Hi World Friends 🌏! Do you think this was difficult? Show us your ❤ with Subscribe, Like👍 & Comment, and Share! 🇺🇸 Christina www.instagram.... / @christinadonnelly 🇯🇵 Saki / sakiponne_
You definitely don't stick your tongue out when making the "-el" sound in "squirrel". Your tongue should hit the back of your top teeth to make an L sound.
I loved Niki's reaction to "Rural": What is happening in your mouth?! 😂😂 For us, Spanish speakers, English pronunciation is very hard too... so many different vowel sounds, yet so many consonant clusters!! 😅
@@Elpapu2022 claro, un nivel de comunicación aceptable es posible :) La cosa se complica cuando toca pronunciar sin confundir sheep, ship, cheap y chip 😅😬 O más peligroso aún: cheat, sheet y shi...
Me da la sensación de que sobre la pronunciación de las letras y como suena el japonés y el español si son bastante similares. Más que al inglés seguro
@@MarioFRC32 si son similares, solo que el japonés tiene algunos sonidos nuevos que no hay en español como: つ(Tsu) suena al sonido de una "Ts" fuerte como en inglés sin vibrar la garganta づ/ず (Zu) los dos son iguales, es un sonido "Su" pero vibrando la garganta, parecido al las "Zu" del inglés para imitar a las abejas っ esta es muda, pero indica que cortes el sonido anterior de golpe y luego saques el nuevo fuerte し shi 👍 ん es el sonido "N" pero no está unida a una silaba (osea como que digas en español: "Co...Nn...secue...Nn...cias", para alargar un poco las palabras, creo que solo en canciones se usa asi) Y aún falta el sonido "ya,yu,yo" se puede fusionar a otras consonantes y cuanta como una sola, también es comun no pronunciar la "u, i" de "ku, shi o su" y que puedes alargar las silabas aa, ei, ii, ou, uu
I love the confidence of the student as she faces each word without hesitation despite how intimidated she probably was for at least some of them. These two are so cute together, and I love their chemistry.
I applaud both these girls 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Niki's genuine interest and willingness to learn, and Christina's patience and teaching methods all make the episode entertaining and educational at the same time!
English education is totally a shit in Japan. Students laugh at a boys/girls who speaks FLUENTLY, making them start to speak Japlish instead of CORRECT one. It’s been a big problem in Japan.
In many countries, in public schools the english of canadian and yankee streets, they not teaching. They teaching a ultrapassed english of old books that canadians and yankees hages. That's the reality and the way that I have ever.
“Colonel” came to English from the mid-16th-century French word coronelle, meaning commander of a regiment, or column, of soldiers. By the mid-17th century, the spelling and French pronunciation had changed to colonnel. The English spelling also changed, and the pronunciation was shortened to two syllables.
I saw a video saying that prior to Old French it was something like "colunnel" in Latin as it meant "leader of a column (of soldiers)" but then the sound got swapped for the R in the French, but then some scholars decided that despite the pronunciation having the R in it, that the spelling should revert to reflect the Latin roots of the word. And thus we now have the idiocy of how it's spelled vs how it's pronounced.
@@JosephOccenoBFH There is a new film on Netflix called Carter. I was very surprised to see Christina playing a CIA agent lol, I had to rewind the scene 3 times to make sure it was actually her, she killed it :)
Saki from japan 🇯🇵 has a great pronunciation of english and a good accent , even with these words , some words are hard for me too , english isn't my first language
as a native spanish speaker for me the hardest thing about english is that the written form of the word is not the way it is pronounced and that is really confusing
As a native English speaker, the hardest thing about English for me is that the written form of the word is not the way it is pronounced and that is really confusing. 😆 I misspelled at least 50 words a day in my native language. It's unnecessarily hard! Don't get discouraged by English's weird spellings. Us native speakers are just as confused as you guys are, so none of us will judge you for it! 😆
When I was teaching English, I found the best way to help L1 Japanese or Korean speakers with the English R and the L was as follows: With the "r," the tongue should be rolled back in the mouth touching nothing; for the "l," the tongue should be pressed up against the back of the upper teeth (not the palate).
When a language is your first language sometimes you don’t realize how difficult it can be to make certain sounds. I never noticed that saying rural was difficult maybe because I use the word a lot. When I taught ESL, it opened my eyes to this. For me, French is a difficult language as far as spelling and pronouncing. I have a friend whose first language is Louisiana Creole but who also speaks Parisian French. She says what is taught formally isn’t how most people speak.
Yeah, that's really really painful when learning difficult languages like Chinese and Japanese. You invest thousands of hours to find that native speakers don't talk like that. It's much easier with Spanish or Norwegian because they're much similar to English, so it's easier to re-train yourself.
I think it might depend on accent too, rural is really easy to say in my Australian accent, but if I force myself to sound American I fumble over a lot of words. Whereas I don't have that problem with any other accents.
LoL this reminds me of trying to teach a friend online how to say rural. I was breaking it into pieces for them. I realized I sounded a lot like Scooby Doo saying "I dunno". We decided country/countryside was a better option. 👍
Both of them communicate, try to learn and implement and explain in a very interesting way, and add a bit of fun too. It's learning about languages as well as a bit about the cultures in different parts of the world.
Excellent job Saki 🇯🇵! You did extremely well! Great to have Christina as an ex English teacher 👩🏫 now movie star on hand for this pronunciation video!
I am a native British English speaker and know for certain that Squirrel is one of the most difficult word for non native speakers to pronounce. Conversely, the French for squirrel, (écureuil) is almost impossible for an English, native speaker to pronounce correctly. I speak French fluently as a second language and I still struggle! It was interesting to see that the American pronunciation was "COMPLETELY" different to British English speakers pronunciation. I would pronounce this Skwi-rre-ll.
As a native speaker of English, I must say that this is the first time that I've ever heard the word psychotomimetic. My first pronunciation of the word was not correct and I had to search for it online. You really do have to hear the word pronounced in order to know how it's pronounced!
Rural is also a spanish word. It comes from late latin "rurālis", and that from classic latin "rus/ruris" which means "countryside". So rural is "relative to the countryside". However in Spanish, its pronunciation is even worse because we *sometimes* roll our R's, so the first R is rolled, but the second R is *not* and it's similar to the korean one. And before you ask... yes, there's a *rule* on when to roll our R's: if a word starts or ends with R, that R is rolled. Then if an R needs to be rolled in the middle of a word, we write double RR.
As a native English speaker (American English), why on Earth would you tell someone to stick their tongue out to pronounce "L"? I tried and I literally cannot pronounce "L" if my tongue is sticking out. The tip of your tongue presses against the alveolar ridge behind your incisors when you say "L" in "squirrel".
It's not so much the pronunciation of words, but it's her fluency that's impressive. She doesn't have to think and recall grammar and vocab she just uses it. Accents are just accents. We can't help it for the most part. I think that's the difficulty that language learners find when speaking a new tongue: using without thought
You should show them the "Rural Juror" bit from 30 Rock when you make them do rural. I bet that'd make her feel better about her struggle to pronounce it
@@Ssandayo “rural” is one of the hardest words for foreigners yes, but I believe that Asian people are struggling more with words with many “r” and “l” sounds
@@Kolious_Thrace Besides Japanese I speak Chinese as well, and Chinese has no problem with that because there’s R in Chinese. And I know there’s R in Korean too, so maybe it’s a problem only for Japanese🥲
@@Ssandayo wait, there’s the “r” sound in Chinese? I thought there wasn’t because many Chinese people in my country there cannot say the words with “r” For example in Hellenic we say tría for 3 Chinese people they say tlía, they change the r with l because they cannot say the r… I was pretty sure that the “R” sound exists in Japanese. Like the alphabet Hiragana, words like rai meaning thunder…
@@Kolious_Thrace Yeah, there’s R in Chinese, but the pronunciation is not the same as English. It’s like… you gotta do the mouth shape like 😬 instead of 😗. If you can’t imagine that, you can google translate the word “Japan” to Chinese and listen to the pronunciation. And “R” in Japanese is totally a trap, we DON’T have R sound. What we write as R is actually pronounced as L.
Reminds me of a bit in 30 Rock where one of the characters made a movie named "The Rural Juror". The whole joke was that everybody had to pretend like they knew what the title was, because nobody could actually understand it when spoken. It came out something like "The err jurr"
'Rural' is a Spanish word too, but I think English took it from French, yet it wasn't the best word to add to the English vocabulary because it doesn't work that well under English phonology.
Actually the squirrels in Korea are in colors like yellow - at least I think someone said that to me when he thought the brown ones are ugly. I said but they are always brown, arent they? He said no the ones in Korea are very colorful.
Some tips for rural as someone who doesn’t find it difficult. This is a general American accent If you want to sound like a native: (who doesn’t struggle with this word) Your first sound is ru. Then it’s an r that immediately goes into an L. There is no vowel sound there If you don’t care about mastering the word and just want to be understood: Ru roll pronounced like the word roll (but don’t say them as two separate words. There is no pause. Go fast)
One word my Japanese friend in college said sounded both cool and was hard to pronounce, but I never see on these lists: _anesthesia_ . The _s_ with _th_ next to it followed by yet another _s_ is a bit more subtly difficult than R/L sounds, but still challenging due to the _th_ .
For me, I think the way we say 'rural' in England is easier than American English, because we make the 'u' slight different to Americans. I say it more like "rue-ral".Christina, if you listen to Lauren you'll see what I mean 😵💫😅
In Ohio, we also have Grey squirrels and some white squirrels. I moved to l.a. 8 years ago and was surprised to see brown squirrels and the squirrels are bigger here as well.
As Indonesian 🇮🇩 we can Pronounce Rolling Rrrrrrrr we love Rrrrr: 1. Squirrels : Skuir-rrel 🐿️ 2. Choir : Khua-Yer 🎻 3. Throughout : Trog-Hot (We cant Pronounce this word) 4. Colonel : Kolonel (Its easy for Indonesian) 💂🏻 5. Rural : Rrrurral (I Love this word we can rollring Rrrrr) 6. Harlem : Harlem too 7. Brewery : Brewer-I 🍺 8. Scissors : Ski-Ssor (we dont use this word we just say Gunting) ✂ 9. Penguin : Pinguin 🐧 10. Psychotomimetic : Psikotomimetik (we change this word in Indonesian spelling)
Apa kabar? In Spanish we drop the syllable "to" in "psychotomimetic". Just get the 2 main greek roots of the word and join them together. In fact the Wikipedia article about psychotomimetism is not translated to any other language... and that's strange.
That word is close... the only reason why I could sound it out is because I know the parts individually. You have to divide the word into "psychot", "o", "mimetic" to get the stress and vowels right. It becomes "psy.chót.o-mi.MÉ.tic". English is hard, y'all.
In Spanish we drop the syllable TO and just join the 2 other greek roots of the word: psicomimético. However that's not even in Wikipedia or any dictionary.
as someone from massachusetts, i didn’t even realize we have mainly grey squirrels in our state until christina said so…. come to think of it, i don’t think i’ve ever seen a brown squirrel even though squirrels in the media are often depicted as brown?? 😅😅 that’s crazy to me lol
As an English speaker learning Vietnamese i can sympathise. I still find it difficult to pronounce the Ng. I think Italians can maybe say it correctly as theres similar in the alphabet but sometimes i say right. The most important thin is confidence. Vietnamese is very clear and loud. So just say it and get it wrong and people will help. So happy Vietnamese people are so nice and helpful
It wasn't uncommon way back in the day of walled cities to have a "code word" that only residents could pronounce. So, if a foreigner/spy were trying to act as if they were a native, they could be found out/denied entry.
Hi. Don’t worry I also struggle with those words. I can’t pronounce r’s and l’s very well even though I lived in the U.S for basically my entire life. I’ve had to do speech my entire life and I’m still struggling with r’s.
Really interesting! Also, when I say squirrel, my tongue stays behind my teeth. In fact, there were a few times in this video that the tongue should be staying behind the teeth, not thrust out between the teeth.
It funny to me how different the American and British pronunciations of the word are. When I first heard an American saying it I didn’t know what they were talking about, “there were skwerls in the walls” whereas in Britain we pronounce it more fully like “skwirel”
Larry Hurley, a burly squirrel hurler, hurled a furry squirrel through a curly grille. How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? (Woodchucks are squirrels - ground squirrels.)
In my city we mostly have the reddish brown squirrels. A nearby suburb has all three types of squirrels. Gray squirrel, black squirrel and the reddish brown squirrel.
I haven't ever seen a squirrel in the wild. My city Madrid is to be blame, too huge (4th largest metropolitan area in Europe) and too urban, I'm afraid.
@@BlackHoleSpain my city isn’t as large as Madrid. We have some squirrels in our downtown. I have also seen a hare rabbit and regular baby rabbits. Not sure how they got there. Maybe someone dumped the in our downtown city.
Part of the problem with English is that it's essentially a Germanic language with a heavy dose of Romance infused (predominantly French and Latin) and a smidge of Greek. That's why many words (like colonel) sound different than they're spelled.
Words like “squirrel” and “rural” are possibly easier to pronounce in the English way, as two more distinct syllables, rather than the American way. “Skwi-rel” and “ru-ral”.
I found the best way to explain how to say the R and L, as they do have a sound that is close, that is the R in Ramen, as the tongue shape for the R in ramen fits in the middle of both letters. But in English you push the tip of tongue more to back and to the roof of the mouth, and for the L you move the tip of tongue to the top of your teeth. I say this because Saki was asking about tongue shape.
3:10 likely the most difficult thing about english, for a lot of words how it's written doesn't matter, just have to learn it by listening. if someone knows how to say "chair" and makes some assumptions about how to say "choir" they're going to be sadly mistaken.
That was really quite cruel to give Saki some of the hardest words for Japanese speakers to say , you could of given her some easier ones .Well done Saki , you did really well and tried really hard ..
i'm from brazil and studied english for seven years, and the most difficult word for me to pronounce is definitely "world" lmao it's so funny cause it's such a basic everyday word but i still mess it up from time to time
Can confirm as a native American English speaker "rural" is really hard to say, especially when said really fast, because of how unnatural is feels saying back to back Rs with no consonances, so your mouth isn't really getting a break lol.
If she was taught the word squirrel how the English say it how it’s originally pronounced she wouldn’t find it as hard to say. Americans pronounce it like scworl (1 syllable) when the English pronounce it like scwi roll (2 syllables)
Oh boy, from a UK perspective I was ready to cringe at the US pronunciation; only one stood out 'Rural' which we'd say as 'Ru-Rahl' and Christina says it that way once (05:26) but the rest of the time drops the second r. I note the difficulty over 'Brewery' holding pursed lips making it sound like 'we' at the end, she changed to the more open 'ee' sound after which we'd use in the UK. Many words are hard due to English being written lazily and the sounds being too flexible - like Psychotomimetic I'd assume was 'Sigh-ko-toe-me-meh-tick' (no 'tomy' in the middle). My young sons have learnt using phonetics (which I never did) and it's amazing how much better it is than trying to workout random letter sounds - in a way it more closely resembles katakana in that you have more fixed sounds; still there are plenty of rules and exceptions so even with phonetics it isn't simple.
