Hadar Shemesh teaches pronunciation shortcuts for natural English: drop or soften th, h, l, r sounds; elide t and d between consonants; skip silent letters in mb and wo patterns; reduce function words like and and of; link consonants into vowels. A free PDF cheat sheet is in the show notes.
The h in pronouns like her, him, or hers, and his is dropped when it's unstressed. So instead of saying tell her that she can go tell her, tell her, tell her.
Hey everyone, it's Hadar. Thank you so much for joining me. Today we are going to what I really love doing, which is to simplify pronunciation. So as you know, I like cheating. To be honest, I like cheating. Like not cheating on someone and not cheating people. I like cheating when it comes to learning and to speaking. Because why work hard if you don't have to? Why work really hard if you get the same results without investing as much energy into the work? So this is why I wanted to create this episode for you, where I share with you this cheat sheet that I've been using for years to help my students have an easier time pronouncing hard things. And all of a sudden I realized that I've never shared it publicly. Like all of those little hacks and tricks and things that I always say when people ask me questions about these words. But I never created this cheat sheet. Pronunciation Practice with Hacks Cheat sheet and hacks these are good words to practice with hacks that will make challenging transitions or words feel a lot better when pronouncing them. So this is it. This is what we have for you today. And also we have a PDF that you can download with all those hacks and examples so that you don't have to remember it. You don't have to take notes right now. Just listen to the episode and practice along with me. But you don't have to have to take notes. I've summarized everything for you and you can download it for free. I'm going to put it in the show notes so I hope you're excited, as excited as I am. And let's listen to today's episode.
The first hack is that you don't have to pronounce the th in the words close and months. You this transition is very challenging for non native speakers who don't have the th sound in their language. So to pronounce the word months, we think that we need to transition between the th and the s months. But in fact people tend to drop the th here and just say months. And instead of saying clothes with a th and a z, you can just say close as in close the door months close. Another th hack is when you're pronouncing the th sound in function words like the this, that, those, these, them. The secret is that you don't have to stick the tongue all the Way out, the this, that, you can just place the tip of the tongue on the back of the teeth, the this that, or almost pronouncing it like a d on the teeth, the this, that, those. The reason why we do this is because these words are anyway reduced and they're supposed to be pronounced very shortly. And if you focus on sticking the tongue all the way out, you're going to end up emphasizing this word and it's going to take you a long time to transition between the previous sound to the th. And we want to reduce the this transition. So when you place the tongue on the back of the teeth and you pronounce it like a D, it makes it easier for you to pronounce the car in this with that. That way the focus is not on the th, it's a lot quicker and it's easy for you to pronounce. Another hack is when the T consonant or D consonant appear between two consonants. Especially when you connect words together, you can drop the t or the D. For example, instead of saying, just saying, there is a t there, you can drop the t and connect the two sounds together. Just saying or stand with, stand with them, Stan with them, stand with them. I drop the d. Best thing. The T is between the s and the th. It's the best thing that ever happened. I just dropped the t and it's really hard to notice it. It's the best thing that ever happened. Best thing. Now, the sth transition is tricky, but still it's easier than st. Th. Next person. The T is between the s and the p. Next person, drop the t. Next person, next person. One less consonant to pronounce. Another hack is that the H in pronouns like her, him, or hers, and his is dropped when it's unstressed. So instead of saying tell her that she can go teller, teller, teller. Instead of saying get him his bag, you can say get him, get him, get him his bag, get em is back. So him and his turn into um and uz. Instead of saying bring her, you can say bring her along, bring her along, bring her, bring er, not bring her. The next hack is that you don't have to pronounce the l in the words always. Alright and already. It's not a mistake to pronounce the l, but if you're struggling with the l, just drop those sounds. Simply pronounce an ah sound right before always already. Alright? If you're struggling with the R, the next one is for you. You can drop the R in words like yesterday. And instead of saying Yesterday. You can say yesterday. Yesterday. Instead of saying particularly, you can say particularly. Particularly. Particularly. And you can also drop the R in comfort. Comfortable. Comfortable. And even in the word for. When the next word starts with a consonant, it's for me, it's for them. The next hack has to do with reductions and connected speech. The phrase what are you? And what do you Sound exactly the same. And this is how you can pronounce it. What a ya? What are you? What do you want? What do you want? What are you doing? What are you doing? What are ya? What are ya? The next hack is also about connected speech. When a word ends with a consonant and the next word begins with a vowel, the consonant becomes the beginning of the next word. Instead of saying make it, the K becomes the beginning of the next word. Make it. Make it all over turns into all, all over. Lo ver. Lo ver. All over. Instead of saying love her, remember, we drop the H in pronouns. Lover, Lover, I, lover. And yes, it does sound like a lover. I'm only I. Moanly. Moanly, Moanly. I'm only saying that moanly. I'm only. Do not pronounce the B in words ending with the spelling pattern mb like climb, comb, lamb, bomb. Do not pronounce the O in words that have the w. O Spelling like work, er, er, er, work, worm, not warm, worth and world. When we have small function words like and, or, or, or of, you want to reduce it so the vowel is pronounced with a schwa and then you want to connect it as if it's an additional syllable to, to the previous word or the following word. For example, if we have the word and, it will be reduced to and you want to connect it. Bread and butter. Bread and butter. Black or white? Blacker. White. So really think of it as one word, blacker, and then white, black or white. Cup of love. Weeks. Couple of. Couple of, couple of. So I'm connecting it to the previous word couple of weeks. And in this case you can even drop the V sound and just say couple of. Couple of. Couple of, couple of weeks. All right, that's it. I hope you enjoyed these hacks. Write them down, remember them. You can also find them on my website organized for you. So go check it out. And if you have more tips and and tricks and hacks, share them in the comments below. Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video, consider liking and subscribing and sharing it with your friends, family, co workers, colleagues and students. Have a beautiful, beautiful rest of the day and I will see you next week in the next video. Bye.
