Day 11 - Reducing TO, DO, DOES - Understanding Fast Speech in English

Hi there and welcome to Day 11.

Do you know what happens to the words TO and DO in fast speech?

Well, I'm about to tell you.

English with Jennifer

The words TO and DO both have a long U sound

when I say them slowly and carefully.

/tu/.../du/

But in fast speech these words are usually unstressed,

so either I change them to have a schwa sound

or it may even sound like I drop the vowel altogether.

For example:

Of course, I'm also changing the YOU to a YA

and we'll talk about that change soon,

but listen to how I change the DO to D'. D'ya know?

Another form of DO is DOES.

And this verb can also be reduced with a schwa sound.

Instead of "Does it matter?"

I could ask:

Remember that DO and DOES could be stressed,

so we don't always reduce the vowel sounds.

Look at these exchanges.

Listen.

So we say DO and DOES weakly

when we use these verbs as helping verbs to form a question.

And we reduce TO when it's part of an infinitve

or a prepositional phrase.

Listen closely.

I'll say a sentence or phrase.

You try to understand.

That's all for now.

Thanks for watching and happy studies!