And this summer, we're going to use those movies to learn English and study how to sound American.

Every video this summer is going to be a Study English with Movies video.

We'll pull scenes from the summer's hottest movies, as well as favorite movies from years past.

It's amazing what we can discover by studying even a small bit of English dialogue.

We'll study how to understand movies, what makes Americans sound American,

and of course, any interesting vocabulary phrasal verbs or idioms that come up in the scenes we study.

I call this kind of exercise a Ben Franklin exercise.

First, we'll watch the scene.

Then we'll do an in-depth analysis of what we hear together.

This is going to be so much fun! Be sure to tell your friends and spread the word

that all summer long, every Tuesday, we're studying English with movies here at Rachel's English.

If you're new to my channel click subscribe and don't forget the notification button.

Let's get started. First, the scene.

If you find this recording, don't feel bad about this.

Part of the journey is the end.

Just for the record, being adrift in space with zero promise of rescue is more fun than it sounds.

Food and water ran out four days ago.

Oxygen will run out tomorrow morning.

That will be it.

When I drift off I will dream about you.

It's always you.

Now, the analysis.

If you find this recording--

If you find this recording--

How was the word 'if' pronounced? Do you hear 'if'?

I hear ffyou-- ffyou-- I hear the F sound right with the Y sound, ffyou-- ffyou-- It sounds like the word 'few'

because it's the F consonant and the JU diphthong. The IH vowel is dropped and the consonant is linked in.

If you find this recording--

If you find this recording--

If you find this recording--

What are the stressed words in this thought group? Listen again.

If you find this recording--

If you find this recording--

If you find this recording--

I hear 'find' and 'record'

as the two most stressed syllables. If and you, said really quickly. Ffyou-- ffyou-- ffyou--

If you find this recording--

If you find this recording--

If you find this recording--

This and the first syllable of 'recording' which is unstressed, has the IH vowel, re-- don't say: rii--,

re-- re-- re--. This re-- This re-- This re-- This re--

These are two more unstressed syllables, lower in pitch, said quickly before the stressed syllable, cor--, recording.

Recording-- recording-- recording--

Whoa! Different day, different outfit, important announcement.

Did you know that with this video, I made a free audio lesson that you can download?

In fact, I'm doing this for each one of the youtube videos I'm making this summer,

all 11 of the Learn English with Movies videos.

So follow this link, or find the link in the video description to get your FREE downloadable audio lesson.

It's where you're going to train all of the things that you've learned about pronunciation in this video.

Back to the lesson.

So we have the stressed word, find, our verb, what happens to the D here? Let's listen.

If you find this--

If you find this--

If you find this--

It's dropped. Sometimes, we drop T and D, or any consonant between two other consonants, in this case,

I definitely hear him doing it. The sound before is an N consonant, the sound after is the voiced TH,

and he drops that D. Find this, find this. Can you do that with no D, smoothly linked together? Find this. Find this.

That makes it a little easier to link the words.

If you find this--

If you find this--

If you find this recording--

If you look up the pronunciation of the word 'recording' you'll see that the vowel in the stressed syllable is the AW

as in law vowel. But when this vowel is followed by R, it's not pure, it's not AW, but it's

oh, oh, it's more closed, the lips round more, the tongue pulls back a little bit more. The R influences this vowel.

Recor-- recording.

Recording-- recording-- recording-- Don't feel bad about this.

Don't feel bad about this.

Hey guys! I'm out for a walk, listening to an audiobook, and I thought this is the perfect time

to tell you about Audible, who's sponsoring this video. It's a great resource

for native speakers speaking American English.

The thing I love about Audible is their huge selection. Everyone can find something.

If you work in economics, you can find an audio book about economics.

As you listen, you'll be hearing the specialized words that are specific to conversations you'll be having.

You can hear them pronounced over and over by native speakers.

And you can also hear them use the kinds of phrases you'll need to describe topics in economics

or whatever topic specifically you have conversations about.

They also have audible originals, which are exclusive audiobooks you can't get anywhere else

on any other platform. I am planning on listening to this one when I go on vacation this summer.

Because they're kindly sponsoring this video, you can get your first audio book for free,

plus two audible originals when you try audible for 30 days. Visit audible.com/rachelsenglish

or text rachelsenglish, all one word, to 500-500.

On my walk, I'm listening to The Great Gatsby read by Jake Gyllenhaal,

an American classic, I love Jake Gyllenhaal's voice, great neutral American accent.

When you find a good title, put it in the comments here, I'm always looking for recommendations.

So again, you can check out audible.com/rachelsenglish or text rachelsenglish, all one word, to 500-500

if you live here in the US. Okay, let's get back to our movie Ben Franklin speech analysis.

Don't feel bad about this.

Don't feel bad about this. All right, the second part of the sentence, this whole thought group is lower in energy,

it's not as loud and especially towards the end, it gets a little bit of the popcorn quality of the voice,

where there's not as much air engaging the vocal cords.

Don't feel bad about this.

Don't feel bad about this.

Don't feel bad about this.

In fact, let's just listen to the last three words. Bad about this.

Bad about this.

Bad about this.

Bad about this.

Do you hear how low on energy that is? Bad about this.

It's partly because this character is running out of energy, he's run out of food and water,

so he's really feeling tired, but it's also a natural part of American English speech

that we have this popcorn quality in the voice sometimes towards the end of a phrase.

Bad about this.

Bad about this.

Don't feel bad about this.

And our stressed words are 'don't'...

Don't feel bad about this.

Don't and bad are the two most stressed syllables there.

Feel, even though it is a content word, is less stressed than the other two words.

Don't feel bad about this.

Don't feel bad about this.

Don't feel bad about this.

Now, let's look at our N apostrophe T contraction. How is that pronounced?

Don't feel-- Don't feel-- Don't feel--

We have a couple different ways that we pronounce N apostrophe T contractions.

In this case, what he did is he dropped the T sound completely.

Remember, we do sometimes drop the T after N, we drop the T between two consonants,

so it does follow those rules. Now we don't always pronounce N apostrophe T this way, but in this case,

this is how we did it. So it goes right from N to F. Don't feel-- don't feel-- don't feel-- don't feel--

Don't feel-- don't feel-- don't feel--

It's just part of how we connect and make our speech very smooth.

Sometimes, things like a T will get dropped or become a stop. In this case, totally dropped.

There are lots of things that we do with American English that you'll notice

go towards the goal of very smooth and connected sounding.

Don't feel-- don't feel-- don't feel bad about this.

Bad about-- bad about--

We have an ending consonant, it links them to the beginning vowel, the schwa of about.

Bad about-- about, about, about, about, bad about.

Now, the T in about is a stop T because the next word begins with a consonant.

Again, this is the voiced TH and we do that, we make a T a stop T, sometimes at the end of a thought group

but also very often when the next word begins with a consonant. So it's not dropped.

It's not: abou this, abou this, that would be dropped. It's: about this, about this.

Do you feel that there's a tiny lift, a little tiny break between the two words?

About this. Even though the energy of the voice keeps going forward, there's this little lift

and that signifies the T. It's a stop consonant so that quick stop is the stop T.

It's not released that would be this: about this-- about this--

We would never do that. That's too choppy. Too much effort. We connect with a stop T. About this.

Bad about this-- bad about this-- bad about this--

Part of the journey is the end.

Part of the journey is the end.

What do you hear as the most stressed syllables in that thought group?

Part of the journey is the end.

Part of the journey is the end.

Part of the journey is the end.

I hear three more stressed syllables. Part--, jour--, the stressed syllable of journey, and, end.

The other words, unstressed, flatter in pitch, and we do have a reduction.

Of the--

How is the word 'of' pronounced? Part of the--

Part of the journey--

Part of the journey--

Part of the journey--

Part of the-- Part of the-- So the word 'of' is reduced, the V sound, which is written with the letter F, is dropped,

it's just the schwa. Part of the-- part of the-- part of the-- Very smoothly linked together.

Now, how is this T pronounced?

Part of the journey--

part of the journey--

part of the journey--

Part of the-- part of the-- It's a flap T. The tongue just flaps once against the roof of the mouth.

It's just like the D sound in American English, between two vowels. So a T is a flap T

when it comes between two vowel or diphthongs, or if it comes after an R, and before a vowel or diphthong.

So here, it comes after the R consonant, and before the vowel schwa, that's a flap T, and we use that flap T

to link the two words together. Part of the--

Part of the journey--

part of the journey--

Part of the journey is the end.

Then we have more stress, a little more length on jour--, the journey is the--,

then we have three unstressed syllables, the unstressed syllable of journey, ney is the--

and then 'is' and 'the'. Now, the vowel in the word 'the' here is different

than the vowel in the word 'the' here, why is that?

Part of the journey is the end.

Part of the journey is the end.

Part of the journey is the end.

Can you hear it? It's subtle because they're unstressed words, they're said quickly.

But the rule is when the word 'the' becomes a word that starts with a consonant, it has the schwa.

When it's before a word, that starts with a vowel or diphthong, it's the EE vowel.

The end, the end, the end.

See if you can hear that in the phrase "is the end".

Is the end-- is the end-- is the end--

Now, Americans, I've noticed, are not very good at following this rule, it's not that common

to have a schwa sound before a vowel, but here, he does follow the rule, he does make an EE vowel. The end--

Is the end-- is the end-- is the end--

Just for the record, being adrift in space with zero promise of--

Now, he has a much longer thought group.

Again, the vocal energy is low, and I found actually, that it was a little hard for me to understand what he was

saying because of that. With his vocal energy low, he has less inflection,

less pitch changes between stressed and unstressed, and those pitch changes

are part of what makes English clear.

So because his character is very tired, very worn out, very low on energy,

he's not doing as much inflection and that does make it harder to understand.

So keep that in mind when you're practicing English that you don't want it to feel monotone,

all more or less on the same tone. You definitely want pitch changes,

higher pitch for your stressed syllables. How does he pronounce this string of four words?

Just for the record--

Just for the record-- just for the record-- just for the record--

Just for the record-- just for the record--

A little bit of stress on record, record, the stressed syllable there.

Now, let's look, just for a minute we have the word record and we have the word 'recording' up here

those are related, aren't they? So in the word 'record', it's the first syllable that's stressed.

That has the EH as in bed vowel. Re-- record, and then the unstressed syllable has the schwa.

Re-co-rrr-- record.