A short YouTube interview/transcript (Hadar Shemesh with guest Karen Alda of the Top Geek channel) where they discuss geek culture and focus on common English pronunciation mistakes for gamer/geek vocabulary (e.g., 'brothers', 'Tomb Raider', 'virtual world', 'YouTube'/'You Tube'). The video mixes conversational intro, channel promotion (Top Geek, Top Geek Unbox), and pronunciation teaching with examples and repetition.
Chapters
Hey, guys, what's up? This is Hadar, and we have here Karen Alda.
Hi, everyone.
A special guest. I'm very honored to have you here in my channel.
Happy to be here.
Yes. And how are you? Excited. Excited.
Yeah.
Great. Beautiful flap tea you had there. Excited. Notice. Excited. Karen is a YouTuber. A fellow YouTuber. Her channel, top Geek, is an Israeli channel that deals with geeky culture. Such as.
Such as movies, comics, science, unboxing, whatever interest geeks.
It's like a lot of exciting stuff. And she's gonna. She's about to launch, along with her husband.
Yeah.
A channel in English called Top Geek.
Unbox, which is actually kind of a toy review unboxing channel for kids.
For kids?
Yeah.
Fantastic. We're all kids.
Yeah. Okay.
Totally. For kids. All right, so now let's move on to some geeky words. Yay. Yay.
Geeky mistakes.
Geeky mistakes. That's right. If that's possible.
Let's start with an easy one.
Yes. Super Mario Bros. Bros. Hey, bro, what's the name of the video game Super Mario Brothers. Brothers. Right. So let's talk about the word brothers. It's a B sound, then the R as in red. Okay. Or as in brother. So round your lips and pull the tongue in. It's not. Or no, it's not. And it's a cup sound. So don't open your mouth. It's not. Although there is an O there. It's not. Also. You can hear that. Then there is. There is a th and an R. Okay, brothers. So you stick the tongue out for the th, and then you pull it in for the R. Immediately. Brothers.
Brothers.
Good. You can stick the tang out a little bit more.
Brothers.
Excellent.
Tom Brider.
Tom Brider. Tom. What is Tom?
I don't know.
Maybe pave you met. Tomb. Tomb Raider.
Yeah, I guess.
Okay, guys, English pronunciation and spelling do not correspond. So Tomb Raider. Let's talk about the. This word tomb. We begin with a T sound, and then it's the oo, as in food. Two. Two. Perfect. And then you have mb. Right. But actually, when you have this consonant cluster, the B is often dropped or almost always dropped, like in the word combination bomb and womb. All right? You don't say comb, bomb and womb. It's comb, bomb and womb. And toom. Okay, Toom. So try it.
Toom.
Perfect. And then we switch. We move on to the R. Right. So round your lips and pull the tongue in. And then it's the A as in day. Re, Re, re. Right. Not ry rider, like a horse rider. But raider. Raider, Exactly. And then the D is a very light D. Don't pronounce a hard D because it's between two vowels. So it's not raider, but raider. And then you pull it in for the R sound. Tomb Raider.
Tomb Raider.
Perfect. Oh, and it's a set phrase, so the stress falls on the first word. Tomb. Tomb Raider. So what's next?
Virtual.
Virtual. Virtual. Virtual. World.
Virtual.
World. Yes. Oh, West. World. For example, I often hear. Speaking of the word world, I often hear people saying westworld.
Westworld. World.
Okay.
People have a difficulty to say the ld.
Yes. And it's actually the rld. Very difficult.
Right.
And then the link disappears. So in the word world, I actually have a video about it, so you can check it out. I'm going to put a link here. World. Make sure that you pronounce the L. World. And let's begin with virtual. These are two. These two words have the same sound, actually. So although in the virtual you have the letter I and in the word world you have O, they're both the same. Listen. Ver. Virtual.
Virtual.
Good. So let's isolate the ver. Ver versus were.
Were.
Right. Ver as in virtual and were as in world. Right. It's the same sound. It's called the er, as in stir. So let's try it again.
Ver.
Ver. And let's continue with the word virtual. So although there is a T here, it's pronounced as virt.
As a ch.
Yes. As in chicken. Right.
Like ch.
Like ch. Ch. Exactly. Virtual.
Virtual.
Good. And like there's like a little W there before the L. It's a dark L. Virtual. And the word world is a wr. Were. And then just think of tripling the L. World. World. Fantastic. Now, as you can see from Karen, she has this really nice dark L that is not world. It's not here, it's here. World. World. Very good. Okay. Virtual world. Anything else?
If we're talking about YouTube and gaming and stuff, a lot of people say YouTube, YouTube and not YouTube.
Okay.
Is it okay?
Actually, yes. This is a great question. So as long as you pronounce the tense oo, as in food, there in some words, there are two options. So for example, in the. In the word tube or tube, you can pronounce it either with U. Tube. And you can also pronounce it with a Y sound before tube. So you can say You Tube or YouTube. Let's try both. YouTube. YouTube or YouTube. Exactly. So both are. Okay. It's like you can say newspaper and newspaper again. Newspaper. Newspaper with u without that little Y sound. And newspaper.
Newspaper.
You can say Tuesday, Tuesday and Tuesday, Tuesday. Exactly. Both are fine. I personally say Tuesday. All right. That was such a pleasure. And I've learned a lot of stuff. Yes. Did you. Did you enjoy yourself?
Yeah. I think I'll notice more. How do I pronounce words from now on?
Yeah, that's the thing. Like, it kind of like opens your mind as towards, like, how the language sounds and, you know, the building blocks of the language.
Yeah.
I had a blast. Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me here.
Don't forget to subscribe Top Geek Unbox.
Yeah, you can subscribe to Top Geek.
Also if you're and Top Geek.
Yes.
For all the Israeli and non Israeli gamers out there and geeks. So thank you so much. Don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel as well. It's been a pleasure. Have a great week and I'll see you next week in the next video. Bye. Where do all these things go, like, after you unbox?
