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Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

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Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#181

Post by bloak »

I'm going to rant here... I hate the way some people seem to think that a recording is a good way of explaining the pronunciation of an English word. In my (bigoted) opinion the only good way to explain the pronunciation of an English word is with a phonemic transcription into IPA. This is because even within England there are are lots of different pronunciations of the same sound. What you want (or at least I want) to know is whether the first vowel in "Malcow", say, is the same as the vowel in "hawk" or the vowel in "trap". A recording of a particular person saying just the word "Malcow" doesn't necessarily give you that information, and certainly not in an accessible way.

(Also, a lesser consideration: there are some native speakers of English who can distinguish certain sounds in their pronunciation but cannot, or cannot easily, hear the difference between those sounds. I would guess that either they learnt to speak partly by watching people's lips or their hearing has deteriorated as they got older.)

None of the above is specific to English. If I wanted to know how a French word is pronounced I'd prefer IPA to a recording just the same, if not more so.

Admittedly not everyone loves IPA like I do (perhaps some people think it's a kind of beer). The online Oxford English Dictionary provides IPA transcriptions of both the British and American pronunciations and you can click on them to hear a recording. Perfect.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#183

Post by azangru »

bloak wrote: post #181

I'm going to rant here... I hate the way some people seem to think that a recording is a good way of explaining the pronunciation of an English word. In my (bigoted) opinion the only good way to explain the pronunciation of an English word is with a phonemic transcription into IPA. This is because even within England there are are lots of different pronunciations of the same sound. What you want (or at least I want)…

As Daniel Jones wrote in his The Pronunciation of English (I am paraphrasing from the 1962 edition, because I do not have it at hand), it is impossible to learn the sounds of English from phonemic transcriptions alone; you need a living teacher, or, in absense of them, good recordings of representative sounds (he went on to reference certain good-quality authoritative recordings of the time). Youtube can be regarded as one source of such recordings.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#184

Post by weinzierl »

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…

Every English student in Germany too. At least it was like that when I learned English in school.

This seems to be so common that there are even a bunch of Youtube videos out there about this topic, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_53mo10_Mbk

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#185

Post by smcl »

kochikame wrote: post #146
sandworm101 wrote: post #14

If you want to learn to speak english well, watch those programs that use English properly. Blackadder. Archer. Sherlock. Even some of the marvel movies (GOTG) are very careful in how they pronounce and articulate words. Then watch every Brian Cox and Attenborough documentary. You might come out with a bit of a British accent but that is far far better than any youtube-derived accent. Better you sound like Stirling A…

So you're equating using English "properly" with British (specifically, English) English? From a linguistic point of view, you couldn't be more wrong. No variety of any language is superior to another

For starters one of them - Archer - is American, not British. And nobody is saying one language is better than the other, but certainly with these programs you won't pick up bad habits like using "hence why" or confusing "than" and "then" (which I see ALL the time here on HN).

It's not even a UK vs USA thing - for me (a Scot) I notice that large parts of southern England have appalling pronunciation ("fing" vs "thing", "bovver" instead of "bother", pronouncing "r" like "w" - see how the guy on the right pronounces "presentation" as "pwesentation", and "Ryzen" like "Wyzen" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP2QkBnRqko), and that's the most populous region so much of our TV would also be no-go for English learners.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#186

Post by adriand »

zubspace wrote: post #171
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 fo…

These are YouTube videos. I don't think the Youglish TOS has any sway over them. Besides, I'd rely on the fair use doctrine, which I think applies in this case.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#187

Post by hgykutkj »

godelski wrote: post #142
dorkwood wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you got US for “aluminum” because the US is the only country that spells it that way.

That's a fair point (force of habit). But I did get UK when I clicked UK. Interestingly when I put in "colour" or "favouritie" I get different videos than the respective pronunciations for "color" and "favorite"

Doesnt work for me. https://youglish.com/search/piss%20off%20wanker/uk

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#188

Post by yorwba »

avinium wrote: post #161
thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If German listening and speaking practice is what you want, give this a try: https://eardoor.com it's got spaced repetition practice, plus lots of listening material and no sign up required. its free, and there's no annoying app to download.

"This site has been suspended for copyright violations." I assume this happened in the last 8 hours or so..

I sent the owner an email asking for attribution to be added. I guess suspending the site is the correct action to take in response to a DMCA complaint, although I'm not sure my email qualifies as one. (It's not infringing my copyright after all.) It appears to have been a useful service for quite a few people, so I hope he puts it back up with the appropriate attribution.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#189

Post by bloak »

azangru wrote: post #183
bloak wrote: post #181

I'm going to rant here... I hate the way some people seem to think that a recording is a good way of explaining the pronunciation of an English word. In my (bigoted) opinion the only good way to explain the pronunciation of an English word is with a phonemic transcription into IPA. This is because even within England there are are lots of different pronunciations of the same sound. What you want (or at least I want)…

As Daniel Jones wrote in his The Pronunciation of English (I am paraphrasing from the 1962 edition, because I do not have it at hand), it is impossible to learn the sounds of English from phonemic transcriptions alone; you need a living teacher, or, in absense of them, good recordings of representative sounds (he went on to reference certain good-quality authoritative recordings of the time). Youtube can be regarded…

Yes. There are two different things here:

* Learning how to pronounce the sounds of English: for example, how to pronounce (standard) English /a/, which is, of course, different from (standard) German /a/.

* Learning which sounds to use in a particular word: for example, is "swap" pronounced /swap/? (It isn't, of course. In practice most of the difficulties are caused by names of people and places.)

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#190

Post by ramblerman »

bloak wrote: post #181

I'm going to rant here... I hate the way some people seem to think that a recording is a good way of explaining the pronunciation of an English word. In my (bigoted) opinion the only good way to explain the pronunciation of an English word is with a phonemic transcription into IPA. This is because even within England there are are lots of different pronunciations of the same sound. What you want (or at least I want)…

Seem to think?

hear and repeat is pretty much how we all acquired our mother tongues. IPA is nice in the absence of a tutor, or a native speaker, but it's definitely not superior.

Forgetting the fact people need to be trained in understanding how to interpret IPA before they can even use it, it still misses some subtle inflections.

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