Why You Can't Understand Native ENGLISH Speakers (movies/TV & real life)

Video Statistics and Information

Video
Captions Word Cloud
Reddit Comments
Captions
Hi guys. Welcome back to English with Max. Do you find it difficult to understand native English speakers? Do you understand your English teacher, but then find it difficult to understand movies and TV series? Well, don't worry, you are not alone. This is actually really common, and in this video I'm going to tell you the main reasons why. We'll look at understanding people in real life, and in movies and TV shows. Hopefully if you understand the reasons why, you will worry about it a bit less, because you'll see that it's very normal, and it might also help you realise which areas in English you maybe need to focus on more. Know hope! As always, remember that you can follow me on social media. Don't forget to subscribe (it's completely free, so why not?), and if you want to watch this video with subtitles, you just need to turn on the captions. First let's look at understanding native English speakers in real life. One reason why it might be difficult to understand people is that native English speakers don't tend to learn other languages. Often if people aren't used to learning languages, they don't necessarily understand the difficulties that a non-native speaker might have. In addition, they might assume that you understand everything and therefore they probably won't make an effort to speak more slowly. If you've watched my videos before, you will know that I do speak some foreign languages. But I'm not saying this to sound superior. The only reason I learnt foreign languages was because it's my passion - it's something that interests me. Honestly, if it didn't interest me, I probably would have just studied French for one year in high school, because when I was at school that was the minimum requirement. I think it's a shame that it's not compulsory to study a foreign language for several years in English-speaking countries, but English is the international language and that's just the way it is. Another reason why you might not understand native speakers in real life is that we often speak badly. For example, we often make grammatical mistakes and some of us mumble. Mumbling is when you don't open your mouth very wide and you therefore don't speak very clearly. I'm an English teacher, so I probably make fewer mistakes than the average person (I hope), but it does happen to me sometimes as well. Particularly when I'm speaking quickly or I'm just not paying attention. And I definitely mumble sometimes. It's a bad habit. Now I have two things that just apply to movies and TV shows. The first thing is that characters in movies and TV series often don't speak like people in real life. Have you ever thought: Why do fictional characters often sound so smart? Well, it's because they have scriptwriters, so very often they use vocabulary or constructions that we don't necessarily use every day. Of course that's not always the case - it depends on the movie or the show - but often the English isn't as simple as in real life. Secondly there is often other noise that can make the dialogue difficult to understand. For example, background music, sound effects or just other background noise. If you're a native speaker, or you have a very advanced level, that's not normally a big problem because it's not so important for you to understand every single word. If you are very used to listening to a language, your mind will subconsciously fill in the gaps, so to speak, if you don't understand every word. But if you don't have a lot of experience listening to a language, obviously it will be a bit harder. Now let's look at some things that apply to both real life, and movies and series. Firstly, there are lots of different accents in the world. Obviously if you're not used to hearing a certain accent, you might find it difficult to understand. But if it makes you feel any better, that often happens to native speakers as well. The second thing is slang. Slang is something that you don't often learn in English lessons and it also changes from place to place. (Yay!) The third thing is contractions. We use lots of contractions in English. There are the standard contractions like "don't" and "I'm", and there are also spoken informal contractions, like "gonna", "wanna", "coulda", etc. If you are not used to contractions, you will definitely find it hard to understand native speakers. I've actually already made some videos on contractions. The links will be in the description. The fourth thing is reductions. This is something that I could probably make several videos about. Reductions are sounds that change or disappear when we speak at a normal or high speed. For example, this sentence pronounced slowly is: Do you want a cup of tea? But we don't normally say that. We would say: Do you want a cup'v tea? Do ya want a cuppa tea? D'you wanna cuppa tea? Or even: Dge wanna cuppa tea? And the final thing is connected speech. This is something else that I could probably make several videos about, and it's similar to the concept of reductions. Connected speech is when one word follows into the next word. For example, we don't usually say: "This afternoon." We normally say: Thissafternoon. Thissafternoon. Thanks very much for watching, guys. If you liked the video, please hit the thumbs up. Let me know in the comments if you find it difficult to understand native speakers and why, and also tell me if you can think of any other reasons that I haven't mentioned in this video. See you next time.
Info
Channel: English with Max
Views: 23,260
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: why you can't understand native speakers, why you don't understand english speakers, can't understand native english, why can't i understand british accent, why can't i understand native speakers, why don't i understand native english speakers, understand native speakers more easily, understand native speakers, understand native english speakers, learn english, english with max, native english, why are native speakers hard to understand, native speakers hard to understand
Id: zqP1nOMZccc
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 7min 58sec (478 seconds)
Published: Thu Jul 19 2018
Related Videos
Note
Please note that this website is currently a work in progress! Lots of interesting data and statistics to come.