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Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

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Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#201

Post by taejo »

mc32 wrote: post #89
graphpapa wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as a brit, I would say 'tuna' and 'tuner' exactly the same

Hearing 'piano \tuna\' and '\tuna\ sandwich' is not odd. Hearing 'piano \tuna\' and '\tuner\ sandwich' sounds different. It exists.

If by "it exists", you mean that there are dialects in which those are the pronunciations of "piano tuner" and "tuna sandwich" then I'd like to know more, but I've met many people who speak dialects without the so-called intrusive R and don't understand how it works (but think they do). With intrusive R you get "tuner and mayo" but not "tuner sandwich".

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#204

Post by taejo »

jjeaff wrote: post #62
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It only seems to be some Americans pronounce it nitch, so maybe regional there, though I couldn't guess where or which is most common. Here in the UK essentially always neesh. It is from French after all. Edit: American audiobooks on the other hand seem to go 100% with nitch for some unexplainable reason.

>It is from French after all. And yet the British say "filet" with a hard 't'? I have never heard anything but the French pronunciation in the US.

I believe BEng distinguishes "fillet" (with a final t) from "filet" (without), the former having been borrowed from French when it still had a /t/ at the end, and the latter being a later re-borrowing (usually in phrases like filet mignon). Something like "filet of fish sandwich" comes across as a humourously fancy name for a pretty ordinary meal.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#205

Post by rebuilder »

godelski wrote: post #134
jalgos_eminator wrote: post #5

Wow, this seemed to work very well for all the words I typed in. I would love to try something like this for German, as it can be hard to pronounce those massive compound words they have. The one criticism that I have is that many of these videos are from ted talks or speeches by politicians. During speeches people will inflect words differently than in everyday conversation, especially politicians. I got one Theresa…

Not me. Rural was particularly bad and is a terribly difficult word for non-indo-european speakers. The video (I found this in a few words) starts RIGHT on the word (autocracy did this as well). Most of the time this doesn't happen though. I did wish it would default to a specific pronunciation too. Default to US or UK when selecting "All". Router I got UK, Aluminum I got US. Epoch I got (it says US) some weird basta…

For "rural", I'd expect there to be significant differences between rhoticizing and other dialects.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#206

Post by taejo »

richrichardsson wrote: post #193

"Improve your American pronunciation". Search term : Aluminium Result : American saying Aluminum Search term : Solder Result : American saying "sodder"

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. You can argue that "aluminium" and "aluminum" are two different words, each pronounced the same way in Britain as in the US, but with the former being common in Britain and rare in the US and the other vice versa.

But there is only one word "solder", and in most of the US it's pronounced like "sodder" would be, if that were a word at all.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#207

Post by rebuilder »

SilasX wrote: post #102
jalgos_eminator wrote: post #5

Wow, this seemed to work very well for all the words I typed in. I would love to try something like this for German, as it can be hard to pronounce those massive compound words they have. The one criticism that I have is that many of these videos are from ted talks or speeches by politicians. During speeches people will inflect words differently than in everyday conversation, especially politicians. I got one Theresa…

Seconded. I still can't tell apart the first a's in Ratte vs Rathaus, and Germans assure me they're different and the difference breaks any attempts to make puns based on the two (Rathaus=city hall, but to my ear feels like Ratte-house/haus).

Well, by my native language's customs (Finnish), they'd be spelled "Ratte" and "Raathaus", which maybe makes the difference clearer. Same wovel sound, different length.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#208

Post by mkl »

rebuilder wrote: post #205
godelski wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not me. Rural was particularly bad and is a terribly difficult word for non-indo-european speakers. The video (I found this in a few words) starts RIGHT on the word (autocracy did this as well). Most of the time this doesn't happen though. I did wish it would default to a specific pronunciation too. Default to US or UK when selecting "All". Router I got UK, Aluminum I got US. Epoch I got (it says US) some weird basta…

For "rural", I'd expect there to be significant differences between rhoticizing and other dialects.

I don't think so, as both "r"s are sounded (like at the start of a word in a non-rhotic accent). It's when the "r" is at the end of a sound that there's a difference: "are", "our", "letter", "arctic", "architecture", etc. (none of those "r"s are sounded in my non-rhotic New Zealand accent, edit: unless followed by a vowel sound, like "letter and").

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#209

Post by elil17 »

jalgos_eminator wrote: post #5

Wow, this seemed to work very well for all the words I typed in. I would love to try something like this for German, as it can be hard to pronounce those massive compound words they have. The one criticism that I have is that many of these videos are from ted talks or speeches by politicians. During speeches people will inflect words differently than in everyday conversation, especially politicians. I got one Theresa…

They have a German version - click on “in English” to get a drop down list of other languages

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#210

Post by mkl »

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)…

I'm not sure I understand. A single word may have many different IPA transcriptions for different regional accents, so IPA won't necessarily tell you what you want to know.
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