How to Improve Your Spoken American English and Sound like a Native Speaker

Today, we’re going to study American  English conversation by using this  

scene from friends. We’re going to do a full  pronunciation analysis so you understand how  

everything is pronounced, this is going  to increase your listening comprehension  

when you’re watching American  movies and TV. First, the scene.

Hey guys.

Hey.

What’s in the bag?

Mmm, just some presents.

Come on, show us what you bought.

You know you want to.

Okay.

Okay, this is a picture  frame from Ben to my parents.

That’s cute.

I got some hers and hers  towels for Susan and Carol.

Cool.

And uh, I got this blouse for mom.

Ross, that is gorgeous!

Yeah?

Now let’s do the in-depth  analysis of everything we heard.

Hey guys.

Hey is a very common greeting  in American English. Hey guys  

as well often used to address a  group of friends. Hey guys, uh.

Hey guys.

All connected, part of one phrase, one  idea. We don’t really feel separate  

words here. Hey guys. So just one big  up down, smooth and connected phrase.

Hey guys.

Hey.

Monica says ‘Hey.’ Really clear falling off there,  

little up at the beginning and hey, falling  down in pitch, Chandler’s is much faster.

Hey.

But this is the general way that  we pronounce statements. A little  

up and then falling off pitch. Hey, hey. Hey guys.

Hey.

What’s in the bag?

Here we have a really good example  of stressed and unstressed words  

in American English. ‘What?’ our question  word and bag, our noun are both stressed.

What’s in the bag?

If you love this kind of in-depth analysis  of American English pronunciation, I really  

encourage you to check out my online courses  at rachelsenglishacademy.com. We have one on  

all sorts of different Hollywood scenes, there  are over 50 there to choose from, from movies,  

from TVs and in all of them, we take a scene,  we study it, we do that in-depth pronunciation  

analysis together. The best part though is  each video comes with an audio soundboard  

so you can train the little mini phrases  yourself and really get it into your voice.

You can see it.

And when you listen in slow motion,  it helps you really hear the rhythm,  

the stress and the linking. So be sure to check  

out rachelsenglishacademy.com.  Let’s get back to our scene.

What’s in the bag?

So, longer on what’s and bag and in the said very  quickly. Also, there’s no separation here. It’s  

one thought, everything is linked together.  It’s really important to know in American  

English that we have stressed and unstressed  words and the unstressed words are said very,  

very quickly. So we don’t want them to be  all clearly and fully pronounced. We want  

in and the to be in the, in the,  in the. So fast, a little quieter.

What’s in the --

So what’s, a little bit longer, a little bit  louder and also bag, a little bit longer,  

a little bit louder and the up down  shape of stress. What’s in the bag?

What’s in the bag?

Mmm,

Just little m sounds as he’s thinking.

Mmm,

Just some presents.

Just some presents. Two longer  syllables. One is just. Just some  

presents. And then the other one is pre.  So they both have a change of direction,  

this is one of the ways that  we show a stressed syllable.

Just some presents.

Notice the T in just is dropped. It’s really  common to drop a t between two other consonants  

and here it’s between two S’s. So it’s just some,  just some. No T connecting with a single S sound.

Just some --

Also, notice the words some is not pronounced  some but it’s some. It’s said very quickly,  

it’s one of these unstressed words in  IPA, I would write it with the schwa  

which is an unstressed fast sound,  some, some, just some, just some.

Just some --

Just some presents.

Very smooth. No breaks between words. This linking  is one of the characteristics of spoken English,  

it can make it hard to understand  if you’re expecting every word to  

be clearly pronounced and separate from  other words. The more you study with me  

the more we study American English pronunciation,  

the more you’ll get used to this and the easier  it will be to understand native speakers.

Just some presents.

Notice the s in presents is a z  sound, zz, pre, pre, presents.

Presents.

Come on, show us what you bought.

Come on, come on. Really fast  on the word come. Come on,  

and then more length on the word on. Come on,  come on. Sometimes you’ll see this written C  

apostrophe m-o-n. C’mon. That’s how we  might take the vowel out of that first  

word and just link the m into the next word so  it’s k sound k-mon, come on, come on, come on.

Come on--

Show us what you bought.

Show us what you bought. [flap] So if we’re  studying the rhythm to make it easier to  

understand, then we see show us what you bought.  We see that show and bought are our stress words  

and ‘us what you’ are unstressed, flatter in  pitch, softer in volume and said more quickly.

Show us what you bought.

So the three unstressed words, us what you, us  what you, us what you, not very clear on their  

own, only clear in the whole sentence. So ‘us  what you’ we have a stop t here in the word what,  

what, what, what, us what you, us what you,  us what you, us what you. But see if you can  

really simplify your mouth movements and  just imitate us what you, us what you,  

us what you in order to match that pace. It’s  not going to be what you think. It’s not us  

what you but us what you, us what you, us what  you. We aim for that to be less clear. Because  

that’s the only way to make it fast enough and  it needs to be really fast so we have contrast  

with the stressed syllables because that’s  actually what makes English clear to us.

Us what you--

Bought.

Bought, bought. And another stop T  at the end there. What is a stop T.  

A stop T is one that doesn’t have tt,  that released t sound. Bought, bought,  

we stop the air at the end, bought, in our  throat or just with the tongue position,  

bought, bought. But it’s different from ba where  there is no consonant at the end. This is bought  

and that abrupt stop, even though it doesn’t  have t, is what sounds to us like a stop t,  

I have lots of videos on the stop T, you can  search Rachel’s English Stop T to find them.

Bought.

You know you want to.

You know you want to. So he slows it  down, he exaggerates things a little bit,  

you know, we’ve got a down up there for  our stressed word our verb. You know you  

want to. And then another stressed  up down on the other verb want.

You know you want to.

But it’s important to note the smoothness here  when he slows it down, we really hear how each  

word links into the next one with no break. You  know you want to. That’s exactly what we want  

every time we speak English. Want to, tt, tt,  that there is a little bit crisp true t there.  

So different that the stop T here, we do  hear t, t, a little bit of that release.

You know you want to.

Okay.

Okay. This is a word that can have either first  syllable word stress or second. Okay. Here,  

he kind of does both. Okay. Make sure you’re  doing a diphthong, two different sounds. Oh,  

your lips have to round a little bit more towards  the end of that to get the full sound. Oh, okay.

Okay.

So the next time he says it, we have a more  clear second syllable stress. Okay, okay.

Okay.

This is a picture frame from Ben to my parents.

Let’s listen just to this part  of the sentence a couple times,  

see if you can feel that some words are  longer, louder and higher in pitch than others.

This is a picture frame--

This is a picture frame, picture, we have some  up down stress there. Picture frame and then  

up down. Both these changes of pitch, both  of them are what we use to show stress. Pic,  

frame. It’s different than the other words  that are either flatter or just moving in  

one direction like up towards a peak of  stress. This is a, this is a. Picture  

frame. When we have a change of direction of  the melody that signals a stressed syllable.

This is a picture frame--

So this is a, less important, faster.  Let’s listen to just these three words.

This is a--

This is a, this is a, this is a, this is a.  Can you do that that quickly? Simplify your  

mouth movement as much as you can, make sure it  all links together smoothly. The S links right  

into the ih of is and then this which is actually  a z sound links right into the schwa, is a, is a,  

is a, is a. this is a, this is a, this is a, this  is a, this is a. Not very clear right? When we  

take these unclear, unstressed words in a row and  we listen to just them, we’re like hold on, that’s  

so unclear and actually sometimes I’ll play this  for a native speaker and they can’t understand  

it. But then when I play them the whole phrase,  they totally get it. This is a picture frame.

This is a picture frame.

The T here is actually making a ch sound.  Pic-chur, picture. Picture. It might sound  

like an sh to you. Picture, picture but in  the dictionary, you’ll see the symbol for the  

ch sound which is written like this if you look  up the phonetic symbol. Picture, picture frame.

Picture frame.

From Ben

From Ben. If I slow that down. From  Ben, I find that both of them are  

stressed. From Ben. Then he goes up a  little bit to show he’s not done. Well,  

who’s it for? It’s from Ben but who’s  it for? He’s going to keep going.

From Ben--

To my parents.

So, all linked together, sounds like one  word, one phrase and it’s just one scoop,  

down and up to my parents, parents. Why do we  have so many phrases that are going up at the  

end. The general pattern is the phrase goes  down at the end. Well, the phrase will go up,  

the pitch will go up at the end if we want  to signal we’re in the middle of a thought,  

we’re going to keep talking like here or if we’re  listing things. Like here, he’s just finished one  

thing, and now he’s going to list more. So when  you’re listing things, each things goes up until  

the last one goes down. To my parents. So let’s  just listen to this little phrase one more time.

To my parents.

To my parents. Par. So that’s our stressed  syllable, everything else is faster. To my  

is actually to my, to my, to my. So, a  little true T and then a schwa. That’s  

a reduced vowel. It’s not to but tt, tt. So  we can say it really quickly. To my, to my,  

to my, to my, to my. Can you make it that fast?  To my. Try it right now. To my, to my parents.

To my parents.

Aw, that’s cute.

Monica says ‘Aw,’ aw, really clear up down shape,  

that’s cute. That’s cute. The word that’s is  reduced just to the ts sound and and the ts  

sound is attached to cute. That’s  cute, that’s cute, that’s cute.

That’s cute.

Isn’t that funny? The word that’s, it’s and also  the word let’s can all reduce this way to just the  

ts sound attached to the next word. That's cute,  that’s cute. Do you notice? I’m not saying cute.  

I’m not releasing that T Monica doesn’t release  that T, it’s a stop T, cute. So a T is often a  

stop T at the end of a phrase or if the next word  begins with a consonant. That’s cute, that’s cute.

That’s cute.

I got some, uh,

I got some, uh. I got some, uh. I actually  love this so much because it really shows  

our linking. Some, uh, like this is the  thinking sound but it sounds like muh,  

because the m links into the vowel. We link  our words together so much that we even link  

words into sounds that aren’t words like this  thinking vowel. some, uh, some, uh, some, uh,

I got some, uh,

So, if there’s just one thing you take away from  this, I hope it is linking, linking, linking.

I got some, uh,

I got, I got, I got. Those two words  link together quickly, we have a stop t,  

it’s not I got. It’s also not I got.  Sort of tapering off into nothing.  

It’s got an abrupt stop, that’s the  stop t. I got, I got, I got some uh.

I got some, uh,

Hers and hers towels.

Hers and hers towels. Going up. Towels. He's  going to talk a little bit more about them.  

Also we got two stressed words. Hers and hers and  they both follow that pattern up and down. The  

word and reduces. It’s a little unstressed word in  there where we actually drop some of the sounds.

Hers and hers towels--

Hers and hers. So it actually sounds kind  of just like n and it links them together.  

The z links right into the n which goes right  into the h, no break at all. Hers and hers.

Hers and hers--

Now, keep in mind with the word hers that it’s  got this vowel that looks like the letter three  

sort of in IPA and it’s the r vowel, it’s the r  sound in vowel form. Hers, it’s also in earth,  

it’s in girl. So, you don’t need to try to make  a vowel sound that’s really separate from the  

r. Just from the h, her into an r-like  vowel sound. Hers, hers, hers and hers.

Hers and hers--

Hers and hers towels for Susan and Carol.

Towels. So he actually doesn’t really put  a break here, he keeps going. For Susan and  

Carol. So the two proper nouns, the two names  also have stress. For Susan and Carol. So they  

both have firs syllable stress. Su, Car and  are two other words that are less important,  

that are faster, they are both reduced. They  both have sounds that change. So this is not  

pronounced for. And it rarely is pronounced for  in conversation but what is it? Let’s listen.

For--

For, for. So not for but fer, fer. Hear  how it’s flat? It’s lower in pitch,  

it’s not very loud, there’s not a  ton of energy in it. It’s for, for,  

for. So, in phonetics, in IPA, I would  write that with an F and a schwa r,  

these two sounds blend together. So you can  think of it as just being no vowel. For, for,  

for, for Susan. For Susan. In the word Susan, the  first letter S is an S, the second letter S is  

a Z. S is tricky in English because sometimes  it’s an S sound and sometimes it’s a Z sound.

For Susan--

For Susan and Carol.

Just like here with hers and hers,  we have Susan and Carol and again  

the word and reduces to just the and  sound. Susan and, Susan and. Actually,  

the sound before is an N so think of it as like a  schwa n or you can think of it as being the word  

in Susan and, Susan and, Susan and Carol. But  it’s definitely not and fully pronounced is it?

Susan and Carol.

And, uh,

And, uh. Okay now, here he’s thinking, he’s  drawing it out a little bit more and now  

this same word, that was reduced in whole  thought, now that it’s on it’s own isn’t  

reduced. It’s fully pronounced. And uh, but  do you hear that? It links just like some,  

uh, and uh. The D links right into that  thinking vowel uh. This is the sound we  

make in American English when we’re thinking,  when we’re feeling uh or uhm. And different  

languages have different sounds that they  make when they’re thinking. For us, it’s uh,  

this really pure, open relaxed vowel in IPA,  we would write it like that. Uh, and uh.

And, uh,

I got this blouse for mom.

Now let’s listen to the rest  of his phrase and listen to  

it three times. See if you can feel  which words are the most stressed.

I got this blouse for mom.

I got this blouse. I got this blouse. A really fun  rhythm here. So short for I but then got has some  

length, I got, I got, I got. It’s not I but it’s  I like seriously how fast can you make that I, I,  

I got, I got, and it links together smoothly,  we have a little bit of a break there,  

a little lift so we feel that stop for the stop  t. I got, I got this. And then this again is low,  

is quiet, there’s less vocal energy in it, I got  this. And then we go up again for blouse. So,  

unstressed stressed then unstressed stressed.  I got this blouse [flap] I like sometimes to  

just say phrases on their rhythm [flap] so I can  really feel it, I think it’s a fun way to break  

down the language.

I got this blouse--

I got this blouse. A blouse is shirt, it’s a top  but it’s dressier that a T-shirt for example,  

something a little dressier. Now, I see  we have the word for and I’m wondering,  

are we going to hear the whole word  for or are we going to hear reduction?

I got this blouse for mom.

For mom. For mom. It’s definitely not for  mom but for mom. It just links right into  

that word. It’s jus part of that one, up down  shape that we’ve got. For mom. So we’re peeking  

on stress here for our noun and the word for  is just sliding up to it. And it’s reduced,  

drop that vowel. For, for, for. And I  don’t want for. I want for, for, so fast,  

for mom. I love it when I’m working with  my students in my live classes and we’re  

working on reductions and they get it but  they’re still making it twice as long as  

they need to because then I can say no, not  for but for, for, for. And once the start  

shortening it like that oh, my gosh, they  sound so natural speaking English. For mom.

For mom.

Ross,

Ross, Ross. So, her pitch is higher,  

this shows elevated excitement. Ross, it also  has a couple different pitch changes. Ross.

Ross,

Ross, that is gorgeous!

Yeah?

That is gorgeous! That is, both  said quickly, that is, that is,  

that is. She’s not linking them with the  flap T which she could, she’s making that  

a stop T. That is, that is. But they’re both  said very quickly before more length on gor,  

gorgeous. One up down shape of stress. First  syllable is stressed and the second syllable just  

falls away from that peak of stress. Gorgeous. And  this is a, we’ve got a lot of vowel letters here,  

just think of it as I. is, is, is. Gorgeous  like in kiss. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.

That is gorgeous!

Yeah?

Yeah?

He doesn’t open his mouth much for that, it sounds  a little trapped, yeah? But we know what he means,  

the intonation going up here, this time it’s  asking a question. So the intonation goes up  

to signal we’re not done with the thought,  if we’re listing things or if we’re asking  

a yes no question. That’s what’s happening here,  yeah? He’s asking for confirmation like oh, wow,  

you really think it’s gorgeous? You think she’ll  like it? Of course Monica is being sarcastic here,  

she does not the mom will like it, she does not  think that the blouse is gorgeous at all, she  

think it’s hideous. She think it’s terrible. What  do you think of the blouse? Would you wear it?

Yeah?

Giving gifts can be stressful right? Let’s  listen to the whole conversation one more time.

Hey guys.

Hey.

Hey.

What’s in the bag?

Mmm, just some presents.

Come on, show us what you bought.

You know you want to.

Okay. Okay, this is a picture  frame from Ben to my parents.

Aw, that’s cute.

I got some, uh, hers and hers towels for Susan  and Carol. And, uh, I got this blouse for mom.

Ross, that is gorgeous!

Yeah?

Thank you so much for studying with me,  love doing this kind of scene analysis.  

If you like this kind of exercise, I have  many, many lessons like this in my Academy  

where we’re taking scenes from movies and TV  and we’re doing a full analysis then you have  

a soundboard to work with the audio so that  you can really take what you’ve learned and  

get it into your body to transform your own  accent. If this sounds interested to you,  

check out Rachelsenglishacademy.com. In the  meantime, please subscribe with notifications on,  

I absolutely love being your English teacher.  And you can keep your learning going right now  

with this video. That’s it and thanks  so much for using Rachel’s English.