Hey everyone, welcome to the Influency Podcast.
So happy that you're here.
Today, I'm going to share a video from inside one of my programs, New Sound, where I am answering questions about pronunciation, specific words, practice strategies, and even incorporating breathwork into speech.
So, you'll have it all here.
Pronunciation, vocabulary, strategies, fluency, and mindset.
And I figured it would be really interesting to hear real questions from real students and how I interact with them and the answers that I give.
So, I felt like sharing it with you here today.
I hope you enjoy it.
And just a reminder, if you have questions for me and you'd like me to answer them on the podcast or on YouTube and you're not inside one of my programs, you can go to my website at hadarshamesh .com and then go click on Ask Hadar.
you'll be able to send a video or audio message or a text message.
And we always review these questions and I am going to record a few episodes answering those questions.
So, if you have questions for me, don't be shy.
Head over to my website, hadarshemish .com and go to Ask Hadar and send me your question.
Oh, and one more thing.
If you're listening to this on the podcast, which you probably do because I'm only publishing this episode on the podcast.
If you can take a minute and rate and review the podcast on whatever platform you're listening to this on, because it actually helps the podcast get to more people who need it.
So if you enjoy my content and my episodes, I would be so grateful to you if you take a few minutes to do that.
So rate and review the podcast and I'll also get to read it, which is always great.
Anyway, thank you so much for listening.
and let's go ahead and listen to this Q &A session.
June Lin is asking, how do I identify if there is a secondary stress in a long word, such as congratulations?
Not that easy to hear the nuance between primary and secondary stress.
So let's talk about that.
This is a really good question.
first of all the way I define a secondary stress is really a word a syllable that has a pure vowel but it's not the primary stress okay a pure vowel but it's not the primary stress how do you identify between the primary and the secondary here's the thing I want you to first identify the primary stress so actually the distinction is not between primary and secondary It's between secondary and schwa, right?
Because there is only one primary and we need to be clear around what is the primary stress.
Because if you pronounce the schwa as a pure vowel, probably nothing's going to happen.
You're still going to be clear.
If you don't fully pronounce a secondary stress, it will affect the clarity of the word, right?
But then it's a question of pronunciation, right?
you want to make sure that the vowel that you're using is the accurate vowel.
So, it's not about stress.
It's really about pronunciation.
If you don't pronounce the primary stress properly, if you misplace it, then that could be a challenge.
Not always, but it could be a challenge.
So, the question is, first of all, what is the primary stress?
So, Junlin was giving the example of the word, I think.
Congratulations. Congratulations.
Congratulations. Now, my question to you is what is the primary stress here?
That's the first question you want to ask yourself before anything else.
And before you start even saying the word, ask yourself, does it follow a specific pattern that we can already guess the answer without testing anything?
All right. So you wrote lay, and that is absolutely correct.
And we know that when we have this suffix, shen, and this is how we pronounce it, shen, T -I -O -N, is a suffix that is always pronounced as shen, shen.
And the primary stress is always going to be the one syllable before the suffix.
Now I want to ask you guys to give me examples of more words with the suffix shen.
We have expectation.
Good. Realization. Condition.
Information. Elevation.
Promotion. Elaboration.
no matter how many syllables we have before, the ending is that pronunciation, expectation, congestion, termination, a lot of a hesitation, celebration.
We are looking for suffixes with the shun sound at the end.
Notion. Good. Action.
Good. So, we're clear on that.
Every time we have this shun suffix, one before.
Okay. Good. So, back to the beginning.
Now, we want to ask ourselves what syllables are reduced and what have pure vowels, and those are the secondary stresses.
Okay. So let's begin with a first syllable.
And remember, a syllable has a vowel in it or a diphthong, right?
But it cannot have two vowels for the most part.
So the first syllable is this.
And don't be confused with vowel letters because sometimes we have vowel letters that are absolutely silent.
Okay. Like in the word management, there is an E there that doesn't have any syllable.
It doesn't represent any vowel.
so it's not management.
Okay. So here we have the letter O.
Does it represent a pure vowel?
Is it a secondary stress or can we reduce it?
Is it con -grad -ulations or can we reduce it to con -gradulations?
If you can reduce it and it sounds okay.
Now this is a very general rule of thumb and the best way is to actually check the dictionary if you're really not sure.
But if you can reduce it, then potentially it's a schwa because secondary stresses, when you reduce them, it just doesn't sound right if you know the word.
So for example, if we take the second syllable, brah, that has the as in cat, which means it's the secondary stress.
If we try to reduce it, say it to yourself with a schwa.
Congre. Congratulations.
Congratulations. Right.
It's not that it would be a horrible mistake, but it just doesn't sound the way we're used to hearing it.
If again, you were exposed to this word before.
It is an A as in cat.
Congrats. And then right after that, we have the J sound and a schwa.
Congratulations. Congratulations.
Now I said it in the past.
I'm going to say it again.
there is something about the rhythm of English.
It's not always the case, but you probably won't find a lot of secondary stresses or a lot of pure vowels and a primary stress, right?
English likes that when you have stressed, unstressed, stressed, unstressed, stressed, unstressed, unstressed, stressed.
So in a sequence of three syllables, you're probably going to have at least one schwa, if not more.
So you want to expect it, that you're going to have schwas in a long word.
And when you expect it, then you're like, okay, I know that there should be a schwa here.
And again, of course there are exceptions, but this is the mindset when you're analyzing words, because it's going to help you if you assume that there's going to be a schwa there.
Okay. Francesca is asking, I don't get stuck in one -on -one conversations, but I do when I record a video.
So I want to record videos more spontaneously.
So I've decided to record daily videos speaking about the book I'm reading.
Is it good? Any better recommendations?
I think it's fantastic.
I saw that you started doing it with permission to speak.
I think it's great.
I think anything that you're passionate about and you want to develop your ability to speak about something that matters to you, whether it's a book you're reading, your job, or anything else, this is an excellent practice.
So just keep doing it.
And if you want to level it up, you can also listen back to it and give yourself notes and rerecord it, but it's not a must, right?
That's just, if you have extra time and if you want to once a week, let's say elevate one of the exercises, but for now what you're doing is wonderful.
Okay. Rosie was asking, could you please help me pronounce Rural, frustrating, pathetic.
Okay. We have a bunch of words, so I'll just go through them one by one.
And I think you're all going to enjoy this practice.
So the first word is Rural.
Rural. It's a relaxed R, R, R, so round your lips.
And then the cook, look, book, vowel, and then it's an R sound, a schwa and an L roll.
It's a dark L, but it feels like it's almost like you're adding an O sound.
R -roll, R -roll, R -roll, R -roll.
The secret here is to drop the tongue down after the first R.
If you keep it up, this is how it's going to sound.
R -roll, right? If it sounds muffled is because the tip of the tongue is not going down, stays up.
Okay. So that's the first word.
The second word, frustrating, frustrating, stresses on the first syllable.
A lot of people say frustrating.
And I think you might even see it in the dictionary.
In American English, the stress is usually on the first syllable.
Frust, frustrating.
It's very frustrating.
verb or adjective. Okay.
I'm not going to go into this.
We're going to focus on the frus with a F R transition.
Wait, fruh, fruh, frus, frus, right?
So connect the F to the R frus, ray stress.
That's the primary stress.
Frustrating stress is on the first syllable.
frustrating frustrating that's very frustrating frustrating ray a as in day okay frustrating and then another word we have pathetic pathetic stresses on the second syllable pathetic pathetic, p, schwa, p, th, as in red, p, th, voiceless th.
And then we have a flap t, a schwa, and a k sound, pathetic, pathetic.
All right. And then the next one, we have method.
Another word with a th, the o is a schwa, me, primary stress, me, th, th, th, th.
Good. Then we have authority.
Now, there are different pronunciations here depending on the dialect, but I'm going to teach you the way I teach it inside of New Sound with an ah sound.
Ah, ah. But you can also round your lips a little bit more than you'd usually round your lips for the ahs and father.
Ah, thaw. So a th sound and the ahs and father.
Ah, thaw, ruh. An r sound and a schwam.
authority. Authority.
And finally, we have the word algorithm.
Algorithm. As in cat, so let's practice it.
This is a dark L, so it's a little heavier.
I kind of tense the back of the tongue for it, algorithm.
Stress is on the first syllable, algorithm.
All right? Good. Sharon is asking, T H in that, sometimes I hear it as a D even by native speakers.
This is a really good question.
T H, especially voice T H in function words, the, this, that, those is often pronounced as a dental D, which is actually a D on the teeth.
So it's not that. Can you hear?
It's not D, dat, but that, that, that, that.
So I'm pronouncing a D on the teeth.
It's called a dental D and it's kind of like a combination between the TH and the D.
And the reason why that happens is because these words are pronounced really, really quickly.
Now I don't teach it right away in new sound because I want you to get started with the, the sound like with getting used to pronouncing it when the tongue is on the teeth.
And then now that you know this, it's really easy to just make it a lot shorter.
And when you make it really short, it ends up sounding closer to a D, but I would only do it in function words like the, this, those, that, this, these, but it's still not a D sound, a strong D sound.
Okay, Miguel, I struggle with hair versus her.
Where are her hairpins?
Okay, let's practice it together.
So her, stir, okay?
No vowel between the H and the R.
Her, her, her. And then we have hair, hair.
It's kind of like you're taking the H and the R that are connected for her, and you're stretching them out, and you're creating space for a vowel.
Her hair, her hair.
Now, the sentence, where are her hairpins?
So where are is reduced to where, where are.
I'm going to try to make it as least confusing as possible.
Let's do it without reductions right now.
Where are, okay, where are, where are.
Or even where, rar, her, hairpins.
Where are her hairpins?
Where are her hairpins?
And if we want to reduce the R, what we hear is basically something like where her, where her, where are her hairpins.
But let's pronounce it fully right now.
Where are her hairpins?
Okay. Yoko, how to master the transition from TH to the D in the word withdrawal.
So let's practice it with, right?
With, technically it's a voice TH with, yeah, with, and then you transition to the D with like this, with you're kind of like pronouncing the TH, and then you're blocking the TH by pressing it against the teeth, pressing the tongue against the teeth.
With daily practice.
Not any different. Birthday.
Yesterday was earth day, right?
Withdrawal. Now the D -R is a J sound.
So we're actually transitioning from the T -H to a J.
Withdrawal. But the tongue is in the same position as it is for the D.
It starts there. Withdrawal, then it pulls back a little bit.
Withdrawal. Okay. The next question.
Okay. We have from Catarazina.
How to manage our breath when speaking so we're not out of breath.
So first of all, I would encourage you to start practicing belly breathing, right?
And there are a lot of videos on YouTube that teach you how to do that.
Because when you breathe into your belly, you are actually able to inhale more air.
and by that, carry your voice or carry your breath throughout longer sentences.
So that is one thing that could be helpful.
So breathing exercises, belly breathing.
Now, I would look into, I would start observing why you're losing your breath, okay?
Maybe you're just not breathing when you have time to breathe, right?
So maybe you're trying to carry your breath for too many sentences.
So make sure you're taking either a catch breath, something like that, right in the middle of a sentence when there is a comma, not every time there is a comma, but just like I did now.
But when you're in the middle of a long sentence, you want to take a really quick breath that doesn't fill you up fully, but it's just it's called a catch breath.
Okay. So that is one thing that you can start paying attention to because it really depends on how you're behaving right now.
And the second thing is to make sure that when you get to the end of a sentence, you take a pause, like you're not continuing to the next sentence and you allow your breath to sink in, to breathe in.
Okay. Usually we run out of breath because we're just not taking any breath or you're not giving yourself the space to take a breath.
So you're just speaking on long sentences.
So pay attention to what you're doing and come back to me.
If you have any observations, thank you for everyone who had a hot seat and all your beautiful questions.
And that's it. Have a beautiful, beautiful rest of the day.
Bye everyone.
