10 Tips to Understand Natives 100%

Ice cream? A lot of soy in? I had to color? 

I-- I go to... Hey! Has this ever happened to you?  

Have you ever been listening to natives and it  sounded nothing like what you were expecting?  

Well, in today's lesson we will look at some  of the main sounds in American English as well  

as connected speech patterns. So if you want  to improve your pronunciation and even be able  

to understand fast speaking natives, then this  lesson is for you. And here at RealLife English  

every single week we make lessons like  this that help you to stop feeling like a  

lost and insecure English learner and become a  confident natural English speaker. So join our  

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So if you've been learning English for a  while, you probably already know that often  

instead of saying "going to" we reduce it to  "gunna." For example "I'm gonna go change"  

or "I'm gonna go get another espresso." However,  did you know that we can reduce gonna even more?

Well, I'm 'unna get another espresso. Uh...  More latte? And if you want to take it even  

a step further, you can reduce "I'm going to"  to I'ma. Now, this used to be considered more  

street English, but now all the time it's  becoming more common in everyday English. 

Jokes on you they was always  friends now I'ma get my immunity.

If you're like most learners, then you're  probably terrified of accidentally saying  

"I'm going to go to the bitch", right? This is  because it's very difficult for most learners to  

distinguish between the long EE and the short IH  sound in English. But really it's quite simple,  

it just requires a lot of practice to make sure  that you're saying the right sound and so that  

you can identify it when you hear it. So we have  the long EE where you have to kind of smile so...

And the short IH is much more  neutral, your mouth barely moves.  

Let's look at some examples  to help you to practice this.

Another interesting reduction that  happens in pretty much every accent of  

English is the 've or of preposition being  reduced to an uh, schwa sound in English.  

So this happens when we have  a contraction. For example... 

Which we can all reduce just to that schwa sound: However this also happens with the word "of"  

which we get rid of that v sound and it just  becomes a schwa as well. So we have phrases like 

It's pretty amazing how this happens in the  negative form as well. So if we want to say... 

That can become a contraction: But then it can also be reduced even more to:

All right, so let's do a checkpoint to  test how you're doing so far. We're going  

to have a couple more of these so always be  prepared for a quiz. So the first question,  

listen to the clip and try to identify which  version of the going to reduction you hear.

Now listen to me and fill in the blanks.

Now you read the sentence out loud  first and then listen to me say it  

to compare to see how you did with pronunciation.

I hear learners pronounce incorrectly the past  tense of regular verbs all the time. It's this  

-ed ending that tends to trick people up because  we can have three different possibilities for  

how to pronounce this. So we can have a  T sound at the end in words like worked,  

fixed, watched. We can have just a d sound at  the end in words like played, stayed, tried.  

And if we have a t or a d before the  past tense, then we get a full ed sound.  

So that's in words like wanted, decided, rented.

Maybe you've noticed before that Americans often  change the t sound in words where the t comes  

between two vowels. We call this an American t  and it sounds very similar to the r sound in some  

Latin languages like Spanish and Portuguese. It's  just a quick tap of your tongue behind your teeth.  

So let's look at some examples: However this doesn't just happen  

in individual words, it can happen in connected  speech as well where we have a word ending in  

a t and being followed by a vowel as long as  it's also preceded by a vowel. So for example:

By the way, why don't you practice some  of these pronunciation skills that you're  

gaining in today's lesson with learners from  all over the world? Now you might be asking me  

"How can I do that? I don't know anyone from  other places!" We made it super simple for you  

with the RealLife App. Now this is the  only place where at the touch of a button  

anytime, anywhere you can connect with  learners from around the world and have  

fascinating conversations about whatever  interests you. Be that your passions, your jobs,  

your dreams. Just look at what one of our users  Clyde says about his experience. He says... 

Just like Clyde you can improve your speaking  skills and, again, practice everything that you're  

learning today by downloading the RealLife App  for free by clicking up here or down description  

below. Or you can simply search for RealLife  English in the Apple App or Google Play Store.

The schwa is perhaps one of the most important  sounds to master in English and unfortunately it  

doesn't exist in a lot of other languages.  It's the simple unstressed uh uh sound.  

In fact, a lot of times I like to  tell my students that, you know,  

we tend to think culturally the English speakers  are pretty lazy and this is reflected even in  

the language because this sound is super lazy.  You don't really do anything with your mouth,  

you just barely open it and go uh uh. And this  is really important, because it's the most common  

sound in virtually every accent of English. It's  also a sound that we'll use when we're speaking,  

so don't fall into the bad habit of using the  same sound you'd use in your native language. Try  

using the schwa sound instead. So that would be  something like: I don't know. Uh... I'm not sure

And almost all unstressed sounds in words and  sentences have this schwa sound in them. So  

let's take a look at how you can find the schwa  sound in a word. First you need to look at or  

listen to the word and isolate the vowel sounds.  So let's use the word construction, for example.  

Next you'll find the primary  stressed syllable in that word.

And then, finally, as we heard before. Usually  unstressed syllables use that schwa sound,  

so probably besides that stressed syllable  all the other ones will be schwa's.

By the way if you want to learn all  about how to find and use the schwa,  

we made this lesson recently talking all about  it as well as a podcast really diving deep  

into how to master the schwa sound and sound more  natural when you speak English. You can find those  

by looking in the description down below. All  right, are you ready for checkpoint number two?  

Let's take a look at that  simple past tense pronunciation  

that we covered before. Be sure to pause the  video if you need. All you have to do is look  

at the different words and sort them to how  they are pronounced. You ready? Let's go.

Another type of word that we almost always reduce  is pronouns. And some of these will even drop  

letters so that's the case with pronouns like he,  him, her and them. We drop the h or we drop the th  

in the case of them. So let's listen  to how this sounds in real sentences.

This is a super tricky sound in American English.  So much so that if you have confusion around it,  

you should definitely check out the full lesson  that we made all about it. But let's look at it  

briefly in today's lesson. So we have this t  plus vowel plus n, first of all we're going  

to pretty much fully drop the vowel. It almost  disappears altogether. Next, when we make that t,  

typically when we make a t, we do a plosive sound  right. What you're going to do is stop your tongue  

behind your teeth before that plosive sound is  able to be made. So let's look at an example.

And the final thing is that by  doing that by pulling our tongue up,  

we're going to force the air out of our  nose to make that n sound. So it becomes:

If that end sounds hard for you, just practice  it and because you're naturally blocking here,  

it will eventually come out. Just try to feel that  sound in your nose. Just to give you a few more  

examples, I'll say them and then repeat after me  trying to say it as closely as to how I said it.

Let's look at some more sound morphing. So we have  two more cases with the t and the d combining with  

certain vowels. And this happens in certain words  with the y. Particularly with the pronoun YOU. Now  

if YOU is preceded by a d or a t, those two uh  sounds come together and they morph. So if we  

have a t and a y it actually becomes a ch sound.  If we have a d and a y it becomes a J sound. So  

let's take a look at some examples to make this  more clear. I'll say them and you repeat after me. 

However we can reduce this even more to a schwa  sound. That often happens with the pronoun you  

is that we'll change it to ya. By the way, using gotcha can be  

a really great alternative to saying "I  understand" or "I heard what you said" 

And in the same way, here we can say: All right, yime for your final checkpoint  

and then we have one more pronunciation tip  before we wrap up today's lesson so first  

read the sentence out loud and then listen  to me say it to check your pronunciation.

Alright now listen to me and  choose the correct option

Now while this last sound doesn't  interfere with your communication,  

it does help to add extra nuance and helps you to  sound even better and more natural when you speak.  

So did you know that there are two ways  that you can pronounce the s sound?  

It can either have a s sound or a z sound. But  how can you know when it's supposed to sound like  

or when it's supposed to sound like z.  So let's take a look at an advanced trick  

so many times the s in nouns and adjectives has  a s sound. Let's take a look at a few examples 

the S in verbs tends to have a Z sound. So  let's look at some examples of verbs with this. 

Pretty cool isn't it? Check out these examples  with full sentences. The s's in blue have a s  

sound while the s's in red have a z sound. If you  don't use what you learn, knowledge is useless. 

You know, the letter s in english  is such a fascinating sound and we  

just don't have the time to cover all about  it in today's lesson. So would you like  

another lesson that's talking all about the  different nuances of the s sound in English?  

Then be sure to leave a comment down below saying  I want another lesson all about the s sound. If  

there are many requests, then we'll definitely  create a lesson on it to keep learning more about  

pronunciation. Then next I highly recommend  that you check out this lesson where we give  

you some tips on how you can speak English  faster. So let's check out a clip from that.