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Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

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Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#211

Post by mkl »

taejo wrote: post #206
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.

I think they're trying to say it's American-focused, rather than English-focused. A search for "aluminium" returning pronunciation for "aluminum" contradicts your idea.

Leaving the "l" out of "solder" is just bizarre to me as a New Zealander :-)

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#212

Post by Broken_Hippo »

philwelch wrote: post #144
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…

I'm a native English speaker and "rural" is a genuinely weird word to pronounce. My pronunciation is halfway between "earl" with a leading "r" and just incoherently growling "rrrl".

I was thinking the same thing - I realized that when I say this word, it is always slurred. Your pronunciation is much like mine, and I'm not even sure it would sound correctly if it were different as it would put too much emphasis on the middle "r".

However, I'm sure there is a name for that "there but not there" letter.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#213

Post by Broken_Hippo »

interfixus wrote: post #169
TomMckenny wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likewise, try showing a non-English speaker that "mass" and "mess" are different. Or better yet: "Luke", "look", and "luck" And for Spanish speakers there's "Jeep", "sheep" and "cheap"

By ' non-English speaker ' do you mean ' someone with English as a second language ', ' someone not speaking English ', or ' someone not from England '? I'm a non-native English speaker, and certainly has no problem distinguishing between your examples; in fact I use such words as illustration when explaining subtleties of Danish pronunciation to anglophones. And I absolutely cringe whenever '2' is used for 'to', og…

And I absolutely cringe whenever '2' is used for 'to', og '4' for 'for'. Just stop it, they sound nothing alike.

I'm a native english speaker, and I pronounce those the same.

Two = to = too, but "tool" sometimes nearly has 2 "o" sounds, depending. For = four, and the sound in "four" is not the same as in "foul", which is two sounds.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#214

Post by Broken_Hippo »

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)…

A recording is a good, though, in the same way as hearing native people speak improves your own pronunciation over time.

This even happens without you realizing it.

If I really can't get a word down through pronunciation, it honestly helps to see it typed out phonetically in English.

For example, "Hygiene" is spelled the same in both english and Norwegian, but pronunciation differs.

So while in english we might say, "Hi-Gene", in Norwegian I say "Hee-gee-inne". It doesn't work for all words, especially with vowels and sounds that aren't in english.

Had I only had IPA symbols, that takes even longer because of the time it takes to learn the symbolism. I think if it were truly a better way to learn, it would be taught to new immigrants instead of the immersive adult learning that I had, which focused vocabulary on repeating sounds and lots of listening, and the very occasional visual aide to know how to shape our mouth and where to put our tongues.

Not that my pronunciation is perfect, mind you, but I'm passable even if I retain a strong English accent when I speak Norwegian. Most of the time, I'm understandable and the spouse is nice enough to point out rough spots if I slip up too much.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#215

Post by LambdaComplex »

trosi wrote: post #179
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

"I'm fine, how are you?" or "I'm fine, what about you?" would both be more normal in my opinion.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#218

Post by remedan »

mjlee wrote: post #15

How do you leave feedback for what is just a bad pronunciation? The options I can see are: This is not english! Wrong caption? Wrong accent? Poor sound quality. Poor video quality. Crude/shocking content. I don't think any of those fit what I'm hearing for https://youglish.com/getcid/3905773/coxswain

Maybe the idea is to be strictly descriptivist? The way people actually pronounce the word _is_ the correct way. That's why you can listen to multiple examples and see what the common pronunciation is.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#219

Post by rkuykendall-com »

fniephaus wrote: post #101

8 pronunciations of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in English: https://youglish.com/search/supercalifragilisticexpialidocio... Best result: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2467&v=4axGm0g-1...

One clip was so intriguing, I had to go back and watch the whole thing, and it was really good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2Za1TlYvBc

I'm a native English speaker but this could actually be a very cool discovery tool. I typed in my own (relatively rare) last name and found cool graduations and community organization videos.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#220

Post by sandworm101 »

JetSetWilly wrote: post #197
smcl wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You are just attaching prestige to some variants of the language over others. It just so happens that variants of English spoken by professional classes in the SE of England or NE USA are more prestigious (at least for some) than variants of English in a pub in Liverpool or Glasgow, but those other variants are not "wrong" and don't have "appalling pronunciation", they just have different pronunciation. If there was…

>> You are just attaching prestige to some variants of the language over others.

Yes. This is about people wanting to improve their english. They have identified that their english is less than they deem acceptable. If you want to improve, you need something to aim for. So that does indeed mean putting one version over another.

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