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Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

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Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#281

Post by sundarurfriend »

MeImCounting wrote: post #27
narag wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I did not know it was a river in Spain, coming from the US I had always assumed it was some catholic religious phrase or a mispronunciation of a native word. It makes me cringe to imagine people saying "GWAD-uh-LOOP" but I guess its not even that bad compared to many mispronunciations

> It makes me cringe to imagine people saying "GWAD-uh-LOOP"

What's the better/closer-to-original pronunciation?

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#282

Post by sundarurfriend »

askiiart wrote: post #79
queuebert wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that where the speaker randomly pauses between words, as if they want to check that you're still watching?

My guess is that it refers to the really "hype" voice that a lot of YouTubers use. Like Mr. Beast, and most Minecraft YouTubers (but usually not ones on Hermitcraft) (source: I've had to listen to my little brother watching Minecraft videos way too much).

It's interesting, all of us interpret it based on the YouTube bubbles we are familiar with:

I first assumed they were referring to the "I have just figured out a secret, little child, and I'm deigning to share it with you" type voice that Johnny Harris and people making videos of that ilk put on.

Then I thought maybe they were talking about the YouTube voice people like Connor (CDawgVA) and Ludwig put on, which is a mix of the "hype" voice you mention and a sort of 80s radio presenter voice.

The conclusion is that there's no such thing as a "YouTube voice" that the GP comment mentions, it all depends on which bubble of YouTube you're familiar with and extrapolate to the whole of it.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#283

Post by dgroshev »

yhager wrote: post #190
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…

There is no such thing as "English pronunciation". English does not have a regulatory body like Spanish or German have. There are many English dialects, and sounds (and meanings) vary, A LOT. It's up to you whether you want to try and assimilate the local dialect of where you live right now, or you want to simply understand and be understood. There are many non-native speakers who are extremely easy to understand, ev…

The set of meaningful sounds (phonemes) is pretty conservative though. They can be rendered very differently (and that's what we call "accent" in native speakers), but it's like moving a densely connected graph around in the soundspace — yes the particular sounds might shift, but it's the relation between them that encodes meaning, and that is preserved. In that sense "English pronunciation" does exist.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#284

Post by dgroshev »

smokel wrote: post #42

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

"Estuary English" is the closest to the "default" there is today. RP is coded posh, Estuary is "vaguely from around London" without any particular colouring.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#285

Post by pif »

yhager wrote: post #190
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…

There is no such thing as "English pronunciation". English does not have a regulatory body like Spanish or German have. There are many English dialects, and sounds (and meanings) vary, A LOT. It's up to you whether you want to try and assimilate the local dialect of where you live right now, or you want to simply understand and be understood. There are many non-native speakers who are extremely easy to understand, ev…

> The English spelling is guided by meaning

As a native Italian, I'm convinced that using the Latin alphabet without embracing phonetic spelling can only be driven by idiocy ;-)

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#286

Post by pif »

yhager wrote: post #190
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…

There is no such thing as "English pronunciation". English does not have a regulatory body like Spanish or German have. There are many English dialects, and sounds (and meanings) vary, A LOT. It's up to you whether you want to try and assimilate the local dialect of where you live right now, or you want to simply understand and be understood. There are many non-native speakers who are extremely easy to understand, ev…

> There is no such thing as "English pronunciation". English does not have a regulatory body like Spanish or German have.

Well well... as it is called English, scholars from cultural institutions rooted in England are the reference. Everybody else is free to speak their own language, but one is proper English, while the others are at most somewhere-English.

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#288

Post by butokai »

pif wrote: post #285
yhager wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as "English pronunciation". English does not have a regulatory body like Spanish or German have. There are many English dialects, and sounds (and meanings) vary, A LOT. It's up to you whether you want to try and assimilate the local dialect of where you live right now, or you want to simply understand and be understood. There are many non-native speakers who are extremely easy to understand, ev…

> The English spelling is guided by meaning As a native Italian, I'm convinced that using the Latin alphabet without embracing phonetic spelling can only be driven by idiocy ;-)

And that's why the Italian alphabet comprises tʃ, dʒ, ɲ, ŋ: so that no letter is ever associated with two different phonemes!

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#289

Post by Amezarak »

radicalbyte wrote: post #261
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…

> word like "color" has two "o" letters but neither of them makes an "ou" sound That it why we spell it as "colour" in English. Americans removed the "u" from their dialect which makes a needlessly complicated language even more so. Learning Dutch really opened my eyes as to how terrible English is as a written language. The funny thing is that it's mirrored in our law - English law is all about case law and presiden…

This is completely incorrect. "Color" was spelled "color" in England throughout its history. "Colour" was a later variant that came along later and existed alongside "color" for many years. America eventually standardized on the "color" variant and the UK standardized on the "colour" variant. If you have any doubts about this, you can search on books.google.com for +"color" and look through books published in the UK to see that this is the case. For example, here is a book published in 1756 printed in London by an Irishman in which he consistently uses "color":

https://www.google.com/books/edition/An_Essay_on_Waters/UWtb...

You can find many other things of interest in here, like the use of the medial s, which only died out in the mid 1800s and makes reading old texts very annoying.

It's important to remember that for centuries in English, there was no such thing as standardized spelling. You spelled it how you felt it should be spelled. This extended even to people's own names. This didn't really change until the late 1700s-1800s.

Etymologically, the word comes from the Latin "color" via the Old French "color."

Re: Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation

#290

Post by dontlaugh »

pif wrote: post #286
yhager wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as "English pronunciation". English does not have a regulatory body like Spanish or German have. There are many English dialects, and sounds (and meanings) vary, A LOT. It's up to you whether you want to try and assimilate the local dialect of where you live right now, or you want to simply understand and be understood. There are many non-native speakers who are extremely easy to understand, ev…

> There is no such thing as "English pronunciation". English does not have a regulatory body like Spanish or German have. Well well... as it is called English, scholars from cultural institutions rooted in England are the reference. Everybody else is free to speak their own language, but one is proper English, while the others are at most somewhere -English.

That’s a particularly bad example, as accents vary more within England than in most other English speaking countries. Cockneys and Geordies sound nothing alike and there is no way to have unified and consistent spelling between them.
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