusing to find zero search results for this! (not counting partial matches). It seems like the first phrases you learn in any foreign language reliably turn…

Can you elaborate a bit on why it's a weird response? What would be more appropriate? Non-native speaker here
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