Something to say about: Reduced forms

Another common feature of spoken English is the use of contractions and reduced forms (for a useful short list click here and for an academic view, visit this link ). We, more often than not, find ourselves “attacked” by strange reductions that put us off. They are everywhere! Listen to a song… you´ll get them. Watch a TV show…there they are. Talk to a native English speaking friend… you betterkeep your ears wide open. And yet, we don´t have them in our textbooks (haven´t I said this before?), except for some heroic exceptions (the book I am using now has a lesson on three of these key features of spoken English: wanna, gonna and have to, pronounced /hafta/ -sorry about the “symbols”), reduced forms are literally reduced to zip.

Now, how many of these do you actually know and use? OK, OK, don´t you worry, this is not a test. On the contrary, I invite you to listen/ read this Voice of America –VOA program that I just found on the web. It´s an interview with Nina Weinstein, author of the book “Whaddaya say?” about… you got it! Reduced forms. The program features a printer friendly version and an MP3 audio file for your enjoyment.

Comments below, please.

Cesar Klauer

English accents

The first time I went to the UK, I stayed for many weeks in a college 30 minutes away from Cambridge. Mostly, we went to the pub in the evenings and played football on our free time. Almost every afternoon we practiced with the college coach and on the weekends we usually played other teams from nearby towns. The coach was a nice guy who liked to come in play in the team now and then but had a terrible accent to understand. Once during a game, I saw him shouting at me from the side of the pitch, since I could not hear well, I went near him to pick the instructions. All I heard was*: /séiza/ /nambaráit/ What? /nambaráit/ he repeated, angrily, and put up eight fingers in the air. Oh, I got it, he wants me to watch player number eight. So I did, but there a was a rough play involving me and this number eight guy. He got angry (let´s say I had no silk gloves on), turned to me and shouted /yiúdertawáinka/. I got “you dirty…” but that was it. Later I discovered what “wanker” was.
Accents are such an adventure, and an important part of language and culture. In our last post, American and British English were dealt with, in kind of a light hearted manner (with the help of Dr. House himself), but we must not forget that the English language does not restrict to those two variations. Regional pronunciations are a delight, they show how different the language we teach can be “out there,” away from the stiff pages of a textbook, the RP of the BBC, or the silk voices of VOA. Experiencing them makes you feel so alive… and how much you still have to learn. At least that´s how I feel, but I guess the point is not to remain static but to grow from the experience, improve.
For those of you, curious enough to devote some time to exploration, I have these web sites that will blow your minds off. Visit Sounds familiar? and listen to UK regional accent samples. For other accent samples, including many American variations, Australian and Canadian, go to the Audio Archive
Thanks to Giovanni Gonzales and AmigoBryan for their notes on my post of Sunday 24th. All of you out there are welcome to comment, that makes me feel I am not posting up all these for nobody!
Have fun.
Cesar Klauer

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*This keyboard does not have symbols, so I used the regular script to symbolize speech... sorry, but, that´s all I could do.