Guys, do you know how to pronounce correctly the following English words?
Today, I found the perfect way to teach you these difficult words.
Guys, today you'll learn how to pronounce these words, and guess who will teach you!
Ha-ha, you thought I was going to teach you?
Guys, I love to teach you slang, a little bit of Grammar...
But when it comes to pronunciation, you'll need a real teacher!
If you ask me how to pronounce "squirrel", I'll tell you: "Just say it! Squirrel!".
This NY neighborhood, Little Italy! Don't you know it?
That's why I won't teach you this.
Who will? A Cambly teacher - you know what Cambly is, we have made videos for Cambly before.
It's a platform on which you get in touch with English teachers immediately, a native-speaker, 24/7.
It may be a Canadian, an American, an Australian or a British teacher, and you'll practice one-on-one.
And if there's a teacher you like, you can schedule lessons with her or him.
But if you need to study at a different time everyday, if you're disorganized, there are always teachers there.
But, first of all...
(Can I say "antes de mais nada"? "Antes de que mais nada"? Is it Portuguese or Spanish?)
Well, I don't know!
There's a link in the description box, you'll get 15 minutes of a lesson for free when you sign up
Then you can try it and see if you like it.
So I picked a teacher rated highly, contacted him, and he was great in explaining English pronunciation.
So, I'll get in another lesson with him now, and we'll decipher together, him and I
how to pronounce these difficult words in English.
- Hey, Dan! - Hey Seth!
Dan, I understand you are a Canadian living in Mexico? That's what Cambly tells me.
Cambly is correct!
Listen, I really need some help explaining to Brazilians how to pronounce some american words.
Is this something you can help me with? Are you good at teaching pronunciation?
I like to think I am, I've been teaching pronunciation for about ten years, I've been teaching English for twelve.
Before you even do that, should I be worried, as a Brazilian, to have a Canadian teaching me,
as opposed to an American? How similiar are...?
Nah, especially for non-native speakers, people are learning English as a second language
I don't think anybody can tell the difference between an American and a Canadian.
Quite honestly, I can't tell the difference.
Okay, let me ask you about some of these very difficult words. Let's start with a killer one: world.
You can do it sound by sound, okay. There are four sounds.
I always tell people it's very, very important not to confuse letters with sounds,
because sometimes in English they're not always the same.
And I always tell people, too, that in order to make any sound or to say any word in any language
you have to have your mouth in the correct position.
And your mouth consists of, you could say, four or four and a half things:
Your lips, your tongue, your teeth, your jaw.
Maybe you could add a fifth thing, or a fourth and a half thing, is your throat.
Some sounds you use your voice for, or your voice makes the vibration.
Some sounds are like a whisper. Like a "ch". You're not using your voice.
Getting back to "world", so the first sound is "wo...", and most of the sound here comes from your lips.
And you're using your voice. So you purse your lips, as if you're giving a kiss, and it's just "wo"
The second sound is - this is a combination of the vowel "o" and the consonant "r",
you're combining them in the sound of "er"
Er?
Yeah, the "or" in "world" is pronounced like "er", just like "er", like "teacher"
How about the word "were"?
Yeah, you can say "ere" in the word "were" is the same as "or" in world
The next sound is the letter "L", which always makes the sound of (sound)
Now, that's a logn sound, which means you can extend it,
and you can say that sound for as long as you have breath in your lungs.
You are using your voice, so it's not a voiceless or an air, or a whispering sound.
So, now the (sound), to make the sound of (sound), your tongue has to be touching the roof of your mouth
And then the "d", it's short. This is similar do "L", and maybe this is why people have difficulty.
Your tongue has to be touching the roof of your mouth to make the sound of "d"
But the difference is, your tongue comes down very suddenly, very quickly.
So the "L", you're kind of going... the tongue is touching...
Right, and then if you put it all together, "world"
And, you know, these other words I have on my list here are not that different
"Squirrel", and that's the same sounds.
Some letters or sounds are easy to make, but to make the transition from one to another can be difficult.
Another thing is, the vowels are the problem. We just tend to flatten out some of these vowels,
we don't really pronounce them the way they're taught.
So, "squirrel", I'm not even pronouncing the "e".
You could make the argument that it's a one-syllable word, or a two-syllable word.
But English pronunciation in many ways is very lazy.
And it's okay, you're probably gonna sound more natural if you're lazy.
And some other words like that... "Restaurant": two syllables, but really it should be "res-tau-rant"
And same with "vegetable". People say "veg-table". Non-English speakers, they say "ve-ge-ta-ble"
And another one is "comfortable". Nobody says "com-for-ta-ble", we say "comfrtable"
Once you lose the vowel, then suddenly you've got "m", "f", "r" and "t", all in a row.
Wow, it's really five consonants.
A lot of these words that end in "able", most of them are not pronounced "able".
Like, it's not "comfort-able"
A problem that is very, very common for a lot of people is the difference between "can" and "can't"
because, typically, when you use "can't" in a sentence, you don't hear the "t" sound at the end.
For example, if I say "I can't help you", I'm not saying "I can'T help you", but as English speakers we know
the way you stress it. Because if the word is positive, if its this word ("can"), we say "I can help you"
But if we say "can't", we're really stressing the "a" in "can't"
English learners pronounce them both the same.
And sometimes, when a student will say "I can('t?) talk to you tomorrow", and I have to ask them, like I say,
"You CAN or you CAN'T talk to me tomorrow?"
Let's figure that out...
And then, when somebody answers, they pronounce it differently.
They don't say "Yes I c-n", they say "Yes, I can"
In the first one, "Yes, I cAn", we clearly hear a strong "a" sound, like "a", like "hat"
But if we add this, it changes back, "Yes, I c-n"
So, Brazilians seem quite often to pronounce the word "too" as "tchu"
(And you know you do it, okay? Let's fix this here and now.)
So, let's start from the most important question.
To, too and two: are they all pronounced the same?
There's zero difference, they're identical, They're not similar, they're 100% identical.
But, obviously, depending on how you use them, they might sound different.
Like, "I'm going to the store", I'm not gonna count "one, to, three, four, five"...
Exactly, yeah, now of course it depends on the words that surround them
If we're talking about the preposition "to", "I'm goint t' the store"
But, realistically, if you isolate them as words, the preposition "to", the other one like "also", is "too"
and the number, "two", exactly the same.
"Too" and "two" usually are stressed more.
Yeah, I don't think those are ever, ever, ever pronounced as "t-"
It's only the preposition "to" that is sometimes pronounced as "t-"
So I'm going to declare right now
You said it right there, you said "I'm going t-"
I'm going to declare that they're not all pronounced the same.
You could say that, you could put an asterisk beside that and say that's an exception.
So, I don't think the problem is with "to", it's with the ones that are really stressed, and they do seem to always say
"tchu"
So then what happens is, often I'll say, "Well, pronounce it like the pronoun in portuguese,
as the same pronoun in Spanish: tu"
But that's not quite what we say, either.
Again, just, you know, repeat. "To, to, to, to..."
It's very casual. I guess in Spanish and in Portuguese, the "tu", it's not really the pronunciation
It's more like the inflection.
Maybe it's a mental block. Maybe sometimes your eyes, and your ears, and your mouth lie to each other.
Where is the tongue there in "to"?
The only difference between the "t-" and the "d-" is your voice. Everything else is exactly the same.
Your tongue has start touching the roof of your mouth and then it comes down.
I always tell people, "Imagine you have a switch on your throat and you can turn your voice on and off,
like you're turning the lights on and off"
No change. The only thing I'm doing is changing, I'm whispering for the "t-", and I'm using my voice for the "d-"
And then "oo", which could be, like, a double "o", like "tooth"
Or in Spanish and Portuguese, the same sound, which is the sound of "u"
And this is, again, similar to, you know, you're pursing your lips and making almost like a kiss sound "oo"
And if you notice with that sound, that has nothing to do with the tongue
You can actually roll your tongue. I'm moving my tongue like this.
Maybe when they see the letter "w", they have some kind of mental block or something
or something just changes in their brain and sends bad information to their mouth.
Okay, I hope you liked this lesson. I liked it a lot. The kind of teacher I like.
He obviously has a lot of experience and knows how to explain things I couldn't even imagine.
The tongue, the mouth. Maybe you need a lesson, or continue this lesson with him.
You'll have 15 minutes for free, don't forget there's a link in the decription box.
Or perhaps you'd prefer another teacher to practice conversation, because it's only in conversation
that you'll improve your English.
One more announcement, Ask Amigo Gringo will be back on Fridays.
It's going to be shorter videos, but I miss posting videos on Fridays
If you know someone who REALLY needs to improve their pronunciation in Englih,
share this video with them.
And don't forget to like the video and subscribe to the channel... But you're already subscribed, right?
I think so...
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