AEE 2690: 3 Strange Things Americans Do with Pronunciation with Michael from Happy English

This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2690, Three Strange Things Americans Do with Pronunciation with Michael from Happy English. Welcome to the All Ears English Podcast, downloaded more than 200 million times. We believe in connection, not perfection, with your American host, Lindsay McMahon, and today's featured guest coming to you from Denver, Colorado, USA. And to get your transcripts delivered by email every week, go to allearsenglish.com forward slash subscribe.

Americans do three weird things when they pronounce words and phrases. You don't have to mimic the accent, but you do need to understand it. Today, Michael from Happy English shows you exactly what you need to know to succeed from New York City to California and everywhere in between.

Has this ever happened to you? You're mid-sentence and you hear yourself slow down. You simplify. You avoid the word you actually want. That moment adds up in meetings, interviews, and everyday conversations.

It weighs on you and makes you feel isolated. It becomes harder to make real connections. Our free two-minute fluency quiz helps you identify what interrupts your flow and your connections and how to fix it. You'll get your English level, B1, B2, or C1, and you'll figure out where to go from here.

Start now at allearsenglish.com slash fluency score. That's allearsenglish.com slash f l u e n c y s c o r e. Hello, Michael. Welcome back to All Ears English.

How have you been? Hey, Lindsay. Thank you so much. Good to be here. I've been good. I've been good. A little hot and sweaty in Japan, but other than that, yeah.

Yeah, for sure. It can get very hot in Japan. So I'm going to take a minute to introduce you for any of our new listeners who don't know you. You've been on the show a number of times.

But guys, today I have Michael DiGiacomo on the show. He is the founder of Happy English and the host of the Happy English podcast. He's been teaching English since 1994 and has helped learners from around the world to speak more naturally and confidently in everyday conversations. Michael is from New York City and now is based in Japan.

So again, welcome, Michael. Thank you so much. Yes. Which borough are you from? Where did you grow up in New York? I grew up in a place called Long Island.

Long Island is like next to New York and they talk more like this. Yes. I've heard it on TV. So it's kind of like the suburbs of New York City. Yeah, I'm glad you showed us a little bit of the accent there.

It's very distinctive. When I hear it on TV, I know that's a Long Island accent. Like it's even different from Manhattan, right, Michael? It's interesting.

Yeah. It's got its own unique thing. If you know Cyndi Lauper, the singer Cyndi Lauper, and you check any of her interviews, she talks like that. That's how she talks.

I grew up in Long Island and I'm a singer. Yeah. Yes, she does. She's been in a couple movies, I think, too. And she brings the accent into them as well.

I love it. I love it. So that is a good way to sample that accent. Go find clips of Cyndi Lauper. Or Bugs Bunny. Okay, Bugs Bunny. Bugs Bunny has more of a Brooklyn or New York City accent.

Yeah, slightly more of a Brooklyn accent. So we're getting into accents today, right? But we're going to bring it one level up and talk a little bit about why American English is difficult to understand even when you know all the words. Many of our listeners feel they do know a lot of vocabulary but sometimes have trouble understanding when American English speakers speak.

Right. So what are three of the pronunciation patterns that Americans tend to use in everyday conversation, Michael? What would you say that are tricky? Reductions, reduced words, words tweezed together, linking words, right?

Put it away like that. And then Americans have this really unusual relationship with the letter T. Right. Sometimes we drop it. Sometimes we make it sound like a weak D. And so all these things together, some people say, or a lot of people say, oh, Americans talk too quickly.

I don't think it's the speed. I think it's more the style. And that's what I wanted to share with your audience today. Yeah. Yeah, I love it. Well said, Michael.

So it's not so much the speed, it's the style. But if we know what to look for, I think that's the key piece. Right. If we've primed our ears for what to actually listen for and look for, we'll understand it when it hits us right in the face, right?

Right, right. Because English, and I think especially American English, the way it sounds is usually totally different from the way it looks on the paper. Right. And so if you can have a little bit of a flexibility in your ears and don't rely on your eyes very much, you'll start to hear English from a better way or a new way, I think.

Yeah. And so from a student perspective, from a listener perspective, why does this really matter? I mean, what happens to your listeners, to our listeners when they're just not able to understand? What does that create?

So what that does is that creates panic and loss of confidence. So you're having a conversation with somebody and they say something and What? Like it, it doesn't, your ear tells your brain, I heard this.

And the brain's like looking through its little file of, of phrases that I learned. Whatcha, what do you, what do you, I don't know. What do you, is that a new word? Yes.

So that's, that's the problem. And if you can get used to understanding how Americans speak, Then when you have a conversation with people, when you're shopping or even watching a movie or a TV program, you're not going to have that panic situation. Yes, 100%.

Yeah, that's a good analogy to imagine that the brain is like a file and we're going into our files. And is that word in the file? Oh, no. So I panic, right?

It's not in there, but it actually just sounds a bit different than how we learned it in the textbook, right? So, all right. I think our listeners are ready to get into what these three kind of differences are. You mentioned them at the top of the show, Michael, but let's go a little deeper into them and maybe practice a little bit.

So reductions. Tell me about reductions. All right. Reductions happens when we take a couple of sounds in English. For example, what are you? What are you doing tomorrow?

What are you doing tomorrow? Now, that's a very basic sentence that you might learn in a classroom or in a textbook. But what are you? One thing about Americans, we don't like a space between words.

Right. We speak, if you've ever played the piano, it's kind of like the pedal on the piano. You play one key and that keeps going while you play the next one. It's very smooth and we like that.

And so we do everything that we can to make sure that there's no gap between the words. So what are you? What are you? What are you? What are you? What are you?

What are you? What are you? What are you? What are you? What are you? So things like, what are you doing? What are you thinking? What are you looking at?

Michael, do you think this is more common? These reductions are more common, let's say, on the East Coast versus Middle America versus the West Coast of the US? Any thoughts on regional differences?

I would say probably most people speak this way, but it probably happens more on the East Coast. I'm from the East Coast. And so I don't know, maybe because it's cold in the winter, we try to get the words out quickly without having to move the mouth too much.

I think that's true. I think in New York, especially New York, Boston, places where I've also lived for extended periods of time, people speak really quickly. And it's just a real kind of just go, go, go. I think it ties in with the lifestyle, don't you think?

Absolutely. Something like that? Absolutely. Because the pace, the pace, we call that a New York minute, you know, something happens in a New York minute means really quickly.

And that comes out in our, in our language. Yeah. Mm-hmm. For sure. So should we do a little role play, Michael, just to show our listeners some examples here?

Yeah. And before we do that, I just want to mention that what are you sounds like what do you? What do you? Yes. What do you? What do you? What do you?

What do you? What do you? What do you? What do you? So what do you? What do you? Works for both cases. So for example, I might say, what do you do? What do you do?

Okay. Lindsay, what do you do? Yeah. What do I do? I teach English. Yeah. I'm an English teacher. Right. What do you do? What are you doing? Well, right now I'm interviewing you for a podcast episode.

Right. So yeah. Okay. That's important. What do you do? What are you doing? Both sounds like what do you do? I'm really glad you said that. We almost skipped over that.

That's really important. This is two totally different phrases. What are you and what do you both create? What do you? Right. Excellent. I love it. Which brings us to another key point, which is you might feel like

all these words squeezed together. I don't know what they're saying, but the context is going to help you understand that. And just one more thing about what do you do or what do you do?

That's how we naturally ask someone's job. We don't say, what is your job? We say, what do you do? So that's a good point. What do you do or what do you do?

Oh, I'm an English teacher. Yes. What are you doing? Oh, what are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? That's like right now. Yes. And on the vocabulary side, I found that when I lived in New York, a lot of people asked me that question, right?

What do you do? What do you do for work? But now that I live in Denver, people don't ask that question as much. So I think it's a much more common thing to identify with your career on the East Coast.

But that's for another episode for another day. For sure. For sure. Do you ever start speaking English and suddenly the words disappear? You pause too much, you hesitate, you know what you want to say, but only later, not in the moment when it matters.

This is where your fluency is breaking down and it's fixable. That's why we created our two minute fluency quiz. It shows you your exact English level right now, so you know what to work on next. Are you B1, B2, or C1?

Find out. Go now to allearsenglish.com slash fluency score and get clarity on your English level and how you can improve this year, starting today. One more time, go to allearsenglish.com slash f-l-u-e-n-c-y-s-c-o-r-e.

All right, Michael, let's get into the second thing, weird thing that Americans do when they speak. What do they do? We don't like tea. And it could be because historically, America was a British colony, and we had a little conflict.

We threw the tea off the ship, and that started America's independence. But the letter T, right? Things happen with tea. And so... The T at the end of a word quite often sounds like a weak D. It's reduced.

And so this happens especially when the next word starts with a vowel sound. So... put it away, put it away. If you say that the way it's written, written, put it away, put it away.

It's not smooth. So all we do is we take the D at the end, put it away, put it away, put it away. And that makes the mouth work less and it makes the air smoother.

Yes, I love that. Are there any more examples of these things that we do with the D that you can share with us? And this is something you could use in your everyday English. What did you do yesterday?

Oh, I bought a new car. I bought a new car. Sounds like I bought a new car. I bought a. I bought a. So the T sounds like a weak D and kind of connects with a. I bought a new car.

I bought a new car. Or if you're a baseball fan, right? Yeah. He hit a ball. No, we wouldn't say that. We would say he hit a ball. He hit a ball, right?

And it's funny because it also sounds like hide, the verb to hide, the past tense of hid, right? Right. But we can infer that probably we're not saying to hide the ball. We're saying to hit the ball.

Right. We can kind of guess that from context. Right. Context is king, my friends. Context is king. He hit a ball and put it away like we said before.

So those are my examples. Put it away. Okay. So strange things happening with the T turning into a D sound. Absolutely. And there's a third weird thing that Americans do.

What do they do? What's our third piece? The third piece is a bottle of water. A bottle of water. Yeah. The T sound in the middle of a word with vowels around it usually sounds like another weak D. So my cousin in California would probably say, I drank some water.

But me as the New Yorker, I drank some water, water, a bottle of water. And so water sounds like water. Better sounds like better. And the word city, what does that sound like?

New York City. I used to live in New York City. New York City. Yeah, it's a good question. I wonder if in California they pronounce that T more. Is that what you found, Michael?

Have you heard that? I'm not sure exactly, but I think they might pronounce it more like a T than the New Yorkers do. I think that's probably true. Yeah.

I think it's probably sounds somewhat like a D, but more T like than New Yorkers do. I probably because I feel like New Yorkers just again, they speak fast. They're living their lives in a fast paced way. Right.

Right. All right. How about another example? Any other examples here? Yeah. You know, because of the heat yesterday. Right. I was I wasn't feeling so well, but luckily I feel a little better today.

I feel a little better today. A little better. I feel a little better. Nice. But listen to that the way it's written. I feel a little better today. A little better today.

So all of those T sounds make the air coming out of your mouth stop. And that's the thing that Americans don't want to do. We don't want to have the...

So I feel a little better today because I drank a bottle of water in New York City. Yeah. And then, of course, if we're learning like a British accent, it's completely different, obviously, guys. But I wonder, because you think about London, I mean, it's a fast-paced city.

They also don't want to slow down, right? They're speaking quickly, but it's just a different accent, different way of life. Really fascinating, Michael. Where should we – we're going to have to finish up for today.

We're almost out of time. Where should we leave our listeners on today's episode? What should we keep in mind? So I think American English is not – so fast.

The idea is not that it's fast. It's the way we connect the words and the way we speak and, you know, make the words flow into each other. I think that's what makes it seem fast. And one more thing.

You don't have to speak this way. You don't have to say a bottle of water. You don't have to say, what do you do? Right? You can pronounce English whatever comfortable for you.

Yes. But you need to know how we speak, how native speakers speak, so that when you talk to native speakers or talk to people living in the New York, even non-native speakers who live in, you know, especially like they live in New York a long time, they speak this way too. Yeah.

People who live in the States have this style of speaking. You watch American movies, Hollywood movies, TV shows. You're going to hear this style. So you need to know how we play with the written word so that you're not kind of shocked or embarrassed or, oh, what did he say?

What did he ask me? What did he ask me? What did he ask me? Yeah. Yeah, we're trying to avoid that moment of shock and panic. And I love that you said that, Michael.

We don't have to choose an accent to mimic if we don't want to. Right. We can speak in the more textbook style, right, and pronounce these T's if we want to or in any way we want. But it's a comprehension thing that we're talking about today.

And comprehension is everything for staying in that conversation. And as we say it all in English, staying connected. Right. Absolutely. And, you know, English is really a global language now, more than it was even 15, 20 years ago because of the Internet.

And everyone speaks English and everybody speaks English with a little bit of their own accent. Totally fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But like Lindsay said, and I said earlier, the idea is you want to be able to understand when people speak to you.

So how you speak is fine. As long as people understand you, you're good to go. But this is how we talk. What do you think? Yes. Yes. Yeah. And what's the ultimate goal of why you're having that conversation?

It is to connect. So there you go. I love it, Michael. Thanks for coming on the show and bringing these pieces. So important to know and really good to put it into perspective and to chat a bit today about New York versus the West Coast.

Really interesting things that can come into pronunciation. Absolutely. All right, Michael. So where can our listeners find your show, Happy English? That's what it is.

It's the Happy English Podcast. You can go to the search bar in wherever you're listening to this podcast in and just type in Happy English Podcast. You'll see my face in a little blue square and that's how you know you're in the right place. All right.

So guys, go on over and check out Michael's show. Michael, how often do you publish each week? What's your publishing schedule? Is it once a week? Three or four episodes a week.

Perfect. All right. Excellent. Guys, go on over there and check it out. Thanks for being on the show, Michael. All right. Thanks, Lindsay. Bye. Bye-bye.

See you next time.