How to Understand Americans and American Slang? (+12 American slang words in English)

hey everybody my name is chris murray coast welcome to another video in this video i'm going to talk about what it means to be fluent so that you can understand american english speakers and so that you can understand some american slang [Music] first of all what does it mean to be fluent being fluent really means just being able to understand people so when people talk to you you don't have to translate the words in your head right so when we translate it slows us down and we have to think a lot longer but there's also another problem when we never think about what we're saying we just speak and speak and speak these are two different problems that affect people that make them sound like they're not fluent so on one hand if we don't think enough then you might just say lots of words and try to get all the ideas out of our head and it doesn't sound correct so it sounds a little bit strange to people because we're saying lots of incorrect things and we never stop to get any feedback about what we're saying the second problem is when we have to translate all the time in our head so we speak very slowly with big pauses and people can see that we are thinking a lot both of these things stop us from being fluent because being fluent really means just understanding people without translating and it doesn't mean that you can't translate at all it just means that in any situation where a person is speaking english with you you can ask in english for more information so that you understand what they're saying it doesn't mean that you understand every word and every sentence and every phrase because even i don't understand all of that sometimes i go to a different country and i meet a person from australia or from ireland or from another place and they're a native speaker but they have different phrases and words so i might need to ask them to explain what that means to them so it's not only about being a native speaker or a non-native speaker being fluent just means that you can use one language to get new information and to understand new information so really being fluent is about these situations where you don't know what something means that's what being fluent means it means that when you're in a situation and you don't know what the word is you don't know what it means or you need someone to repeat or you didn't understand that you can ask questions in english get the information in english and learn new ideas and new words in english now one question that my english everyday students always ask me when they're doing our 24 7 speaking practice is they ask why do americans not pronounce the letter t in the middle of words and they're talking about words like better the word better now maybe you always studied british english at school and you think that this word should be pronounced better or better but in american english it's better it's better so the t in the middle of the word sounds a little bit like a d if you ask a native speaker if they're saying a d sound they're going to tell you that they're not they're going to tell you that they're saying t and it's just that they're holding the sound back a lot and to other people from other places who speak other languages it sounds like a d sound now there's a special rule about when we do this uh when american speakers do this and the word better it has a vowel sound before the t in the middle of the word a vowel sound is things like ah these are vowel sounds because vowels are the letters a e i o and u and sometimes y uh so after those vowel sounds if we have the letter t and then after the t we have the sound er like at the end of the word like in the word better then american english speakers usually change this t sound to sound like a d now there's another rule too when there's a vowel sound before the t and after the t there is the l sound for example in the word metal metal like the top of that building is made of metal so in american english this also sounds like a d sound so these are the two main situations when american english speakers change t sounds to d sounds it's when there's a vowel before the t and after the t there's the er sound or the sound there's a lot of examples of this for example the word daughter in american english it's usually daughter daughter so you can see that it sounds a little bit like a d but it's not it's it's a t but it sounds a little bit like a d when american english speakers say it another good example is water do you drink water i drink water all the time it's my favorite so water it sounds a little bit like a d right and another word is little little like small some things are big and some things are little and there's just a little difference between this sound being a t and a d right or for example another word an animal turtle turtle so these are some examples of when american english speakers say more of a d sound instead of a t sound even though in the word it's written with a t okay the last thing we're going to do in this video here just to keep it really short and easy is to go over a few american english slang phrases so one of these phrases is the word bummer bummer and it's not about being a bum it's about something that disappoints you you might say that film was a bummer and it means that you wanted the film to be better you were disappointed by the film another good american slaying phrase is laid back laid back laid back means relaxed or calm or easy going and we might say john is really laid back it means he's easy it's not difficult for you to find something to do with john because he will do anything he just does whatever you want he goes with the flow that's another slang phrase right to go with the flow it means to do whatever is easy that it's not hard for you you can make plans with people and you don't really mind what you do you just want to make plans with people and do it another example of american slang is the word bomb now usually when we talk about a bomb we're talking about war a plane drops a bomb and right usually this is what a bomb means but in slaying we can use this word as an adjective we might say that hamburger was so bomb that means it was really good it was high quality it was really tasty another one of these strange american slang words is the word sick now usually sick means ill like when you don't feel well maybe you need to go to the hospital but in slang this means that something is very very cool it's awesome we could say that film was sick that means that it was a great film i really liked it it was really cool sometimes you'll hear american people say the word sweet and they aren't saying it about food and they're not saying it about a person right like my sweetie like someone who's very nice and kind no there's another meaning of this word in american slang if you say that something is sweet it means that it's great it's like when you uh hear somebody saying something like okay let's meet at the cinema at five o'clock and you're like sweet it just means cool i like it it's it's good so you can see that there's a lot of american slang words that mean something like cool that something is enjoyable and we like it but there's also a slang word for the opposite thing when something is not cool maybe you think it's boring it's not high quality you think that it's not so interesting you can say that it's lame yeah you could say it's lame you could say that party last night was so lame that means it wasn't cool it wasn't fun it was kind of stupid it was lame okay another american slaying phrase is ripped ripped to be ripped you could say mike is so ripped this means that he's very muscular i'm not i'm not ripped i don't go to the gym enough to be ripped but maybe mike is is ripped because he goes to the gym so it means that someone has big muscles all right another word that we can use in slang is cheesy so usually cheesy is about something that has cheese in it but when we say that something or someone is cheesy what we mean is that it's not so funny it's kind of stupid like that joke was really cheesy and that means that the joke was only a little funny and it's kind of a stupid joke another really popular american slang phrase is shady or to be shady we could say was a shady guy outside the shop last night what does it mean if he's a shady guy well if someone is shady it means that they're suspicious they're doing something strange and you think maybe they are going to do something bad so shady it's like a person who's in the shadows it's not clear what they're doing and maybe they're doing something that they should not be doing maybe something illegal all right another example of american slang is the word flaky say john is so flaky he makes plans and then he doesn't show up right he doesn't he doesn't do what he says that he will do this is what a flaky person does we even have a verb to flake and this means to not do the plan that you said you would do so it's not good to be flaky i really don't like it when people are flaky and the last american slang word that we're going to learn today is beat in the verb to be beat we could say i worked for 14 hours today i am beat it means i'm very tired so i hope you like this video thanks a lot for watching and if you did like it go ahead and press like press subscribe and leave a comment down below and i will see you in the next video lesson bye bye

Channel: English With Kris Amerikos

Views: 11,076

Keywords: How to Understand Americans, how to understand american slang, american slang words, American English, how to become fluent in english, learn american slang, popular american slang, how to pronounce better, how to pronounce metal, how to pronounce turtle, how to pronounce little, american english slang words, bummer meaning, laid back meaning, go with the flow meaning, bomb meaning, sweet meaning, sick meaning, lame meaning, shady meaning, cheesy meaning, kris amerikos

Id: oS918HRgrNw

Length: 11min 55sec (715 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 14 2021