Why Some People Say SHTRONG (the CHRUTH)
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- Опубликовано: 24 окт 2022
- All good wishes to Hank Green at this time xxx
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A discussion of why English speakers in various countries pronounce 'sh' at the start of words like 'street' and 'strong'.
MRI videos from University of Glasgow:
www.seeingspeech.arts.gla.ac....
Josh at English Hacks on 'tr' and 'dr':
• Consonant Clusters and...
Keenyn Rhodes on 'storm chroopr':
• American English Pronu...
Picture credit:
Hank Green (thumbnail) Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
![Sean Rii, Karyon, Sharzkii - Taungule [My Love] (Official Music Video)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/eJoMuypbSzQ/mqdefault.jpg)
I saw the thumbnail and immediately thought, "damn, that's such a weird way to pronounce those words," only to realize that I myself pronounce them that way
@@topherthe11th23 "Datsh very shtrange, to shink shat anyone would shay it like shat"
god damn close to Shhhhean Connery
My favorite of this is Christopher Walken in "King of New York": "you guys got fat while everybody SHTAWWVED on tha street!" lol
Truth. Or...chruth!!
I feel like I'm getting called out when I watch any of his videos
Same. I’m trying to consciously fix it because I teach kids so I want them to pronounce it correctly.
That was a bit jarring to suddenly see myself! Happy to be a pioneering Street Shopper! This is especially weird because my mom (from the American South) says "srimp" instead of "shrimp."
I'm not worthy! 🙏🙏🙏 I should have mentioned "srimp". Charles Dickens:
Capital srimps!' said Mr. Joseph Tuggs.
Mr. Cymon eyed his father with a rebellious scowl, as he emphatically said 'SHRIMPS.'
'Well, then, shrimps,' said Mr. Joseph Tuggs. 'Srimps or shrimps, don't much matter.'
There was pity, blended with malignity, in Mr. Cymon's eye, as he replied, 'Don't matter, father! What would Captain Waters say, if he heard such vulgarity?'
(Sketches by Boz)
Sounds like a hypercorrection on the shrimp thing.
Aaaaaaahhhhh so THAT'S why Dr Phil says he hates sounding like a "srink"! This answers my comment of about 24h ago. Never expected to get the answer direct from Hank Green 🤣
I went to the comments specifically to look if Hank commented!
@@trentgraham465 yeah i'm a little dissapointed its not from chrash course. no, just kidding....crash course is infinitely better than scishow.
A minor point about the word "sri": it is indeed actually sometimes written "shri" in English, and is solely written as श्री _(shrī = sh + r + ī)_ and pronounced /ʃɾiː/ in Hindi, and written identically and pronounced similarly as /ɕɾi/ in Marathi, as well as in Sanskrit, from which the word originates. The spelling "sri" in English is merely an odd transliteration artifact.
I grew up in India, but I speak English 90% of the time so it’s practically my first language. Interestingly I think most Indians _don’t_ replace the sr/dr/tr sounds - and that’s why our accent sounds more ‘heavy’ in some ways
That’s extremely cool!
Interesting. As an Australian native speaker I find Indian accents to be the second hardest to understand, only behind Chinese. Despite the presence of English in India. I think your explanation why makes a lot of sense.
I think it's because our Ts, Ds and Rs aren't alveolar or post-alveolar, they're all retroflex
The Indians I knew in grad school seemed to be split about 50/50 on sr vs shr (to my American-English speaking ears). Is it regional?
Like @LeftFalangle mentioned, it is mostly because of the post-alveloar to retroflex t/d, but I think it's also because of a trilled or tapped alveolar r, which allows for a "harder" tr, so to speak. If it was a retroflex t/d but approximant r, I believe the result would still be a fronted affricate like in the video.
As a non-native speaker, your videos have confirmed so many of my suspicions about English phonetics that I haven't read anywhere even though I can still hear them. Super informative, sir!
His videos are not "a non-native speaker." I assume you are.
@@jamesmcinnis208 can you read?
@@joelRmontfort @James McInnis is making a grammar observation. The structure of "As an X, Y is..." implies that Y is an X. Obviously that's not what OP meant, the intended meaning is clear, and this mistake (if you can even call it a mistake) is extremely common. But James is pointing out that taken literally, OP's comment is saying that the video itself is a non-native speaker.
@@softy8088 Yep, it's very pedantic as the meaning was clear, but he's technically right.
Ah, the eternal conundrum: Speak/Write exactly like natives and have natives insult you for making native-like mistakes, or speak according to all the rules of "correct" English and sound unnatural and stuck-up? To be or not to be... exactly like an average modern native speaker? And should we strive for average, or is the goal to be so good that you're expressing yourself more "correctly" than the average Joe? Will the average Joe hate your stupid snobbish face when you correct his grammar mistakes?
As a Brazilian with an interest (inchrest) in linguistics who's been learning English all my life, I noticed your channel seems to be the first I've seen to point out these mannerisms of native speakers, especially in such a clear and well taught way! I've noticed when talking to Americans that some of them say "undershtand", and it piqued my interest
I definitely say shtreet, but happy that I don’t say undershtand
Your Portuguese cousins also like turning S into SH too
@@shaunmckenzie5509 True, some Brazilian accents do it too (mine doesn't)
Very Inch Resting!
Some people, including myself say," inchrist", where I'm from (rural Nevada) "inchrust" sounds a little off. Also, we never smash letters after the R. It's always before the R. If someone said," Undershtand". I would assume they were eating and talking at the same time or that they have a speech impediment. I'm speaking from an American English perspective though. Maybe there are other accents out there that may smash letters after the R?
as a native french speaker, I find your videos particularly clear and accessible for us who didn’t grow up to intuitively know the many unwritten rules of english around the world. I appreciate that you give explanations that rely on examples while still including the phonetic sound marks and the kind of mouth movements.
it’s also quite nice to find such content that doesn’t take a stance on what is right and what is wrong.
wow ur really fluent! im currently learning french
@@Spheriment thank you! I’ve been learning English for most of my life so I’ve become pretty used to it. good luck learning French,, it was a real b*tch for me
@@tired1923 So true. My mother is from Québec so naturally, I had to learn French. Even after speaking the language for nearly 10 years and living in Québec for 6 years, I still struggle with it, especially gendered nouns. That rule fucks me up all the time
Gotta love descriptivism in such matters, ennit.
No such thing as a 'wrong' word or sound, if it is generally understood.
Well... With the exception of some of the sounds of your native French, particularly some of those involving R's. They are categorically and objectively _wrong_. This is an opinion I must insist upon, as it presently seems more likely that I will persuade the rest of humanity of the point than that I will learn to correctly reproduce them...
I am a beginner/intermediate French learner. Is there a RUclips channel (or other resource) that you know of that is similar to what Dr Geoff Lindsey does but for the French language?
That sounds incredibly interesting, but I wouldn't even know where to begin!
My younger sibling once wrote "filchreip", which I found interesting-it demonstrates not only the 'chr' phenomenon, but also the fact that young children hear the phrase 'field trip' in contexts that don't make clear the constituent words, to the point of perceiving it as monolithic, a single word.
English is unique among Germanic languages for spelling noun clusters like "field trip" with spaces between the constituent nouns. In languages such as German, Dutch, or Scandinavian languages, the same kind of construction exists, but no spaces are added, so it would be something like"fieldtrip".
@@fritzp9916two months late but minor note, what adds to the situation is the fact that english spelling is highly irregular and if you don't know the word, you'll have to know a bit about its origin to get a grip on how it might possibly be spelt
so maybe in german you could in theory hear Schulfahrt and not know that it's composed of schul and fahrt, you could still write it by hearing the term the first time
I’m a choir teacher and a lot of my students write “chreble clef” rather than “treble clef”. I’m glad I found your channel, I’m always ranting to my choirs about pronunciation 😂
Please ask them to take my survey!
@@DrGeoffLindsey I must be a weird one here as that seems to come out as t'r to me, same with t'r in train. The tongue hits the roof of my mouth just behind the teeth for both at the end of the t sound. That said my grandfather was in the forces as was my father and both travelled a lot with my mum in tow for much of it. Perhaps that is also why I have a weird tendency to go with the flow up to the point of picking up an accent in many ways when I travel. It's like I somehow swallowed more of the dictionary of sounds growing up although I still find pronouncing kn really tricky since moving to the Netherlands those two consonants do not flow in sequence for me. It often either feels like I am tripping over my tongue or a slight hint of an a or u vowel seems to insert itself as a transition.
I read an early draft of an academic paper containing a phrase that spelled everyone’s favourite cheese “swish cheese”.
There is a reason you’re feeling frustrated. And that road on which your frustration drives leads to horrors like this.
Oh, sorry, frushtration.
Academia. NO excuses.
Also, my 7 year old epsilon has a lisp. It is adorable. It’s hard not to let it go so that I can enjoy the cuteness for awhile longer. It’s not a full lisp, seems to mostly occur at, or near, the ends of words. “Swith cheeth.” That sort of thing.
Are they stupid? Not even my 9-year-old self would make that mistake.
I'm a native english speaker from New Jersey and i wasnt aware of this until singing in my highschool choir. My choir director had to instruct us how to sing the word "street" which nearly all of us pronounced like "shtreet" and none of us were aware that we did this. You learn a lot about phonetics from singing in a choir because the director has to decide on a standardized pronunciation for all the words so that when the singers sing, their voices will blend. I've even met singers who use IPA to write in the pronunciations of words. This is more common in choirs where they sing songs in many different languages.
Singers are the only people I've met besides linguists who have use for the IPA.
So true! I sang all through high school and college and it was my only exposure as an American to IPA. Interestingly, words like “street” or “drum” can be sung in different ways depending on intended feel. Singing “s-treet” could employ a flipped r, but could also have a quick clean s into the American R. If you used “shtreet” you’d get way too much consonant and would lose clarity across an ensemble. Interestingly, a less sophisticated choir might still have people unknowingly using “shtreet” for lack of hearing/feeling the difference. By contrast, “Jrums” makes a lot more sense, as to use the American R you sort of have to voice the D first or combine them into “Jrum”. An American r “d-rum” has a lot of bounce to it, while “jrum” fees like it is a bit more mellow and can fit in a phrase more smoothly. Then you could also do a flipped r “d-rum” for that more classical choral sound. Really fascinating topic
Further, snare is more like how street’s s is supposed to be pronounced, as a funny connection to drum
I use IPA all the time as a speech pathologist, to record exactly how clients have pronounced words during both assessments and therapy. It’s very useful, can’t do the job without it.
I like the people who say "aks" and "wif" instead of "ask" and "with", what's the story there? Also, if you can't use plurals properly you talk like Tonto. It's kind of appalling how many people have that problem.
Classically trained singers are actually taught to use IPA as part of our education. When I was in university, I had to write out the IPA for every song I did. We took an entire IPA course. It was actually quite helpful because we were required to sing in so many different languages. You might look at an Italian word, for example, and be unsure how to pronounce it, but once you saw the IPA there was no longer a question.
Massive shout out to how non-judgemental you are with your analyses Doc. It's almost impossible to have conversations around language and pronunciation change without encountering bias (I include myself in this!). Wonderfully objective and informative - thanks!
You know that sometimes "bias" is just a stick used to beat you and that, often, that bias isn't bias at all?
I'm sure you'll have had "speech, language, dialect change all the time" thrown at you by people who lack the ability to discuss anything, usually followed by "you racist!" It really is tiresome. There are even those who say that 'you're' and 'your' should now be interchangeable because "everyone knows what you mean anyway". It's a steady decline in standards which starts with little, apparently unimportant things like speech and dress but ends with the kind of social lunacy we're seeing these days.
@@typhoon2827 🏍️ Alone you're not on this train of thought 🚂. The decay of language is a symptom of the decay of society. We're dumbing down and simplifying English for a new generation that doesn't want a difference between your and you're. Their and they're. To and too. Those who spell it how they say it and add a few apostrophes while they're at it.
@@typhoon2827 Fun fact: Singular "they" (and "them") has been in English longer than singular "you". But people who claim to want to keep English traditional only ever complain about the first.
@@ryanm7704 ooooh, sounds like copium to me, as fun a fact it might be. I'm guessing the Vikings used the non gender specific term "fisherthem" too. Am I right? 🙄
@@typhoon2827 Or that linguistics is often used by people who have no idea what they're talking about to attack and other people.
I would be interested in hearing what you meant by "social lunacy".
As a native German speaker it never occured to me that the R was responsible for pronunciations like "shtrong", because on the surface we have a similar thing with "Stein" or "Spiel" being pronounced with SH.
I always assumed it was simply something about the clusters, but of course in German the situation is very different in that apparently original Germanic S had come to be pronounced alveolo-palatally and later shifted to a post-alveolar position in these clusters but further to an alveolar position elsewhere.
This covers the Stein but not the Spiel. P is an entirely different sound from S so why does it become a Schpiel?
@bramblebop1904 Well, the reasons in German are completely different. Apparently in English the R plays a role, but in German it has other historical reasons that also cover "Spiel" and "schwimmen" (where it even made its way into spelling, in the middle ages it was "swimmen").
And I'm so used to the German change that I didn't even think about the reason for the English one.
We have different languages, but we share the same anatomy, lol. Sh-t is easier to say than s-t, in any language. Very interesting topic...
@@bramblebop1904 That might be true (though I don't believe there's anything anatomically easier about /št/ than /st/), but the point is that this isn't where the phenomenon came from in German, because German S was then NOT pronounced as it is today in both German and English, but more palatally. This palatal spirant became less palatal in some positions and more so in others and ended up coalescing with "sch" in some phonetic environments and with "s" in others.
I’m a native speaker and I have literally never noticed this but it definitely happens. I can’t even tell if I do this because now I’m so hyper focused on how I’m pronouncing these sounds!
I keep saying strong over and over like a jackass trying to hear it 😂
I'm native and I don't think I understand how to properly say train anymore.
Try putting it in a sentence like you were talking to someone! It helps you to say it more naturally for you. May also help to record yourself saying that while thinking about something else to distract your brain.
take the quiz link. I just realized I say "baddery" instead of battery. Baddery acid.
How could you have never noticed before? It's very easy to hear.
I have an auditory processing disorder that makes it quite hard to keep up with conversations and I when I was younger I purposefully taught myself to do all of these things as a way to mask the disorder. I didn’t know there was a language to describe it but I figured out on my own that if I simplified the pronunciation of certain words I could say them faster and create the illusion that I was speaking at a similar speed and cadence to someone who was more neurotypical. I knew people would listen to me more and infantilize me less if they didn’t know that I had a mental disability. So I paid very close attention to how people around me were taking and figured out every single shortcut I could find in my local accent (American Midwest), then I figured out ways to lean into it so that people would just think I have a bit of a “country” accent rather than a mental disability.
That's really interesting, thanks for sharing. Hopefully one day neurodivergent and disabled people won't have to worry about being judged anymore.
That's quite amazing!
@@frankdayton731 For example, I'm judging you having ignored the context of the comment you're replying to in order to make a pointless observation.
I just realized I do this omg
Rare homosapien W.
As a US 2nd grade teacher (7-8 year olds), I give a spelling assessment at the beginning of the year and invariably have a significant number of them write chrain and jreme (train & dream). They are certainly aware of their phonics! Extensive reading throughout the year seems to extinguish this tendency.
Wouldn't they be reading way before the age of 7 or 8 though? Is it not usual for Americans to start to read at the beginning of school at age 4-5? Or before then? When I was little we were all given crayons and pencils the moment we could grip them, so I have handwriting from when I was 1 and a half years old. And I know I was reading by the age of 2 (just basic books like Where's My Teddy? and The Very Hungry Caterpillar). At 7 or 8 I was reading books like Redwall and Goosebumps, as were most of my classmates. By then spelling words like train and dream would be easy unless the individual had some kind of learning disorder or dyslexia.
@@AlexaFaiekids start learning to recognize and write letters at 4 or 5 in the US, but depending on how fast they pick it up, it may take a year or two to learn to actually read, and longer than that to remember how words are spelled if it doesn't match up with what they're hearing, so I wouldn't be surprised to see spelling mistakes from kids that age.
I'm from Barbados and typically what we do when speaking in our creole is that we'd go completely post-alveolar with words that start with thr. So instead of "through" we'd say "chrough" which would be identical to "true" or instead of "three" we'd say "chree" or "tree" but the latter is often discouraged from a young age. I find this fascinating because I've never seen this pronounciation outside of the Caribbean.
When Gullah & Creole were more common in the American south, you’d hear it there too, but not as much these days. Some of it has crossed into African American dialects, and that is probably where it’s made it’s way into other parts of common American pronunciation.
That's how Irish people speak.
Tree, tru, etc. It's because there is no TH sound in the Irish language and this passes over into the English dialect.
Considering the large numbers forcibly moved to Barbados from Ireland, it would make sense there is an influence in your dialect.
@@jenster29 I was observing the same thing. This video is a good example of the influence of the Irish accent in Montserrat.
ruclips.net/video/Jfip96k1cE0/видео.html
@@Mariemgt123 haha yeah they sound like they come straight out of Cork hahah
I insisted to my mother circa age 4 that “dress” started with “j”. I grew up in the American South. So cool to see that this came from somewhere!
The jr/chr thing is actually one of the first things that got me into linguistics as a hobby. Noticed while hanging out with friends as a teenager that I was saying "chrees" rather than "trees". No one else knew what I was talking about at the time but I started looking into what that might be. Funnily enough I never heard it being acknowledged before this video, I assumed it was just a weird quirk of my particular dialect of English.
Holy crap you're right! I never noticed that before?
I remember being a toddler and asking my parents why "tree" isn't spelled like "chree" instead. It really bothered me as a kid, but I guess I've let it go as I've aged 😂
It shouldn't be acknowledged, because it's deeply wrong. LOL
@@PeterCamberwick Oh? How so?
I did this, too, with “drunk.” 😂
I had a very *magical* experience once where people in RUclips videos sounded weird like there was something in their mouths. Hearing you point this pronunciation makes me realize that I was just perceiving this accent more clearly. It sounds exactly the same!
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I (16m, german) have wondered specifically about the "tr" situation for a while now and couldn't figure out why I was always pronouncing it wrong. Normally I'm pretty good with the english pronounciation, but pronouncing "tr" without a "ch" sound was impossible for me. I discussed this topic with my english teacher literally the last lesson and the people that overheard our conversation were really confused. Sadly my teacher didn't understand what I meant. Now I finally have proof that I'm not imagining this.
I find stuff like this really interesting, especially since I used to have a lisp with SH, CH, and J sounds. I spent YEARS in speech therapy until one day someone just told me to try pretending CH is more like a T sound, rather than the rushing air through my molars that I was doing. That changed my whole world and suddenly I didn’t have that lisp anymore, simply because I now knew the proper mouth placement of the sound. To this day I still have what feels like a vested interest in phonetics.
I would pronounce my r's like w's and so i have to over pronounciate the r sound. It moved over into the other phonemes so train used to be "twain" but now its "chrain"
Wow you just solved my lisp thank you
Glad you worked past it 🙏
Wait, what kind of lisp did you have? And how did you pronounce your Sh, ch, j sounds before you overcome the lisp?
@@gtc239 I think the name for what I had was a "lateral lisp", if I'm not mistaken. I was never told what the name of it was when I had it, but a lateral lisp seems like the closest thing. I tried to make those sounds by just rushing air through my molars. It made those noises sound slushy and wet, rather than crisp like how they're supposed to sound.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen content that explores the nitty gritty of English phonetics as throughly like this anywhere else on RUclips. It is massively insightful to nonnative speakers like me! Excellent work!
If you're learning English, don't copy this style of speaking.
@@mirvids5036 don't be ridiculous, the tr -> chr and dr -> jr change is perfectly natural and acceptable for all speakers of English. Here's Charles III saying "countries" as "countchries" in his first speech as king: ruclips.net/video/Y9EUPrd_oJw/видео.html&ab_channel=NBCNews (skip to 1:00)
@@mirvids5036 yeah i guess it might be a bit too difficult
@@mirvids5036 Why? That's still native English. If I want to match my pronunciation to that of a native, why whould I change things like these?
@@mirvids5036 and what you’d rather people spoke like confused robots?
The standard orthography of Jamaican Patois shows such sound changes explicitely, for instance "chrii" (three), "chrang" (strong), "jringk" (drink) and "jrai" (dry).
I’d be interested to hear you speak about a phenomenon I’ve noticed among my fellow American English speakers, where people seem to be replacing words ending in “-ing” with “-een”. For example “feeling” becomes “feeleen”, “sitting” becomes “siteen”, and “wrecking” becomes “wreckeen”. I’ve noticed the “g” drop more often in recent years, and there are a few actors, RUclipsrs, and people I’ve encountered who speak this way. Curious to learn your take!
Yeah, I notice that in Family Guy. The Actor who plays Joe does it for a start. "Peter, I don't know where you got that thing, but I'm impoundeen it!".
I've noticed most people I talk to drop the g, though it usually ends up like -in or -en. Like "I was sittin there" or "he's runnin fast." It seems to be really commonly reflected in how a lot of people text or type as well, particularly younger people
The "g" isn't pronounced separately, in English "ng" is the written symbol for the sound "ŋ" which is like a nasal n (also found in "nk" or "nc" words like bank or rink or zinc)
It's weird that you written -een, instead of IPA or as in (but short )
The G-dropping is a time-honored tradition, even with upper-class accents. Ridin', huntin' an' fishin', for example. But "een"? I don't hear that very often. I think Johnny Carson was the only one I knew of that regularly spoke that way.
I've been arguing about this pronunciations for over 20 years. I'm not a native speaker and none of my teachers or even native speaker friends have pointed this out to me, or when I noticed and pointed it out they told me I'm hearing wrong or I was misunderstamding something. I'm so glad that after all this time an actual expert in english phonetics is siding with me. You sir made my day. Cheers from Barcelona.
Shrue Shtory! 😉
I don't know why anyone would tell you you're hearing wrong. As a native speaker this is something that seemed pretty obvious. I used to jokingly write words like train as chrain. Sorry you had to deal with this strange linguistic gas lighting for so long😂
Agreed! Not a native speaker either but this has always frustrated me. Idk if I've ever spoken a lot with others about it but I always found it hard to explain. I love seeing an explanation of it.
This entire channel is excellent, as a native speaker these are the little things that I pick up on, sometimes even subconsciously, to identify someone as a non-native speaker.
That sucks that you were treated that way
My daughter goes to a welsh medium school but she’s very good at writing in English. Her English is littered with welsh phonetics which I find really clever.
In her letter to Santa, she told him she hadn’t been ‘nôty’ (naughty) this year. Vowels with roofs don’t exist in English but phonetically, that’s exactly how it’s pronounced.
Not in American English it’s not
@@melovekittie cool but my daughters first language is British English so your comment is irrelevant.
@@melovekittie Holy fuck you aren't the center of the fucking universe.
It's also wrong in Greek. Is that revelant as well?
@@NH_HN cool but the circumflex isn't used in the English language, thus we must assume there isn't a standardised pronunciation for it, so your initial comment is irrelevant
@@fraizie6815 but almost everyone who knows what british english sounds like can see what "ô" is, and how it makes sense, so your comment is less relevant (but still relevant)
The most inchresting and thought provoking video I have seen in a very long time. Well done
Just wanted to point out the alliterative phrase "choo-choo train." Also the fact that in Czech (and much less importantly, German) the English "J" sound is spelled starting with a "D," as in the loanword "džungle" ("Dschungel").
I'm sitting here as a German feeling wacked out by sht and such even tho we literally do that in German.
This is actually something that always annoyed me about German spelling. We write Sport and Straße, but say Schport and Schtraße.
Sure, English spelling takes the disconnect between written and spoken to a whole new level, but German is usually quite close and these few exception stick out all the more for it.
If anything I am still pretty in the blue as to why this happened in German. The obvious comparison here is "Straße" with "Shtreet".
Hower in German, this happens ALWAYS at the beginning of a word if followed by ANY consonant: Schlaf, Schmerz, Schnee, Spiel, Stuhl, Schwefel. And then in the case of K, it just becomes SCH so "scribere" becomes "schreiben" and "scola" becomes "Schule". This last case I can get behind a bit more and you can see in Scandinavia as well, where "ski" is pronounced (more like) "shee" and not "skee". I suppose S and K are really far apart and SCH pretty much in the middle so it ended up there, but still that logic doesn't work for all the other consonants and this effect only being at the beginning of words.
@@Yotanido There are actually quite a lot of deviations in spoken German from written German. Endings like -er become something like -ah, -en often gets swallowed to -n or just nothing pretty much, there are spellings like ie, ei and vocal plus h, -ig can become -ich, etc etc
@@Yotanido Standard German pronunciation is essentially a compromise between northern and southern dialects. Traditionally, northern speakers do say ẞtraße, while southwestern speakers turn every st into schp. So Kischte, künschtlich, etc. In spelling it always remains st of course, for all speakers. In a way, it's unnecessary that we include the ch before other consonants as in Schwein, schlecht, etc., because sw, sl, etc. aren't used in German anyway. It's kind of like the sr-situation in English.
I know how you feel. I'm a Czech learning German and the other day, I was really annoyed there weren't two different words for "blink" and "wink" in German. How can a language NOT HAVE that? Then I realised Czech doesn't have that, either. It's just English.
A really great example (as a native English speaker) is the word drawer. I remember growing up always trying to spell it with a j and being confused to learn it was a dr spelling because all I could hear and say was the j sound! I’m from the Philly area and it’s basically one syllable, phonetically almost like “joor”
Scrolled looking for someone that brought this up, thanks. I might as well be saying 'jrawr XD', I have a hard time making that word sound like two syllables
Where I'm from, the "dr" sound in "drawer" sounds like "dr" (not "jr"), but the "awer" is pronounced almost like one syllable with a long "o" vowel sound, so that it almost rhymes with door or four or pour.
And the two words that get me,
mirror and solder.
Meer and sodder. How?
@@andrewclarkehomeimprovement I was just getting into an argument with some friends about how to say mirror. I had no idea I was saying it as a single syllable, Meer. I am from Pittsburgh. In Fact I would love to see this guy do a video on the "Pittsburghese" and Philly accents.
@@eqbrim please don't think I was being critical of you or anyone in particular. It's just an interesting linguistic oddity.
Solder. You'd say older not odder, so why sodder and not solder?
Mirror! Just can't get how this can be corrupted to 'meer'. Mi-raw. So easy!
It has been said that we are two people's separated by the same language. I say vive la difference!
Ah, that's not exactly English is it?
D'oh!
The strange thing for me about being a Dutch person with trouble pronouncing the harder r you mentioned, is that I've learned to over compensate, so I hardly use the softer English R, even though it comes more naturally to me
omg thank you!! i tried to convince my first year linguistics professor of this phenomenon after we were asked to transcribe "tree" on a test and i sat there agonizing over how to best represent what i say using only the broad transcription we'd learned at the time hahaha. she wasn't convinced/must have thought i was exaggerating that that was my natural pronunciation of such words. but i remained sure and then started noticing more and more when people do this "train changing" and "drum majoring" -- love the terms btw :). hadn't really picked up on street shopping before this video! always so cool to have new phenomena pointed out, will definitely be listening for that now. i love all the real-life clips you included, especially with "sri lanka" which i'd never previously thought about either :) thanks for this, what a fun journey back to my undergrad days as a ling major!!
I have noticed Shtreet Shopping for years among my middle school students in New Jersey. I also participated in a two-day linguistics workshop at Princeton where the prof (who, as an aside, said he was the ONLY professor there who taught the history of the English language) insisted that the word "trough" was, phonetically speaking, no different from the word "Chroff." He said, "Now, 'chroff' isn't a word, but it certainly could be, and it fits that pattern." I took exception to this because I thought I could hear a difference between TR and CHR but this video has made me think more about it. Perhaps my argument wasn't as SHTRONG as I thought...
Where I grew up (rural Wyoming), trough was pronounced "chroff" with a very clear and distinct "ch", but train, trip, and trot didn't get the "t" rounded out to a "ch". I sort of think trough is a little bit special.
@@bluewales73 Well, if you're in rural Wyoming, I'd think you would want your troughs to be "special"! : ). That's an interesting comment.
@@bluewales73 When I lived one state north in Montana (about a decade ago), chrain, chrip, etc. were the common pronunciation. Interesting to hear it might be different just a bit further south.
I mean troff and chroff are phonetically different clearly there’s no disputing that
If you pronounce the letter t and then pronounce ch, your mouth is doing a different thing, it’s a different sound
"Street Shopping" was extremely prevalent in my high school in South Australia over 30 years ago. Nice to see the phenomenon being recognised.
Interesting! I noticed on your quiz that I revert to a different more precise pronunciation for words I read that are not ones I routinely use but understand (i.e., British English versus American terms).
This is really cool! I’ve noticed some people online, on tumblr/twitter for example, use “inch resting” as a “quirky” way of saying interesting. Now I know where it comes from!
I’m a native English speaker (from Scotland originally), and actually find it really hard to pronounce train as “chrain”, but I generally pronounce “r” at the front of the mouth.
The Scottish 'r' can be very different from the English 'r'.
Oh absolutely, Scottish "r" doesn't fit this pattern at all.
I love the Scottish r! I think the sound of a tapped or trilled r is so much more pleasant to hear than a post-alveolar r, and this coming from the speaker of the former.
I'm from Scotland as well, I grew up with both a tapped "r" and a retroflex "r". I also speak German where "shtr" combinations are the norm. I can pronounce "chrain", but I find it requires extreme retraction and bunching of the tongue at the back while flattening the front and pressing the sides against the back molars. Definitely not possible with any kind of Scottish "r".
@@alicemilne1444 For me, "chrain" with a tapped "r" comes out sounding scouse, but maybe I'm doing it wrong...
I wish we could have a channel like this for all the world's languages
SAME I think about this every time I see a video like this. Too bad English is the lingua franca..
Trying to improve your Athabascan? Maybe your !kung ? Your Old Sumerian?
Seriously, there are still almost 10,000 languages documented by SOMEBODY, even if they are wrong.
+@@Egilhelmson hyperbole, ever heard of it?
Yes, it's really hard to notice things like this in your own language
I learned German and French in highschool besides my native tongue Dutch and honestly its less neccesary in all these languages. Phonetics are more linked to how its written down and how you break up words in syllables. Its really just a few a rules and oddities you have to learn and you're good at speaking out written sentences with words that you dont even know yet.
Its just that the rules can be odd for non native speakers. Like words ending with -en in dutch is not how its written but an "un" or "uh" sound and how french people dont pronounce the "H" at the start of words and most consonants at the end are barely pronounced.
But usually you can look stuff up on youtube about learning phonetics of other languages, there are lots of small non english channels dedicated to (usually aimed at teaching young kids) for learning pronunciation of wirtten words.
This is a very common phenomenon in many languages.
In German and Dutch (and Finnish), the most common example would be the combination of nasal and plosive sounds in the same position.
"Imker" has m and k which are produced in different places and are thus tough to combine. M generally 'prefers' going with p or b, n with d or t, and ng with g or k. Germans solve this by putting a tiny stop between the sounds, making it sound almost like "Imb-ker".
Another word is "sanft" which has the additional f in it. F is produced in the same place as p and b, and the entire word very often turns into "sambft" because the proper pronunciation is more work.
In Dutch, when you use the diminutive of a noun by adding "je" (pronounced -yeh), you sometimes add the plosive as well: "Boom" - "Boompje" (tree, little tree). The Dutch (or German) j sound is produced way back in the mouth while m is produced in the front, so the p makes it easier to jump from one to the other as it has a stronger stop sound.
Finnish is the most consequent out of these three languages as it always does this. M before k turns into ng, so does n before k, m before t turns into n, n before p into m.
I've noticed that Germans pronounce my name (Ruben) like "Rubm." Even as a child I thought that sounded excessively lazy.
@@ze_rubenator That example would be new to me, we normally put more effort in names, but it's still possible.
@@joanneaugust6611 It might be a dialect thing, but I have heard it like that from several different people throughout the years.
@@ze_rubenator I actually tried to pronounce your name aloud just now a couple of times - I absolutely cannot pronounce the n in the end. So it may not be laziness, but actually a thing with native German speakers...
If I want to pronounce the n, I have to put a vowel stronger than the Schwa sound between the b and n. That sounds like Ru+Ben then. But I think the vowel sound is usually more or less swallowed, right?
@@joanneaugust6611 Yeah I also find it way easier to do it that way in German, I think the main problem is the near total emission of the e, which leaves a tricky bn cluster that as far as I can tell isn't present at the end of words in either German, English or Norwegian (my native language).
Your solution to add a stronger vowel sound brings it much closer to the Norwegian pronounciation which indeed is more like Ru+Ben in two distinct syllables.
Just to clarify: By lazy I don't mean Germans are lazy for speaking like that, but rather that it's a lazy feature of the German language to remove a syllable and then having to change a consonant just to make it work 😄
Your videos are amazing. You uncover this fascinating world of language with near poetic elegance. I bought your book a while ago then came across your channel recently and was pleasantly surprised to find you were the author. Thank you for doing what you do - and for the degree of detail with which you do it. Truly grateful.
As a Canadian bilingual I was taking the test and noticed that in some words, like disastrous, the S sound is actually a diphthong of of sorts, starting with a true "s" and very quickly sliding to the "sh" to accomodate the TR cluster that follows. Fascinating stuff as always!
Interesting! I'm British and I would never combine s and t in disastrous. I'd pronounce it: DIS AS TER-US, so 4 syllables rather than how I guess you say it as 3.
Guilty!
@@ranulfdoswell You can hear both pronunciations in English Canadian dialects. Depending on the age of the person and region.
Though a bizarre example in Canadian English is the Torontonian pronunciation of Toronto: choronna.
I think I have something similar here in southwestern MN, but I can’t tell if the TR is turning into SH or CH for me.
I think with SSBE the -trous has a definite t but I think some famous Londoners would say chr or shr as they don't anunciate that part of the word.
Prestige speech affects the definite t, as the speech optimisation is likely to be seen as more vulgar and mumbly.
Was always wondering why English speakers seem to struggle so much with pronouncing Slavic place names and words. From my perspective, they couldn't be easier, but now it makes total sense. On a similar note, I realized that when we try to mimic an "American" accent for comedic purposes in my language, most people simply replace our "trill" r with post-alveolar r and it does the trick. Your videos open my eyes not only to how English works, but where the differences in languages come from, and it is super cool.
Could you give some examples of Slavic place names you find English people struggle to pronounce?
@@zaixai9441 One example from the video - Srebrenica has no sh. (That's of course a lot easier to do if your R is a trill, not the English R.)
KH (as in Scottish loch, or German Bach) is another very common one. Many English speakers will use some form of K for that (like currently in the news, "Karkiv" or "Kerson") - misled by the writing of a consonant that doesn't really exist in English.
Generally, Slavic consonant clusters are a thing many people (not just English-speaking) really struggle with.
The stress being in different places in different languages (Czech: first syllable, Polish: second-to-last syllable, Russian: all over the place, you just have to know) doesn't help either.
Im a german english learner who is super interested in listening carefully and uncovering the secrets of spoken language. Especially when it comes to american English. I have no idea why but I just love the sound of american English. And this video was what needed even though I didnt know I would needed it.
You deliver the clearest, most precise and most enlightening videos on English linguistics I've come across on this platform
One thing that seems to be a little bit missing from this video is why words like "tune" also get changed to "chune" (in some accents anyway, including my own Scottish). The explanation for train changing given in this video is related to the R sound, but there isn't one in that word.
Looking at other "tu" words, I think the difference was in which of the U sounds I was using. So words like tune, tuna, tuba, tuba, tutor, tulip, all start with "chu", but words like tuck, tummy, tuft, tusk, turn, all have proper "tu" sounds. But the vowel is different, for the former words it's pronounced like the word "ewe", while for the latter it's "uh". It also didn't show up in words like "tush" which has an "oo" sound. Not sure why the little "yuh" noise means I change to "chu" rather than "tu" but maybe that's an explanation for another day.
I think it's basically the same thing: the "yu" sound is post-alveolar, like the English "r".
Funny! I remember when I was a little boy confusing tune/chune and turn/churn!
@@echidna8159 I pronounce those words "oo" rather than "yu", and there's never a ch, so this makes sense to me.
U also changes Hs. Don't know the phonetic term for it but the H sound we make at the beginning of hue, human, hugh, huge is totally different to the one we make for hat, hit, hot, hate, hight. The tongue's further forward, and pulls sharply back before the vowel. But only with Us.
@@echidna8159 it's PALATAL, not post alveolar. but we don't fully do the PALATALIZATION so it ends up post alveolar.
Native speaker here. Took the survey and answered t/s/d to most. Felt weird to try to say the words with ch/sh/j - almost like I was drunk :). The s/sh swap sounded more "natural" but that's likely because of my German heritage and the fact that as I was growing up, many in my grandparents community spoke German.
I have an aussie accent and I answered the opposite for most I guess that makes sense lmao
In my native language (Czech) only people with a specific kind of lisp do this or when people talk to babies. But this baby talk always looks and sounds ridiculously. So, I sometimes must laugh at English speakers with overly pronounced shtr as it reminds the baby talk here too much🙂
@@smarter_in_5_mins Well, that's... rude.
@@pleasegoawaydude What about it is exactly rude? That I was frank about how I perceive the shtr? I can't help; it is as it is. You may laugh at my English, and I cannot do anything about it. I laugh (internally) at overly pronounced shtr. In fact, I am often so distracted by it that I close the video. On the other hand, I have not named any person.
Regarding cultural differences, I would recommend you some videos about Czech humor, but you could perceive it as too offensive 🙂 Anyway, try to search for "Expats Think THIS About Czech Humor"; this will give you an idea.
I'm an ESOL teacher and only this week discovered in real time with my students that we don't say 'try' or 'train' but 'chry' and 'chrain' due the British 'r'. This is why learners of English sound strange when they pronounce the t correctly followed by a rolled r, which native speakers don't do. To emphasise to my Ukrainian students what we actually say I wrote 'try' on the board in Cyrillic - 'чраі'. Thanks Dr Geoff for getting there before me and explaining it so well!
So my name is Adrian and I work as a nanny. Consistently, young kids have a very difficult time with my name because of all the soft consonants and that “dr” in the middle. The three year old I nanny now just calls me “AJ” and this video makes that make even more sense. Thank you sir, for your fastidious efforts.
Wonderful video! As something from Eastern Ontario, Canada, I find that most people pronounce 'str' as 'schr'. Strong becomes schrong, street becomes schreet, etc. The city of Toronto is shortened to something like "trono", which the 'tr' then becomes a 'chr'. The city of Chrono!
Chronno cross, not to be confused with Chrono Cross
I find it quite interesting that the exact same effect happens in some variants of Brazilian Portuguese, where "ti" and "di" are pronounced "t͡ʃi" and "d͡ʒi" instead.
As a European Portuguese speaker, those are the some of the main distinctive features of your version of the language.
I believe that in Brazilian Portuguese these occur only before an "i", as you say, but certainly not before "r".
That's different, more akin to yod coalescence in English, where tune and dune are pronounced not as /tju:n/ and /dju:n/ but as /ʧuːn/ and /ʤuːn/, therefore making June and dune (and Jew and dew) homophones.
That's pretty standard in many accents in the UK, though it is allophonic, and not a full merger yet.
Quantidade ou quantchidadche?
@@JT-2312 I speak BP natively. I think you’re completely right.
i don’t know much about English, linguistics, and whatnot… but this video, and your explanations, was very easy for me to understand!
as someone with no prior knowledge, i could still comprehend your points and topics quite well... that’s amazing! impressive, even!
it’s truly incredible that you have the ability to teach me something that i had never learned before now.
there were many times throughout the video where i paused to reflect on your explanation, smiled very big, and said “wait a minute… i do that! wow, haha!”
i just learned a lot about my native language and the way i speak… very interesting and informative video! well done!
I'm loving your videos! So glad the algorithm decided to show me your channel.
Wow! This channel is quickly becoming one of my favorites on RUclips, if not *the* favorite! Great video!
🙏🙏🙏
I know, right? I'm non-native and I have never heard that "shtreet shopping" sounds in native speakers, but now I do and I'm probably going to use them more myself to sound more natural. I think it is because in my native country, when learning English, there is a big push for grammar and writing, and not enough emphasis on speaking and pronunciation - which is a shame! I only wonder if I start speaking with my new tips learned from these videos, would I not sound fake? 😉
I taught art & engineering in China summer 2019, and while I did learn some Mandarin before I went, Chinese college students studying English were assigned to each teacher. They loved taking down notable words we used and asking about them and learning how to use them. One day, I told an 8 year old boy he was being “so dramatic”, and I noticed the college student repeat the word to himself a few times and then start typing in his phone. I peeked over his shoulder and he was looking up “Germanic”. I cleared that up right away! Another word they loved was “drenched”, when we would describe how we felt in the humidity and heat! Another J sound on that one! Also, not sure if it’s related, I had a lisp as a kid and I definitely don’t say shtreet. I say street. I’m in North Jersey (NJ, USA).
Haha! I’m Chinese & brought up there until university age. We students really CLING ON to the words we are taught. It’s so hard to just somehow KNOW a word & its 10 other synonyms out of the blue. If a teacher taught me “oh when ur soaking wet, it’s called drenched” you bet I will only ever use that word. X)
@@harriet.z hahahaha it was really an incredible experience and made me even more aware of what I say and how I say it than I already am.. my mom is a Polish immigrant and my dad is not nor speaks Polish, so I’ve always been very aware of my speaking decisions.
What a bright 8 year old, to know that English is a Germanic language.
Your story reminded me… When my son was young he told me about a scary movie that he saw: “Drastic Park”.
@@davidkantor7978 😂😅🤣 yep! Sounds right to me! 👂🏼
I think you updated the video description in light of Hank's cancer announcement and chemotherapy. That's so sweet and thoughtful. What a nice touch to update a video from 7 months ago. I agree-best wishes to Hank at this time.
A childhood friend used to say ‘bedjroom for bedroom, chruck for truck. Her siblings spoke the same way, and I often think about little things like that, so I found this post intriguing!
I never really paid attention to this phenomenon until my friend casually pointed out that I do it "in that standard southern way."
I was taken aback not only by the realization that others don't say "shtreet" but also by her suggestion that it's a southern thing. I'm in Cali which I wouldn't consider to be that kind of "South" - but I did go to elementary school in Louisiana. I would absolutely love some sort of a map breakdown of which English accents include this and which don't.
We've had a similar debate over glottal stops and the way I say "moun'ain," "impor'ant" and "cer'ain" where she will say "mountain," "important" and "certain" - also a phenomenon that I'd love to see broken down by accent.
I noticed this when I did the survey! I pronounced both “Tightrope” and “night-[something]” with glottal stops in the middle instead of ts. I’m from AZ, might be a southwest thing?
I was born in Northern California and moved to the treasure valley of Idaho when I was 7. I definitely have the impor’nt, cer’ain, moun’ian, thing. Never really realized it was a thing until now
I live in North Carolina and my extended family is from Georgia. None of us say "shtreet" but we all say "mountain". We are white and I've noticed that some of my friends who are black say "shtreet" so I'm wondering if that is also a cultural difference in the US.
@@CaseyWatchin Also from NC and I say street and mountain. Like they're spelled.
Midwest (Ohio) here and I inadvertently remove the "T" as well
I was hoping you would do a video about this! My wife was a 1st grade teacher and almost all of her students would write tr words as chr like tree would become chree, and their dr words would become jr like drink would become jrink. I always found this so fascinating that almost all of them were doing this. I think linguists could learn a lot about how languages change by studying how children interpret what they hear.
Another sound that was commonly spelled wrong was the th sound was sometimes written as f. Which as an American I always associated that sound more coming from British speakers and not Americans. Maybe you could do a video on the th sound vs the f sound, I think that could make for some interesting content.
Agreed!
As a non native English speaker, it may benefit me that I pronounce all the letters of a word, except for words that have letters omitted from their pronunciation, intentionally. It helps me with the spelling of English words tremendously. However, I am often told I sound very robotic when I speak English. In that manner, I guess it is a disadvantage.
I honestly had no clue any of this was even a thing. I just thought I was pronouncing things correctly bc that's how I've heard everyone ever since the dawn of time pronouncing those same words. My mind is blown that you're supposed to say "tuh-rain" or something like that lol. It's almost like it changed on purpose to make more sense
It's not fascinating...its wrong. And it's tragic for those kids.
@@ANGELSVEN The decay of language is rampant in many languages. Some even brag that they can barely speak correctly. This is beyond willful ignorance. This is ignorance celebrated in order to fit into a social herd.
Fascinating! I was recently complaining to my husband that our preschooler was taught the word "tree" as an example of the "t" letter sound. It seemed a terrible example to teach a child, because that's not how it's actually pronounced. My husband looked at me funny and said, "Yes, it is. T-ree. Not chree." He then told me I just pronounce things funny. Thanks for validating how I speak! 😅
so you don't know how to read, is what you're saying
@@john.premose I don't know what happened during your day to make you feel so angry, but I hope it gets better.
You should show the teacher this video hahaha
Nope. Your husband is right
With air escaping the mouth at the tail end of the T as the R sound comes out, tree and chree sound extremely close. Depending on who is saying them, they may sound identical. I notice when I say tree I don't connect my top teeth with my lower teeth, but when I say chain I think I do the slightest bit. In the end, what's really right? Getting a point across so that other people understand or making it more cumbersome to say? I think there's a physiological component because some people's mouths and jaws are just shaped such that it's harder to pronounce certain things a certain way. I don't know how to say tree without sounding like chree even the slightest bit despite not connecting my top and bottom teeth. If anything, my tree _sounds_ like chree, but I guess for some, if they connect their teeth, it sounds like a super quick chshree.
OMG, I am really afraid to pick up this pronunciation and sound illiterate from now on...
Thank you so much for explaining the physiology behind this loose pronunciation. I appreciate your expertise very much!
my little brother spelled “drawer” as “jor” when he first started writing, and now i know exactly why!!! very excited to mention this to dr stanley who will probably not be surprised
In my accent almost everyone says jraw, and draw and drawer are homophones unless the person is very careful to say jraw uh
"Geoff Lindsey saying "ara ara" doesn't exist, he can't hurt you"
Geoff Lindsey saying "ara ara": 0:43
Mdr
Lmao
He doesn't lol. He says rah-arah.
This video highlighted so many things that had to "loosen" after moving to Australia from Wales as my accent changed, without actually realising what some of them were...
I guess there are a lot of variables that make up an accent, and this video is going to be stuck in my head when I next talk to my relatives back home. I'm going to be listening to their syllables more than their words, I think!
lovely stuff, I've been lamenting all my working life that language teachers do not use the basics of phonetics enough (which they must have learned at University). That's why these animated x-ray shots are really useful. Many examples come to mind...one that jumps right at me is a dialect we have in Germany, which is used in the region around Siegen. Its users, amongst others, use the English 'r"! I just checked an audio document, and can confirm that they, like many English speakers, have the tendency for "chrain changing" when using their dialect.
This is something I have wondered about over the last few decades (and yes, Hank Green is one of the first "offenders"). This is actually the first explanation that I have found that actually makes sense. Subscribed.
Thank you so much for this! In German this happened long ago with ST, which is invariably and correctly pronounced sht, we even to it with words starting with sp, but the r is different so words beginning with tr and dr are unaffected.
Similar in my Limburgic Dutch dialect. S always becomes SH before another consonant. Seems a different mechanism than this one though, as it's got less to do with post alveolar harmonization rather than just a lazier pronunciation of any S(c) consonant cluster.
I find I can't do the t > ch or d > j. It's probably because I'm used to the quick alveolar to post alveolar movement. Dutch words like trein ( train ), drop ( type of candy ), or straat ( street ) all have this movement. Sri Lanka in Dutch also makes this movement, however when I say it in "English" it sort of becomes Sgri Lanka
Dear Geoff.
I am a 63 year old native English speaker, quite strict, old fashioned and set in my ways of received pronunciation.
Having watched a few of your videos I am starting to let go of my annoyance of other peoples' 'mispronunciation' and instead accept that English is evolving, sometimes with wreckage in its wake, but nevertheless morphing into a language that today's speakers will barely understand the English of 100 to 200 years in the future.
Looking out for more videos!
I was always puzzled by how some Canadian hockey commentators pronounce "last year" as "lahsh-cheer" or "lahš-čeer". This video helped a lot. Greetings from the place that gave the world hatcheks :)
Ooh, that’s a great example. The yod sound is influencing nearby consonants even across a word boundary: /læst jiːr/ → /læʃtʃ(j)iːr/. I wonder how “last year” and “lash cheer” compare to “lashed sheer” for these speakers-could be a source of some fun tongue-twisters, anyway.
These sounds don’t seem to interact so much in accents (like mine and General American) where the /t/ sound at the end of a syllable is unreleased and/or glottal (about [ɫæst̚ˀ jɪɹ] for me).
I thought the lash cheer was a Washington State thing. It's so common here! Great example!
I am an elementary school teacher, and I have noticed that I've developed what I call my "phonics accent". We always tell our students to "sound out" their words but it is frustrating for them (and us!) when that doesn't work because of regional accents that don't mesh well with basic phonics rules we are teaching them. I end up pronouncing every word "as written" as much as possible while remaining reasonably understandable. Sometimes I wonder if the letters could change for us instead of us changing for the letters 😅
I think it's a shame pronunciation is more likely to change to fit spelling than vice versa.
The letters and spelling has always been changing with pronunciation. What we call an "apron" used to be called a "napron." The N used to be a part of the noun "napron" and not the article "an."
But because "a napron" and "an apron" are pronounced the same, the N ended up migrating to the article when written down.
Written language is but a tool that we use. We made up all these letters and words. We all learn how to listen and speak a language before we learn to read and write it. So the only thing stopping us from changing the language to fit our needs is this arbitrary desire to "conserve" something that has been changing since it started.
@@locsoluv94 Not so much since Johannes Gutenberg. Excellent ickname by the way.
@David Montgomery You're right that regional accents are becoming less distinct and more comprehensible.
@@locsoluv94 I was reading by the age of 2 and there are still words to this day that I have only ever seen written down and haven't heard others say so it always seems to get a laugh when I use them around someone who knows the word from having heard it first. They're usually the longer words which are used in very specific scenarios rather than more everyday vocabulary. Part of that comes from my Mum telling me to read the dictionary and thesaurus (most boring dinosaur by far) when I was bored as a kid. Never made me feel less bored (having a brain that doesn't produce adequate dopamine will do that to you), but I certainly learned a lot of words. But I'm learning more and more that I had a bit of a weird experience growing up. It didn't seem that way at the time, particularly when my brother was walking by 7 months so I didn't really know what else to expect (didn't know anyone else from a baby). Yes his legs ended up a bit bowed from walking that early. No we couldn't stop him, he would undo the straps and climb out of the pushchair, it was a nightmare. He could also undo any of the childproof locks without the keys you were meant to use and we still have no idea how he did it.
It's interesting that the thing that made me really realize how many people shift these consonants was the NBA player Jrue Holiday, whose name I only heard pronounced and never saw written for the longest time. I assumed his name was spelled conventionally as "Drew," because that's just how my brain heard it, and was shocked when I finally saw the real spelling. Great video as always!
I remember an assignment in first grade where we were asked to look at a picture and write the word for what we saw. I saw a "jrore" and felt like it was wrong, but that was the way I sounded it out. I was amazed when my teacher corrected it to "drawer." Not only was there no j and no o in the word, but it was two syllables?!? Haha! I also have a lot of difficulty with the word "treasure"... chreshur... gah.
Superb example. Isn't it fascinating that the dictionaries are totally silent about this?
My partner’s grandparents were actors, so he grew up not allowed to turn picture into pitcher. He puts a lot of effort into saying pict-ture. He’s in his late 50s, kiwi. The rest of us just say pitcher (schwa ending, drop the r). Edit: might be worth pointing out that neither of us does extreme shtreet shopping, though we both do jrum majoring and chrain changing because it would sound very odd not to. He gets mad at Kathryn Ryan on the radio for what he calls “chewing her words”.
Picture to pitcher is funny because I say picshure
@@NoiseDay
if you're paying attention, you'll notice that the quality of the vowel before it changes when you drop that final r. Generally in cases like this it lengthens.
Meanwhile, my Grandpa could fit about three r's into "wash." Haha
When you say "the rest of us" do you mean kiwis? We most assuredly do not all say "pitcher". I would assert the vast majority of us say "piksha".
@@karlhendrikse Hmm, interesting. Now that you mention it I have definitely heard that pronunciation, but I still think most people around me say pitcher. I wonder where the divide is. Is it social or geographical perhaps? I’m in the deep south.
As a native speaker I'm fascinated by these details that I've never even noticed until pointed out in Geoff's videos.
21 year old native english speaker fro. Australia here! always been a shreet shopper/jrum major/chrain person! in fact ive never actually noticed it was a thing until this video !!!! definitely subscribing :)
Fascinating!
I'm from the "Kentuckiana" area in the US and shtrong and shtreet were almost jarring outside of a mock drunken slur. The others were all common enough to my ears. There tends to be a lot of variety in this region and personally I say many of those words both ways depending on the speed with which I'm speaking or even who I'm speaking to. I subconsciously adopt pieces of other people's speach patterns while in conversation with them, but it usually wears off.
If you have 5 mins, please do the survey!
Interesting. I'm from the Midwest and do all of them. Never noticed I was changing anything either lol
I’m from Ohio (Dayton) and I was thrown off by the shtrong And shtreet etc. i say my s and t almost always- except sometimes I DROP the t completely like in Dayton - I will pronounce it Day-in if I’m relaxed and not minding my pronunciations. Anyway, I was raised to think that not articulating words as correctly as possible signified laziness. Lol that’s a Midwest upbringing for you.
Anyway- I completed the questionnaire. Thank you for the video
im from NC in a very southern accented area and i definitely use the “shtreet” and “shtrong” !! haha
Dropping T's as in Dayton. I sometimes watch walking channels such as ActionKid who is from NYC... I don't know if it was him or others like or with him saying mittens and I realized most people I'm around drop the t's in words such as mittens, kittens, etc.
Mittens~MIH´-inz
I remember back in university getting in an argument with a linguistics professor over this. They were insisting that another students transcription of their own speech was incorrect despite her VERY obviously pronouncing it with a /tʃ/ and the rest of the students looking very confused at the prof's transcription.
Hello Simon,
I have a question for you
Your first sentence refers to a professor
But your second sentence says "they were"
So, there's a numeric inconsistency
I presume it was done knowingly/intentionally, i.e. it wasn't just a random error
Q: Did you do that to avoid using "he/her"?
If so, I understand the motivation
But it leads to confusing communication (from my perspective)
Thank you
@@sheltr9735 Hello,
I am not the author of the original comment but just to let you know:
The singular they has a very long history in the english language and is commonly used! That means you should probably prepare yourself to hear a whole lot more of it in your experience with other english speakers.
@@lasseheller9863 Ha! I'm already an old guy, but even I don't remember that!
Yes, I believe you are correct, there will be more of it in my experience
One of my pet peeves is ambiguous or confusing communication
English (and human language, in general) already has so many potential subtle pitfalls that can undermine the transfer of information, from speaker to listener / reader
The addition of an obvious "disconnect" only makes the listener's task more difficult
I really dislike it
Grrrrrrrr
LOL
Thx, have a great day
@@sheltr9735 this is why I always use y'all, which sounds very strange in my very non Southern "Cali girl" accent 🤣 at least the "they" numerical issue is present in almost all languages, but only English doesn't have a second person plural.
I think all languages should have a gender neutral singular term. Yes, "they" can be used for that, but you're right, it is confusing. I think nonbinary people deserve their own term.
@@sheltr9735 I don’t think it’s confusing since the professor was the only object introduced at that point, so they must obviously refer to the professor.
Thank you. I learn something new every time I tune in.
I love these videos Dr Geoff!!!! THANK YOU THANK YOU from sunny Ausshhhtralia!!!
I'm 21 (born 2001) and I pronounce everything *without* the post-alveolar-isation. Even when speaking fast, my natural pronunciation is just as it's written: TRain, rather than CHRain. I also find it easy to pronounce Sri Lanka and Srebrenica with the SR (as opposed to SHR). Though I hear SHR and CHR quite a lot out and about among others my age
>21
>Born 2001
Oh good
@@Xnoob545 who knows - people might read this in the future
@@Xnoob545 Indeed. Otherwise, John Connor's life is in terrible danger.
@@GabeLucario I think it’s more shock that people born in 2001 are full adults communicating on the internet (especially given 2001 is one of those cultural watershed years that divide our lives, like 2020 will be for you, and 1963 for my mom. It’s like, how can there be an adult walking around who didn’t share the zeitgeist of 9/11?). I hope no disrespect was intended by the original replier.
@@KatharineOsborne Ah yeah fair enough. I did manage to see 9/11 on TV live but ofc I don't remember it lol. Plus I'm British so it's not such a big event in our own culture (ofc still massive but we don't have the TSA for example)
Okay, this helps me understand why saying "judicial decisions" is so difficult for me. Been wondering for years. Thanks, Dr. Geoff! Love your videos.
Ohhhhhh Myyyyyy Gooooood ! Amazing ! I am speechless so I found a comment that suited the best to describe this video in more than 3 words "s a non-native speaker, your videos have confirmed so many of my suspicions about English phonetics that I haven't read anywhere even though I can still hear them. Super informative, sir"
Literally never realized that I turned ‘D-R’ words into ‘J’ sounds 😂 made me laugh so hard at myself. Thank you, this is amazing.
These videos are so helpful and informative for me.
I grew up with adults who were quick to point out grammatical and pronunciation "errors," from whom I inherited 1) a love of languages, 2) a level of frustration and self-righteousness when encountering "incorrect" usage; a tedious and tiresome way to behave. Learning from you and Susie Dent and Erik Singer, I not only gain a better understanding of the mechanics of speech but also find myself naturally softening my inherited sense of judgement and impulse to correct some perceived error. I find myself more often being curious and simply enjoying the messiness of language, as well as the privilege of getting to live in the Information Age, where we can witness language evolving so rapidly within a single generation. Thank you for the grace and diplomacy you impart along with this entertaining education!
This is so interesting! It explains why in Costa Rican Spanish, where the r is pronounced somewhat like the r in American English, some people will say:
Chren instead of Tren
Achrás instead of Atrás
Chres instead of Tres
Ajri instead of Adri (my name!)
My first name is Troy, and high school was the first time I noticed someone pronouncing my name "Chroy." I soon realized nearly everyone was pronouncing it that way-including me!
I'm not a native English speaker but I've been noticing that these two words together "this year" are commonly pronounced "dishear". Thank you for videos, they're very useful!
yeah. its very common for native speakers to reduce the voiced "th" sound in fluent speach.
clothes - "close"
nothing - "nufin" / "nufing"
this - "dis"
we're less likely to reduce unvoiced 'th' sounds as they already take less effort to say.
"with", "then", " myth", etc. roll out a lot smoother than words with voiced 'th'
@@WGGplant isn't the th in nothing unvoiced?
@@larsswig912 yeah u right.
@Lars Wig it probably depends on the dialect I live in the Western us and I pretty much always enunciate the “th.” If anything I drop the -g in informal contexts (eg, “I’ve got nuthin” or “nuthin much.”)
@@WGGplantI'd say that's very accent dependent. There are certainly some accents that pronounce th like f, but most consistently distinguish them.
Thanks for this interesting video. I grew up in New Jersey, USA, in the 80s, and I had a few schoolmates who regularly said "chwelve" and "chwenny" for 12 and 20. I suspect that these two pronunciations are the very same phenomenon as you present here of post-alveolar tongue placement. It always struck me as a strange phonetic, but now it makes sense!
This video made me realize I have two 'r' sounds: one for an isolated 'r' sound (right side of the back of the tongue tucked between the right side back molars), and one for when it is being combined with other sounds like 'sh' to make words like "shrimp" (tip against the top of the mouth like in the video).
I always thought it was a remnant of german where cognates of the same word are pronounced with a sh sound (strong/stark or street/straße)
I'm 26 years old and a native speaker from New Jersey, and I indeed do every single phenomenon described here, without having realized it. That includes shchreet shopping 😄 I'll be taking your survey as a thanks for enlightening me on this assimilation pattern and deepening my understanding of it
I'm also a native english speaker from New Jersey and I do all of these things too!
But one wierd thing is that sometimes I talk kind of funny because I'm autistic, but most people think it's just a foreign accent and I get people asking me where im from all the time. A lot of people say it sounds midwestern, but I've lived in NJ my whole life!
I’m also a native speaker from NJ and don’t do any of this lol. In fact, ‘shtrong’ always irritated me when I was younger.
Are you SubSaharan?
Native speaker, 72 years old. My t, d, str, etc. are crisp with no hint of the sounds you talk about. Neither do my daughters (in their 40s) talk this way. I hear people use it from time to time but didn't realize it's so widespread. Very interesting. Thank you.
where are you from? if I may ask
I was born in Alabama and grew up there, but we have been in Northeast Texas since the end of 1981. I think the first time my attention was drawn to the oral phenomena you explain was in novels where Irish speakers used it. After your video I will be on the lookout for it.
I am replying again, this time with egg on my face. I think maybe I do sometimes speak less crisply than I first imagined. I don't think I say "shtrength", but perhaps not so clearly as I should. I am going to listen to myself for a while and see exactly what I do. Thank you for your informative videos.
@@paulcarlachapman628 I'm not Mr. Lindsay haha
@@hya2in8 Whoops! Okay, lol.
I absolutely adore your videos, I hope you'll one day make a video about the commonality of consonant or vowel sounds at the beginning of names. For instance, I'd love to hear about what sounds are most or least common across any geographical or cultural spectrum to use as the first phoneme of a given name.
edit: This also reminds me of how people pronounce D as more of a J sound when it's followed by an R. For instance "Drug." The way it's pronounced by many, it may as well be spelled "Jrug."
Drug has a hard d, its very obviously d-rug. I wouldn't even know how to move my mouth to make a jr sound. Those letters just don't fit together in my mind and I can't fathom how to get them to work. I think you'd have to pull the tongue really far back in the mouth instead of keeping it at the front like with drug. But then it hurts me to try and pull my tongue backwards so I say most words with my tongue touching my teeth as I have to roll it under itself at "rest" otherwise it doesn't fit behind my teeth. I do wonder if that's the reason I can't roll my Rs for Spanish.
This stuff is fascinating. Like being able to see how the English language is evolving in real time. Also, speaking about little kids misunderstanding the spelling of words, my parents constantly tell this story about how my mom pretty much taught me to read and write by the time I was like 3 years old and she got pregnant with my little brother around that time and I wrote a note saying, "My mom is faving a baby".. I'm not sure how that relates here but they seriously tell that story all the time and it seems to fit here somewhat lol..
I'm a 32 year old non native speaker but have been speaking English my whole life. I spent my teens and early adult years in the US. I definitely say shtrong, chrain, etc. Prior to this video I had never noticed any of this bc to me was just natural. Awesome content.
The funny thing about str turning into shtr is that this is a new shift happening in the standard American accent. I noticed it when I was teaching high school choir in 2014 in West Virginia and I could not get my kids to sing ‘str’ no matter what I tried.
At first I thought it was some kind of accent, Appalachian mountain speak. But then I started hearing it all over, even in broadcasting. It definitely skews toward younger people (although I’m 37, and I had never noticed it in my cohort going through school in Northern Virginia)
I always thought this was a speech impediment, or the speaker not being taught proper pronunciation when young. I love your channel it has really opened my eyes (and ears!) to all the inconsistencies of our language. My favourite (!?) is the southern pronunciation of L as a W sound.
I’m a native English speaker but I teach Spanish and I am chruly dumbfounded! In Spanish I don’t do any of the train changing/drum majoring/street shopping. But in English I felt so weird chrying to jraw the “right” sound out 😅
I’m from the Midwest US and the shtr thing has driven me absolutely nuts for the past couple of years. It’s mostly on our local news channels with people in their 20s and 30s.
Really? I haven't noticed it yet but I know that when people say "axed" instead of "asked" it drives me crazy. I always think of someone murdering with an ax/axe.
I'm also from the Midwest... Minneapolis. I've been noticing this for the last 3 years and it's MANY people from what I've noticed..... Lots of news anchors, even from major channels (altho I often see CLIPS of them on OTHER yt channels as I never watch TV and certainly not msm)
It drives me CRAZY too! How are people in jobs where they are professionally speaking and yet they can't even pronounce words properly! Arghhhh!!
@@WVgirl1959 that's a whole different ball game though as aksed is nearly exclusively spoken by black people. There sure will be an explanation for it but I'm too tired now to look it up. I don't find it irritating, I do find this shift in strong to shtrong more annoying. But maybe that is because as a non native speaker we had to learn hard to pronounce it correctly that I find it almost.... Lax to make everything post-alveolar. Not elegant at all tbh.
@@ADDrecords yep that's what I'm saying :-)
It's like "I ain't doing nothing (with variations in pronounciation like nuttin' or 'nuttuhn' where the t is not really pronounced as a "true" 't', but it's hard to decribe sounds. If I could use the phonetic alphabet and everyone would immediately be able to read that it would be different but I am counting on people knowing what that pronounciation sounds like.) And it's all correct English, it is a way though to ascertain a certain 'status'or 'being', in this case being part of the black community. Again, this is part of sociolinguistics. Though not always fully lost, when in professional settings black people will talk different than being among family and friends. And that is nothing different from white people or any group of speakers for that matter. Everyone has a certain way of speaking when socializing in time off vs at work or at the hospital (though in the latter case the difference might not be as strong and people talk somewhere between the "friend/family circle" way of speech and more official manner of speaking)
Record anyone for a day unknowingly and you will notice differences at home vs at work vs with friends etc. Too bad that is unethical but recording and knowing has the risk of people trying to speak the same in all 3 circumstances so data isn't that clear.
But just let it go. This is an accepted form of speech in a group you do not belong to so why would you even care?
Relax. Or should I say Relask?
@@danceteachermom On our local NPR station in Fayetteville, Arkansas, I'm constantly hearing "shtrucshure" for structure. Sounds so lazy!