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Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

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Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#41

Post by ozzmotik »

teach wrote: post #3

This is really interesting! Instead of "here's how you are SUPPOSED to pronounce" any given word or phrase, you show how a bunch of native English speakers actually pronounce it. Maybe everyone is wrong, but if your goal is to be understood then you'd be better mimicking what they do than just being technically correct. :) For example, there's a street in the city I live in spelled "Guadalupe". Natives pretty much un…

don't forget the manchaca (now menchaca as it should have been the whole time!) being said as "man-CHAK".

that or the one from the other major city, good ol kuykendahl aka "kir-KEN-doll"

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#42

Post by smokel »

As a non-native speaker, I was interested in learning the perfect British accent. Turns out there is no such thing. There are many different accents, but none of them is the default.

"Received pronunciation" [1] probably comes closest, but apparently it makes you sound like someone who is a non-native speaker and who tried to learn a default accent.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#44

Post by stephen_g »

Interesting idea. I quite like in terms of the theory behind pronunciation Geoff Lindsay’s YouTube channel [1]. He does a similar thing featuring snippets demonstrating certain ideas - I’ve often wondered how he finds them, perhaps using something like this!

1. https://www.youtube.com/@DrGeoffLindsey/featured

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#45

Post by karaterobot »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #35
CharlesW wrote: post #9

Pro tip: Use YouTube to learn the pronunciation of non-English words, too! Hors d'oeuvres: https://youtu.be/o1-ndsRPxbM Châteauneuf-du-Pape: https://youtu.be/3DSgsON3u8E Laphroaig: https://youtu.be/UdE20EFNDUs

> Hors d'oeuvres: https://youtu.be/o1-ndsRPxbM > > Châteauneuf-du-Pape: https://youtu.be/3DSgsON3u8E Are these jokes? It's not at all the french pronunciation of these. As in: it's so wrong a native french speaker won't even have a clue what you're trying to say (it's so off base it's totally impossible). Try to pronounce "pneu" (tire) in french, that's good one: https://youtu.be/q8aDEF7FH8o (and that's the real, pr…

> Are these jokes?

It would seem they are, yes.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#46

Post by bsimpson »

narag wrote: post #10
teach wrote: post #3

This is really interesting! Instead of "here's how you are SUPPOSED to pronounce" any given word or phrase, you show how a bunch of native English speakers actually pronounce it. Maybe everyone is wrong, but if your goal is to be understood then you'd be better mimicking what they do than just being technically correct. :) For example, there's a street in the city I live in spelled "Guadalupe". Natives pretty much un…

That's not an English name. It's the name of a spanish river. Wad is river in Arabic. They pronounce it correctly. It's common that foreign words are adopted and adapted to the host language, but sometimes, specially if they're names, the original pronounciation lingers.

San Francisco is famously a hodgepodge of Spanish-looking names with canonical hybrid pronunciations.

- Divisadero: duh viz uh derro

- Arguello: are goo-ell o

- San Rafael: san ruff ell

- Tomales: tuh mal es

- Gough: gawff (not Spanish, but still surprising)

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#47

Post by inanutshellus »

narag wrote: post #10
teach wrote: post #3

This is really interesting! Instead of "here's how you are SUPPOSED to pronounce" any given word or phrase, you show how a bunch of native English speakers actually pronounce it. Maybe everyone is wrong, but if your goal is to be understood then you'd be better mimicking what they do than just being technically correct. :) For example, there's a street in the city I live in spelled "Guadalupe". Natives pretty much un…

That's not an English name. It's the name of a spanish river. Wad is river in Arabic. They pronounce it correctly. It's common that foreign words are adopted and adapted to the host language, but sometimes, specially if they're names, the original pronounciation lingers.

aaand that reminds me of "Torpenhow Hill".

> When the Saxons arrived and asked the Welsh the name of that hill, the Welsh said “pen” which means "hill" in Welsh. So the Saxons used their word for hill, “tor,” and called it Torpen (hill hill). > > Then the Norse arrived and the same process added the their world for hill “Haugr”. So now it was Torpen Haugr (Hill Hill Hill). > > Later, the English called it Torpenhow Hill (Hill Hill Hill Hill)

Turns out the rise near the village of Torpenhow isn't named Torpenhow Hill, but I digress... Here's a quick YT on it:

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

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#48

Post by zwieback »

shijie wrote: post #38

Something I’ve learned as someone with high proficiency in another language that I learned in adulthood (I would never say fluent, maybe “functionally” fluent): Poor pronunciation (I.e. thick accent) but good grammar is usually more forgiven by a native than great pronunciation but poor grammar. Because then you sound more native, but you sound a bit… mentally slow. I am in the latter camp. My Mandarin Chinese accent…

I agree. I've been speaking (American) English 99% of the time for the past thirty years but still have a noticeable German accent, never get any flak for that. Apparently Joseph Conrad spoke with a heavy Polish accent so that's my excuse.

What's sad is that educated people look down on people speaking "grammatically incorrect" even if their way of speaking is consistent within their group and conveying meaning perfectly. I just call that snobbery.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#49

Post by CharlesW »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #35
CharlesW wrote: post #9

Pro tip: Use YouTube to learn the pronunciation of non-English words, too! Hors d'oeuvres: https://youtu.be/o1-ndsRPxbM Châteauneuf-du-Pape: https://youtu.be/3DSgsON3u8E Laphroaig: https://youtu.be/UdE20EFNDUs

> Hors d'oeuvres: https://youtu.be/o1-ndsRPxbM > > Châteauneuf-du-Pape: https://youtu.be/3DSgsON3u8E Are these jokes? It's not at all the french pronunciation of these. As in: it's so wrong a native french speaker won't even have a clue what you're trying to say (it's so off base it's totally impossible). Try to pronounce "pneu" (tire) in french, that's good one: https://youtu.be/q8aDEF7FH8o (and that's the real, pr…

Yes, they're jokes. They delighted me so much that I was compelled to share them.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#50

Post by Affric »

teach wrote: post #3

This is really interesting! Instead of "here's how you are SUPPOSED to pronounce" any given word or phrase, you show how a bunch of native English speakers actually pronounce it. Maybe everyone is wrong, but if your goal is to be understood then you'd be better mimicking what they do than just being technically correct. :) For example, there's a street in the city I live in spelled "Guadalupe". Natives pretty much un…

I agree with you but nativised nouns are an edge case that you likely can never stamp out without a huge amount of context that would neuter any usefulness the tool has.

Like any tool for language learning its big limitation is the fact that it appears to be writing based.

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