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Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

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Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#151

Post by toast0 »

benatkin wrote: post #58
solardev wrote: post #57

Mmm... I think there's a danger here. The example "coup de grâce", for example, should be pronounced with the final "s" sound. Otherwise it sounds like "coup de gras", ("strike of fat" instead of "strike of mercy"). But the YouTube videos accidentally leave out the final S. Maybe it's a Britishism? I dunno. Wiktionary calls this a "hyperforeignism", and if you just copy the YouTube videos, you'd never know the differ…

Usually it's for the better. The second most populous country that's located in two different continents and doesn't have more than 10% of its population on islands should not be called Turkey (I said Pavo to because I mistakenly thought it was translated like that to Spanish, and meant to emphasize that it was called Turkey which also means the bird). I also don't mind if I don't hear the word "Cocoa" much anymore (…

The bird seems to be named after the place, so if we fix how we pronounce and spell the place, we should also fix how we pronounce and spell the bird. Although, the bird was never really from the place at all.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#152

Post by gerdesj »

Arnold S .. ch ... war ... err big lad, ran California for a while is being interviewed by Graham Norton on BBC1 now. That's an Irish host on a chat show in the UK with the Governator, a Dame, a comedian and the host of the Repair Shop.

Their accents cover quite a lot of ground but I doubt anyone who has a reasonable grasp of English as a foreign language would have any trouble understanding them.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#153

Post by Dfiesl »

anadalakra wrote: post #119

As a non-native English speaker, the "randomness" of English pronunciation has been a source of frustration for me for many years. I realized there are two types of issues: 1. Some sounds in English don't exist in other languages and you have to learn them "from scratch". For example the "flap T" in butter. Or the particular American "r" (constrast it to the Spanish rolled r for instance). 2. Certain sounds I DID kno…

A word of note: In British English "color" is spelt "colour"

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#154

Post by gnicholas »

toast0 wrote: post #149
gnicholas wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for Hermosa Beach, Los Gatos, and many other CA towns. Even though I speak Spanish, I'm always caught off-guard when someone pronounces these places the Spanish way.

The one that weirds me out is San Pedro, CA vs San Pedro Square in San Jose, CA. The first one is pronounced peedrow, nearly always. The second one is pronounced paydrow (as it would be in Spanish, or for a person), most of the time. San is optional for San Pedro, but not for San Pedro Square.

Very interesting! My grandfather had a store in San Pedro, and I always heard it pronounced the way you describe. I live in the Bay Area but have never heard of San Pedro Square. I wonder if it's pronounced more authentically because of (1) the time period in which it was built/popularized, or (2) the local population. I assume that geographic areas named these days are somewhat more likely to be pronounced authentically (at least Spanish-language ones, in areas like CA that now have large Spanish-speaking populations). Also, from a look at Google Maps, it appears there are a lot of Spanish-language businesses in the area. If the area is largely Spanish-speaking, there's a much better chance it would be pronounced authentically.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#155

Post by anadalakra »

Dfiesl wrote: post #153
anadalakra wrote: post #119

As a non-native English speaker, the "randomness" of English pronunciation has been a source of frustration for me for many years. I realized there are two types of issues: 1. Some sounds in English don't exist in other languages and you have to learn them "from scratch". For example the "flap T" in butter. Or the particular American "r" (constrast it to the Spanish rolled r for instance). 2. Certain sounds I DID kno…

A word of note: In British English "color" is spelt "colour"

I'm based in the US, where it's spelled without the "u". Quite a few examples of this spelling difference - humo(u)r, behavio(u)r etc. Oh and "spelt" is "spelled". Isn't English fun! :)

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#156

Post by ehnto »

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 a big part of immersion learning techniques, which even go as far as having you pick a "parent" to binge watch as you will naturally imitate their accent and cadence.

That's the theory there too, if you wamt to speak like a native, let your brain bathe in native speaking and it will be absorbing all the nuance that won't be in textbooks or classrooms.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#157

Post by Koshkin »

Problem is, you have to have a native speaker hear you say the words (in a sentence as well as standalone), and give you a feedback. Repeatedly, until you get it "right" (to the extent possible). Otherwise you won't get anywhere - unless you are an 8 year old kid, maybe.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#158

Post by ehnto »

gilleain wrote: post #14
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…

Yeah I jut looked up some examples from this list https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-49813249 > starting with 'Frome'. The first video hit had someone pronouncing it rhyming with 'home' when it's meant to be "Froom". Ok, so it got 'Ballachulish' from a video specifically about Scottish Gaelic. (As an aside - how is 'Omagh' difficult?)

Unless you are in my city, where it is Frome like home. It's probable the whole city is wrong, since the namesake is British, but no one will recognize a Froom street.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#159

Post by technothrasher »

anadalakra wrote: post #119

As a non-native English speaker, the "randomness" of English pronunciation has been a source of frustration for me for many years. I realized there are two types of issues: 1. Some sounds in English don't exist in other languages and you have to learn them "from scratch". For example the "flap T" in butter. Or the particular American "r" (constrast it to the Spanish rolled r for instance). 2. Certain sounds I DID kno…

> Or the particular American "r"

I'm a native English speaker and I also have trouble with the American ah.

I grew up near Boston.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#160

Post by mananaysiempre »

anadalakra wrote: post #119

As a non-native English speaker, the "randomness" of English pronunciation has been a source of frustration for me for many years. I realized there are two types of issues: 1. Some sounds in English don't exist in other languages and you have to learn them "from scratch". For example the "flap T" in butter. Or the particular American "r" (constrast it to the Spanish rolled r for instance). 2. Certain sounds I DID kno…

Tried BoldVoice right now and almost immediately hit a bit of interpolation awkwardness: “Tomorrow, we’ll work on Practice your consonant skills”. Usually I wouldn’t complain about this sort of thing, but in a language learning app it seems out of place. Learners can be really trusting at the most unfortunate times. (Mozilla’s Project Fluent[1] was built to handle these situations in a localization setting, but you can probably get away with something much simpler.) Seems really slick otherwise. Now if only I could take a placement test so I could justify paying for it... But I appreciate that most—possibly literally all—of your target audience are not me.

ETA: Also I just clicked on the site logo on /frequently-asked-questions and got pointed to /old-home-2, which is a 404. I swear I don’t seek out bugs, they come to me all by themselves :)

[1] https://projectfluent.org/

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