PRONOUNCIATION - Contractions. 29/10/08

Although English is not a tonal language like Chinese it does make use of stress.

The easiest way to illustrate this is with the fact that for a question, in English, our voices go up at the end of the sentence, while for a statement our voices go down.

So, a sentence like:
“You’re not coming with us” could either be a statement of fact or a question, depending on how it is pronounced. Punctuation alerts us in part as to HOW to say this sentence:
“You’re not coming with us!” or
“You’re not coming with us?”

However, the circumstances in which we use this sentence will also have an effect on pronunciation

If we are, for example, punishing a child and not allowing them to accompany us we would stress: “You’re NOT coming with us”

If, however, we don’t wish someone in particular to accompany us we would say: “You’re not coming with US”

If we wish to point out that someone has joined the wrong group we would say: “YOU”RE not coming with US.”

Because oral English relies on these stressed words to make its meaning clear, our ear is trained from an early age to pay great attention to them: THEY are the important ones which carry our meaning

In general, the words in a sentence that are important, of course, are the verbs, nouns, and often the adjectives(e.g “She’s driving a NEW car!”).

Written English, in text books, novels and newspapers, however, makes use only of punctuation – we gain our understanding from the overall context.[Whatever is written before or after a particular sentence]. And of course, we can read something over and over a few times if we need to make the meaning clearer, as well as reading slowly to help us understand.

Oral language on the other hand, is always spoken much more quickly than the learner is prepared for if they are learning mostly from texts [written words]. It is often the case that a student may get top marks in class for their reading and writing of a particular language and yet be unable to understand a native speaker enough to be able to hold a conversation. English is no exception.

A common informal greeting in English is “Good day. It’s good to meet you.” - a sentence that few students have trouble understanding in its written form. However, if written as it is actually spoken, how many students understand “G’day – goottameecha”?

Rather than becoming upset and thinking that this information will make oral English even more difficult, students will be pleased to learn that they can learn both to speak and understand oral English much better and more quickly than those who might be top of the class when learning mainly from textbooks – if they learn a few basic rules of pronunciation .

Learning phonetically is a great help. As my computer does not enable phonetics however, here's a list here of some of the most common words or phrases spelled the way the words actually sound:

Would you? ........................................................wudja

Did you?................................................................didja?

Do you? .................................……………………….djew?

Does he? ..............................................................duzee

Don’t you?............................................................doncha?

Going to…………………………………………. ..........gunna?

Want to …………………………………………............wanna

See you……………………………………… …............seeya

Give me…………………………………………............gimme

Don’t know……………………………………......... dunno

What are you…..................................................wotcha

How are you…………………………………… ........ howya

What’s up? .........................................................wassup?

More Helpful Hints.
When “t” comes in the middle of a word it's pronounced “d” e.g:

letter = leda, better = better, a lot of = a loda.

The word “to” is usually pronounced just as “t” e.g:

Give it to him = give it t’him, nice t’seeya……

When one word ends in a vowel (a,e,i,o,u) and the next word begins with a vowel, a “y” or a “w” is usually pronounced e.g:

I am = I yam., go out = go wout

The “h” on the word “he” is often not pronounced e.g.:
Djew think ee makes a loda money?

Some Common Phrases:
Watcha do wen now?
Good t’meetcha
Goda go.
Seeya layda
Seeya roun

Wassup with you?
Gonna come?

Dunno.