How to speak English FASTER (without sounding unclear) 💫| Fast speech in American English

Hey there it's Hadar and today we're gonna talk about fast English and how to

speak English faster. Now there are two types of fast English the good fast and

the bad fast.

The good fast is normal American speech

that is considered as fast by non-native speakers and today we're going to talk

about that and the three things you need to in order to be a good fast English speaker.

The bad fast is that when you just speed up your entire speech and you

sound something like this

well the noise twelve years old growing up on Long

Island owes a several palsy fair few blocks away at my house and they not

said they would donate two thousand dollars to serve applause for anyone the

broken Guiness record so at first I wanted to ride the roller coaster at

Coney Island so I called Coney Island they said hey kit take a hike you're 12

years old when I gonna let you strap yourself into the cycle

And the reason why it's bad fast and it doesn't matter whether you're a native speaker

or a non-native speaker is because it makes you sound unintelligible

unclear

and a lot of times people associate fluency with speaking fast right

so and they think that if they were to slow down it would reflect on their fluency and their level of English

and it's gonna sound like their English is not good enough

which is a huge mistake. First because when you speak fast your brain and mouth

are not usually synced you lose your breath and you start making silly mistakes

that you wouldn't normally make.

Also when you speak fast you don't allow

the long vowels in English to exist and then you start narrowing down sounds

the accent is more noticeable and then the result may be that the words are less clear.

So ultimately you are going to be less clear when you speak fast.

And also you need to allow what you say to sink in with the other person.

And when you speak fast you don't give that time for them to understand what you're actually saying.

So this type of fast speech is not something that you want to go for.

However, if you want to speak English faster I'm going to tell you

the three things that you need to take into consideration to be a good fast English speaker.

You have to understand that not all words are created equal.

For some words you might want to go really really fast and speed up through them

and for other words you might want to slow down.

Words that deliver the message, words that carry the content,

words that describe something are words that you need to take your time with.

These are usually the nouns and the adjectives and the adverbs.

And in comparison to that words, that connect those words, all the small words.

All those words that we usually confuse when we try to structure a sentence.

So all of those words are less important, I don't have to emphasize them.

Those are the words that you want to speed through.

So let's look at an example.

read this sentence out loud for me, please.

Now if you're we don't take into consideration

that not all words are created equal

then we will put

the same emphasis on each and every word.

'If I had gone to bed early instead of

watching Netflix all night

I would have been a lot more focused today'.

So let's say I say it fast.

right if I just say everything faster

it's going to be hard to understand what I'm trying to say.

And maybe just simply unclear.

So not all words are created equal.

So here if we look at the sentence we need to look

and see what are the most important words.

Is it 'If'?

Is it 'I?

Is it 'had'?

We can see that some words are going to help me convey the message better

than the other words.

So, for example,

the word 'gone' or 'bed'

or 'early' and 'Netflix'

are going to be a little more important than

'had'

or 'to'

or'of'.

It's not that these words are less important .

They're important to structure the sentence

or at least a grammatical sentence

but I don't need to emphasize them okay

and even within the words that I've mentioned right

'bed', 'early', 'Netflix' ,

even among them they're words that I

might want to slow down more on

and other words I might want to say a little faster right

I'm going to slow down on the words that convey my message

If I've GONE to BED EARLY

instead of watching NETFLIX all night

I would have been

a LOT MORE FOCUSED today.

So these words are going to be pronounced a little slower

but for the rest of the words I can go faster okay.

So you need to detect the words that will convey your message

in the clearest way

and the rest of the words

can be a little faster okay.

So there is a balance

between the more important and the less important

when the more important is slower

and the less important is faster.

Usually function words 'on, in, at, could, would, should

am, is, are,

has, have, a, an, the, this, that'

function words are usually less important.

So usually these words are going to be pronounced faster

but that's not just itю

Here are two other things that can really get you to speak English faster.

The second thing you need to take into consideration

if you want to be a good fast speaker of English

is that you need to tame your tongue in order to control your speed.

So a lot of times people confuse fast speech

with reduced speech.

All those less important words

function words,

'on, in, at, could, would, should, am, is, are'.

are usually reduced when they're unstressed.

So whatever vowel you have in them

this vowel is pronounced as a reduced vowel, which is the schwa.

Let me explain

So for example, if I take the word 'and'

'and'

here I have a pure vowel ə

when I say it properly

'and' right

and then my tongue is doing something like this

'əəəənd'

now when this word is unstressed I completely reduce the vowel there

and instead of pronouncing the 'əəəənd'

I just pronounced it as 'nd, 'nd

so if this is my tongue for the 'ə'

this is my tongue for the 'nd,

'bread-and-butter' ,

'ladies and gentlemen' ,

boys and girls

'n, 'n, 'n.

So it's completely reduced.

So you need to train your tongue and control your tongue

and ultimately tame your tongue

because right now it's doing its own thing.

You have no idea whether it's going up or down,

when you want to stick it out it comes in,

when you want to pull it back it goes out .

Sometimes it behaves like a little toddler that does its own thing

and doesn't listen to anything that you say.

So that's your tongue.

So you need to train it and tame it

and control it

and when it comes to those words instead of pronouncing the full vowel

you need to teach your tongue to go down

and pronounce this very neutral sound

'ən'

Instead of 'on' you say 'ən',

instead of 'of' you say 'əv'.

Okay, get the point?

So all of these words,

dozens of words are actually pronounced

with this very reduced vowel

that the only way to be able to do that

is by training your tongue and teaching it

to pronounce these words differently.

So it's not at all about going fast,

it's not at all about just saying one word after another

really really fast without breathing.

No! It's about changing the position of your tongue.

So if we go back to our sentence

Let's take a look at what happens there.

If I had gone to bed early

if I had gone to bed early

So

the content words here are

BED, GONE and EARLY.

GONE, BED, EARLY.

The function words here are

IF, I, HAD and TO.

so instead of just thinking:

'okay, I'm just gonna say them fast'.

change the vowel in them into that schwa sound

so instead of 'If' you pronounce 'uhf'

Now what happens here is that

instead of pronouncing a vowel that is this long

'I'

you pronounce a vowel that is just shorter

uhf

You're changing the pronunciation

but ultimately it changes the length of the word

because it's a shorter word.

IF - UHF

I'm not saying it faster

I'm just changing the vowel

'I had'

I want to connect those two words together

to contract them

and instead of saying 'I had' with a pure a sound

I will probably drop the H

and the 'a' will turn into ə

I'd, I'd, I'd,

I'd,

'if I'd gone to bed'

to

listen what happens to the word 'to'.

if I'd-gone t'bed.

So instead of saying the full u sound

I'm just pronouncing it again with the schwa

to − t', t', t'

and the t also turns into a D

but that's another story.

That's another lesson

If I'd GONE to BED EARLY

instead of watching NEFTLIX all night

okay

I-wudda-b'n, I-wudda-b'n, I-wudda-b'n

would have been

Again I'm reducing

'would' turns into'wud',

'have' turns into 'əv'

I actually dropped the H, drop the V.

Function words are less important I take out some sounds

and I take the vowel and I change it.

I reduce it, I lower it, I flatten it

and I shorten it.

Okay

and then when I put it all together

everything is more squeezed in together

and it sounds like it's fast but it's not fast

just squeezed in together

and the pronunciation has changed

okay

'It would have been a lot more focus today'.

And I slowed down on the parts that are more important

A LOT and FOCUSED.

Now let's try together

'If would have gone to bed early

instead of watching Netflix all night

I would have been a lot more focus today.

Third thing is that you need to chill out

okay

because it's not enough

that you choose the right words to reduce

it's not enough that you

actually reduce the vowels in the words that are less important

to function words

if you still invest a lot of energy

in those parts that are supposed

to be spoken a little faster

in those parts that are a little as important

okay

because if you enunciate every single consonant super clearly

and you invest a lot of energy in it

then you're gonna get stuck

then everything is going to feel heavy

and you won't have that nice flow that you're looking for

and you won't be able to transition from one sound to another smoothly.

Let's take a different example this time.

Let's begin with a full pronunciation

and maybe that might be how you are pronouncing it right now.

'I don't know what I'm going to do about it'.

Normal speech:

I don't know what I'm gonna do about it.

Now I know it seems like I said it really really fast

but let's break it down.

Now I'm gonna prove to you that I didn't just say it fast I

did those three things.

One, I chose the right words to stress

and what words I don't want to stress

and then I changed the pronunciation in the words that

I don't want to stress

and third

I chilled out.

So I pronounce those parts that are less stressed effortlessly,

I invested very little energy, a lot less energy in the words that I did want to stress.

I don't know what I'm gonna do about it.

Know, do.

First of all you can see right away that these two words are more stressed.

They stick out more, they're longer.

Everything else is sort of reduced.

I. I just said it kind of fast and low.

'I don't know'. I cannot reduce these words to a schwa no is a verb anyway.

So I can't reduce it but I just said it effortlessly, softly.

don't know

Notice that consonants are so soft.

I'm not saying 'Don't know' right

The consonants are super-super soft 'I don't know' .

It's like I'm investing 50% of the energy that I would normally invest

in pronouncing a word separately.

I don't.

And then we have this chunk 'what I am going to'.

Listen to how it sounds:

wuh-daim-g'nna

what-wuh, I am -I'm, going to - .

g'nna, g'nna.

that's' how I reduce it.

So I reduce the vowel and I also connected it

and then I just set it together with very little effort.

what I'm gonna do

what I'm gonna

what I'm gonna do

what I'm gonna

and then I have the time to linger on the 'do'

do

what I'm gonna do

about it.

it-it.

See how a reduce it as well

about it.

I did not say it fast necessarily.

I just reduced it.

What I'm gonna do about it.

I don't know what I'm gonna do about it.

Now I know that chilling out in your speech is not something easy

and you might have to work on it.

Sometimes the hardest thing is to dial it down, is to say everything with less effort.

but it would only do you good.

I always tell my students to imagine English as this classy lady dressed in

black sitting on the couch holding a glass of wine.

She doesn't want to work hard.

She doesn't want to mingle with all you know with all the people there.

She's just like chilling

and that's what you need to think about and that's how you need to feel when you say:

What I'm gonna

What I'm gonna do.

What I'm gonna do about it.

You can choose your own imagery of English if you want but that's mine

That's my. That's how I see my English okay.

She doesn't need to work hard.

People come to her okay.

What I'm gonna do

I don't know what I'm gonna do about it okay.

Okay, let's wrap it up.

To be able to speak English fast, faster

and to be a good fast speaker of English

here are the things that you need to do:

1. Understand that some words are pronounced slower

but other words can be pronounced faster.

So you don't need to just speed up your entire speech.

2. The words that are less important you need to change your pronunciation

tame your tongue, control your speed.

So instead of pronouncing the full vowel you're pronouncing a shorter vowel,

a reduced vowel and that is the schwa sound.

And it happens throughout the entire speech as you pronounce function words

all those small words that connect content words.

And 3. when you have those chunks and parts that are a little more reduced

that you want to go a little faster you have to chill out

and invest a lot less energy in the pronunciation of the consonants in the entire chunk

because that's the only way for it to come out smoothly and effortlessly okay.

Remember that practice makes better.

So you have to do it over and over again.

Understanding it is not enough you have to do it and drill it and practice it.

Now if you're looking for good sentences to practice with

and to implement everything that we've done here

then come on over to my website and in the blog post where I posted this video

I added a bunch of sentences that you can practice with.

So I'm inviting you to come and check it out and practice

and while you're there be sure to subscribe to my newsletter.

So you can get a new video lesson to your inbox every single week.

I don't spam, I promise.

So thank you for watching.

Have a wonderful beautiful lovely day fast and slow.

And I will see you next week in the next video, bye.