Can you guess this phrase?

10 Jul 2023 · 1 min

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0:38

A short YouTube lesson by Hadar Shemesh demonstrating how spoken English reductions and connected speech change perceived words. The speaker repeatedly says the phrase “What are you doing?” and analyzes how the R and T reduce or drop, explaining why listeners may hear “what a” instead of the full phrase.

Chapters

I'm going to illustrate how English pronunciation is really different than how you might be perceiving the sound or the word in your head. Let's read it together. What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you? What are you? What are. The R reduces and connects to the what, but then the T is a flat T and the R is sort of dropped. And then what you hear is what a.