Speak like a Canadian

Hello there, everyone out there. My name is Ronnie. Have you ever had someone, a native

speaker, ask you a question, and you had no idea what they said to you? I'm sure you have.

We, as native speakers, speak really, really quickly, especially if we don't know that

you are not a native speaker. Because in Canada, we have people from all over the world. There

is not one person that looks Canadian. So when we speak to people on the street or in

the shop, we don't know that they don't speak or understand English. So we tend to speak

very quickly, especially when we ask questions. So today, I'm going to teach you how to understand

native speakers' questions. There are about three or four techniques that you can use

with the question form. The first one, you will read in your textbooks, or if you're

studying English, the question would be, "What are you doing?" And then you come to a native

English-speaking country, and people say, "What are you doing?" And you say, "What?

What are you doing? What are you -- what are you doing? What are you doing?" So you get

your dictionary, and you go, "What are you -- how do you spell 'what are you'? What are

you -- what are you doing? Doing? Doing? Do -- do -- doing? I don't know. I have no idea."

So this is how we change it. "What are you doing?" We say, "Whatcha doing?" "Hmm? What?"

What changes -- we drop the "t". We say, "Whatcha doing?" These are the changes that we will

make. In English, when we speak very quickly, we usually drop the "g" at the end of -ing

verbs. So we say, "doing", "watching", "having". The other thing is, "Are you?" We say, "Are

ya?" It's just like writing "are" and the word "ya". So I can say, "What are you doing?"

or, "What are ya doing?" Changes even more to, "Whatcha doing? Whatcha? Whatcha? Whatcha

doing?" Try and say that. "Whatcha doing?" The trick is to say it all together. You can't

say, "Whatcha doing?" You just have to say, "Whatcha doing?" Try that. "Whatcha doing?"

I'm honking my horn.

The next one is, "Who do you like?" You will never hear people say to you, "Hello. Who

do you like?" They'll say, "Who do ya like? Who do ya like? Who do ya? Who do ya?" That

sounds like a new word, "Who do ya like?" So we change "who do", "you", again we change

to "ya", and we actually squish "who do you" all together. We say, "Who do ya?" "Who do

ya like?" "Who do ya see?" "Who do ya want?" So the verb stands on its own in this sentence,

which is easier. We actually pronounce this verb, but we squish all of these ones together.

The next one is, "When did you go?" Now, as I've told you, "you", we usually change to

"ya", but sometimes we can change it to a "ja" sound. "Did", we keep the same, but we

say, "When did ya?" "When did ya?" "When did ya go?" Again, we keep this and it stands

alone. So instead of saying, "When did you go?" Native speakers would say, "When did

ya go?" "When did ya go?" Try that, "When did ya go?" Other one, this one is easier.

Yay, this is easy. "Where is she?" People will not say, "Where is she?" People will

say, "Where's she?" "Where's she?" So it's like we completely take out this, and we put

in a "z" or a "z" in American English, and we'd say, "Where's she?" "Where is she?" "Where's

she?" "Where's he?" "Where's he?" "Where's they?" "Where are they?" "Where are they?"

"Where are they?" Next one, "Why did he do that?" We're going to connect this, these

two together. So we don't say, "Why did he?" We say, "Why diddy?" "Dee." "Diddy" changes

to "dee." "Why dee?" "Why dee do that?" "Why dee do that?" "Why dee do that?" So, I encourage

you to practice saying these phrases. If you cannot say them perfectly, do not worry. The

important thing is that you understand when people ask you the question. For you to be

able to actually say these phrases really quickly, it will take practice, but you can

try. If you can keep on practicing these, maybe you can speak into a digital recorder

or tape recorder and listen to yourself. A lot of people ask me, "Ronnie, how can I improve

my pronunciation?" The best thing to do is get a lot of words that you want to listen

to or you want to try to say, and record your voice so that you know what you sound like.

This will help you. You can listen to it and go, "Oh, that sounds strange." Or, "Yes, that

was awesome." So, I hope you had a great time. What did you do on the weekend? Tell me. Until

next time, bye-bye.