Wat Struggles With Pronunciation

Hi, welcome to the Effortless English Podcast. We now have our new feed, everything is working, and here is the next episode. This episode is titled, What Struggles With Pronunciation.

This is a conversation between my best friend Kristen, a Japanese student, and I. In this conversation, we discuss the problems Kristen's boyfriend is having with pronunciation. Her boyfriend is named Wat. He is Thai.

Wat taught himself to speak English all by himself. He learned by listening and by trying to communicate with foreign tourists in Bangkok. Wat sold jewelry on the sidewalk. His story is amazing.

Wat moved to San Francisco one month ago. Although his spoken English is great, he does have one problem. Pronunciation. Wat has a strong Thai accent.

This didn't cause him problems in Thailand, but it has caused some problems in America. In this conversation, we discuss Wat's pronunciation challenges.

Kristen mentions some of the frustrations she is having trying to convince Wat that pronunciation is important. We then discuss the reason why it is important to have good pronunciation.

Here is the conversation. Like if you're making something and putting together. Yeah, all those things are tools. Hammer, screwdriver, anything you use to make something.

So last night he's trying to say tools, but he's saying... Two. Two. So I think he's saying two. So for five minutes, I'm saying, I don't understand. Two.

And he kept saying two. Two. And I was like, two? Two what? Oh. Yeah, sometimes can be very difficult. Trying to get him to say that the S sound is almost impossible.

The final S? Yes, final S. That's what happens a lot of times. The final S type people, they chop the end. They chop the ends off of words. That's why it's like, if he just finished tools, I could understand.

But he's cut it too. They make everything kind of shorter. That's why I was telling her about enunciation, right? Because when she was practicing her pronunciations,

Like, if she focuses on R and L, she doesn't, not like a Thai person, but, you know, other sounds become weak. So I was trying to tell her, you know, try to pronounce every sound in the word. And even if it sounds a little unnatural, you know, like more like an actor, still, you know, the pronunciation would be very clear. It's tough.

I try to do that with Watt. I haven't said that to him, but I try to encourage that. And I think he feels weird doing it. So he doesn't. But like last night, finally he's like, well, whatever.

When I finally realized what he was saying, I was like, it's tools. And he's like, whatever. And I was like, don't say whatever. You're here now and people aren't going to understand you.

You need to work on that. I think that, you know, obviously he needs to learn to read, but I think he also needs to work on pronunciations. He does. Because a lot of people don't understand.

And yeah, that makes his life more difficult here. I mean, if he's trying to talk to Americans and they don't understand him, that will be frustrating to him. It will cause problems. If his pronunciation is good, even if he can't read, he can ask someone, hey, where's this?

And they understand him quickly. It's no problem. So I was trying to tell her that, you know, I think her pronunciation is quite good. And I said, that's good.

It helps a lot. So like, you know, why for someone else with more of a strong accent, many times Americans get frustrated. If they don't understand you the first time, they become frustrated. They stop listening.

They're like, what, what? And they just, you know, we're teachers, so we'll be patient. But many, many Americans will not be patient. They're just like, okay, whatever.

You know, they just stop listening to you. So it is important.