one to study English. They made a pact.  They broke the pact and now, we get to  

see them at the stroke of midnight. We're going  to study this scene and everything we can about  

American English pronunciation to figure out  what makes American English sound American.  

I make new videos every Tuesday to help you  speak faster and more natural English. You'll  

even be watching TV without subtitles. If you  like this video, or you learned something new,  

please give it a thumbs up and subscribe  with notifications, it really helps.

First, our scene. In twenty seconds, it'll be midnight. 

And the moment of joy is upon us. Looks like that no date pact thing worked out.

Happy New Year! You know, I, uh, just thought I'd throw  

this out here, I'm no math whiz but I do believe  there are three girls and three guys right here. 

Oh, I don't feel like kissing anyone tonight. I can't kiss anyone. 

So I'm kissing everyone? 

No. No. No. You can't kiss  Ross, that's your brother. 

Oh perfect, perfect. So now  everybody's getting kissed but me? 

Alright, somebody kiss me.  Somebody kiss me, it's midnight!

And now, the analysis. In twenty seconds, it'll  be midnight. So the first voice that we hear is  

Dick Clark on the television. He's doing  the countdown party from Times Square.  

And it's part of the tradition of the New  Year that you kiss somebody on the stroke of  

midnight. Is it the same way in your country?

In twenty seconds, it'll be midnight.

So he puts a break here, breaking up this sentence  into two thought groups, and I'm going to go ahead  

and write out the word twenty.

In twenty seconds--

In twenty seconds, in twenty seconds.

We have stress on the first syllable of twenty,  and also on the first syllable of seconds. Um  

in twenty, I would say here it dips down and up.  In twenty seconds, and then on seconds, it does  

the scoop up and then down. Now we have a couple  interesting pronunciation things happening here.  

The word twenty, it's really common to drop the T.  That's because it comes after an N. And when the T  

comes after an N, that's a case where it might get  dropped. And in the word twenty, I would say it's  

dropped more than half the time.

In twenty seconds--

You can definitely say it with a true T. Twenty.  

But that's way less common than just dropping the  T completely, twenty. Now on the word seconds,  

we have the EH as in bed vowel in our  stressed syllable. We have the schwa  

in our second syllable. Seconds, seconds,  seconds, and do you notice that D is dropped?  

Why? Well the D comes after an N, so when D  comes after an N, and before another consonant,  

here it's the weak ending Z sound, that's another  case where we'll probably drop the consonant,  

in this case, the D, so the N before T and D  can mean they're dropped. Almost always we'll  

drop the D between N and another consonant.  Seconds. Ndz, ndz, ndz, right from N into Z.

Seconds--

In twenty seconds, smoothly linked together,  

change in pitch happens without jumps. In  twenty seconds, try to do it that smoothly. 

In twenty seconds,

In twenty seconds, it'll be midnight. 

It'll be midnight. It'll be mid-- going up to  that peak of stress on mid, midnight. And then  

the pitch comes back down. It'll be, 'it will'  becomes it'll, so it's the IH as in sit vowel,  

the apostrophe L, I would write that  schwa L, and the letter T is a flap  

between two vowel sounds. So here, it's between  two vowel sounds so that's a flap. In IPA,  

I write that with the D sound between vowels  but just know, it's a flap. It'll be midnight.  

It'll be midnight.

Again smoothly connected, and the pitch  changes without abrupt stops or skips,  

uhhhh-- it'll be midnight. Midnight and we  have a stop T at the end of that thought group,  

which is a common pronunciation at the end of  a thought group, or when the next word begins  

with a consonant. Let's talk really quickly about  the D sound, it's not fully pronounced, it's not  

mid, midnight, dd-- but it's midnight, so  we put the tongue in position for the D,  

we vibrate the vocal chords, but then  we don't release dd-- an escape of air,  

we just go right into the next sound of the  N consonant. Midnight, midnight.

Midnight--

And the moment of joy is upon us.

So Chandler, always the jokester, and the  moment of joy, sort of skips his pronunciation  

a little bit, but even though we have these big  changes, and the-- it's not and the, and the--  

The voice still carries. And the moment of--

And the moment of-- 

  And the-- Do you notice the D is dropped? Look  

at that. After an N, before another consonant,  it's really common to drop the D in the word and.

even though he's making it stress. And,  he's making it longer, he still drops the D.  

It's the AA vowel plus N. Now when we have that  sequence. When you look it up in a dictionary,  

this is what it will say: aa, an, an, an, but  that's not how we actually pronounce it. The back  

of the tongue relaxes, so whenever AA is followed  by N or M, it's not pure. Aauhh-- We have an  

UH vowel, you can think of it as the schwa, or  the UH as in butter. Aauhh-- Aauhh-- and, and,  

so it's not pure, an-- back of the tongue relaxes.  And the-- now he takes the word the, and he puts  

the EE vowel. That's not usual, the rule is when  the next word begins with a consonant sound,  

you make it the schwa. You would make it EE if  the next word began with a vowel or diphthong,  

but in this case, he doesn't do it  that way. He pronounces it 'the'.

And the--  

moment of joy is upon us.

Moment of joy is upon us.  So we have a peak on moment,  

moment of joy is upon us. As well as another  peak on the stressed syllable of 'upon'.

Moment of joy is upon us.

Moment of-- hold on, moment of, moment of, what?  That T is dropped. Look guys, it comes after an N.  

Just like in twenty. Moment of, moment of, the  next word, the word of, begins with a vowel  

sound. So the T between two consonants we drop  that a lot. But with N, T, vowel or diphthong,  

we also might drop that. Like in the word  internet, center, twenty, or when we're linking  

into a word. Moment of. Lots of different  cases where we change our T pronunciations.  

And we're going to have some videos where  we study that in February and March of 2021.  

So keep your eyes out for those, lots  of good videos coming early next year.

Moment of--

joy

In the stressed syllable of moment,  

mo-- it's the OH diphthong you do need a little  bit of lip rounding for that. Moment of joy, joy,  

that's the OY diphthong, need a little lip  rounding for that too. Everything links together  

really smoothly. There are no skips or breaks.

Moment of joy--

is upon us.

Oy is-- joy is-- these two words linked together,  

joy is-- IH smoothly right into IH, joy is, the  S in 'is' is a weak Z sound, but it links into  

upon, uh, uh, uh, uh, the first vowel there, the  schwa, is a, is a, is a, is a, is upon us. Upon  

us. Stressed syllable of pon-- you can think  of that as AH as in father or AW as in law.

Joy is upon us.

Upon us. And the ending N of upon, links  

right into the vowel of us.

Upon us.

Everything's smoothly connected.

Joy is upon us.

Looks like that no date pact thing worked out.

So Joey makes a comment about the 'no date pact  

thing'. If you'll remember in the first video  we studied in this series, they made a pact,  

no dates for new year's eve. Then in the next  two videos, we saw how that pact fell apart.  

People started inviting dates. And now in this  last video of the series, we see none of those  

plans worked out. Here it is midnight, and the  six of them are there together, no dates.

Looks like that no date pact thing worked out.

Looks like that, Looks like that,  looks like that

His first three words, unstressed,  

less clear, flatter in pitch, said quickly.

looks like that--

Looks like that, looks like that,  looks like that, looks like that.

I think you can even think of this K as dropped,  looks like that, looks like that, like that, 

Like that, like that, because that's what it  sounds like to me. It sounds like he's doing  

L unstressed I into the TH, like that, like  that, like that, like that. AA vowel and then  

a stop T because the next word begins with  a consonant. So it's not looks like that.  

Definitely not that clear it. Looks like that.  

Looks like that--

no date pact--

You know, now that I'm listening to the whole  phrase, I'm not even sure there's a stop T.

Looks like that, that, that, that, that  no, that no, that no-- I almost feel like  

I'm just hearing AH right into N. That  no, that no, looks like that no date pact

Looks like that no date pact--

thing worked out.

No date pact thing-- So definite stress on  the word date, I feel that it's scooping up,  

no date pact thing, pact thing, a little  bit more length here as well. Pact thing.

No date pact thing--

Let's look at our consonants here. Date. We  definitely don't hear that released, right?  

We definitely don't hear tt-- date. But we hear  date pact, it's not day, but date, date, ttt-- I  

do a stop in the throat and the vocal cords. That  signifies the stop T. Date pact. Now here we have  

consonant T, consonant, how is this T pronounced?  

Pact thing--

Pact thing, pact thing, pact thing. It's  totally dropped. Not surprising. Ending  

CT clusters or ST clusters followed by a  consonant, very common to drop that T.  

Pact thing--

worked out.

Thing worked out. Thing worked out. Then we have stress on part of our phrasal verb, to work out. Thing worked out.  

Thing worked out.

I want to do a quick note on the  word thing, it's an unvoiced TH,  

tongue tip has to come through the teeth,  then it's the IH as sit vowel followed by NG.  

So here we studied when AA is followed by M, it's  not a pure AA. That's true here, too. When IH  

is followed by NG, it's not a pure IH. That  would be thih-- thih-- thing, thing, that's  

not how it's pronounced. It's pronounced thing,  thing. So the NG consonant changes that IH vowel,  

it's more of an EE vowel. Thing, thing, thing.  

Thing--

worked out.

Let's look at our word 'worked'. W consonant, the  R vowel R combination, wor-- wor-- then we have K,  

our ED ending here is pronounced as a  T, that's because the sound before was  

unvoiced, the K consonant. Worked.

Worked out.

I really don't hear the T though. Worked  out. Worked out. Ttt-- normally because the  

next word begins with the vowel or diphthong,  I would expect to hear a light T release there,  

but I'm not really hearing that.

Worked out.

Worked out. Worked out. Worked out. I don't know, I feel like it's dropped.  

Even though that's not what most people would do,  I think most people would do a light T release.  

Definitely, we would drop it if the  next word began with a consonant,  

but here, it's the OW diphthong, I would  expect to hear a light T release. You know,  

there's background noise, he's not talking very  loudly, maybe that's why we're not hearing it.

Worked out.  

One, happy new year!

So they're counting down.  They get to the last one,  

one. So when you're counting like this for  something like a holiday countdown, ten, nine,  

eight, each word would be stressed with that  up down shape of stress. One, happy new year!

One, happy new year!

Happy has stress, happy  

new year. So most stress on ha-- and  new, and of course, I wrote it like that,  

but it all links together smoothly, doesn't  it? Happy new year! Actually, you know, the P,  

it's a stop consonant, and I think part of the  celebratory tone and the stress they give, they  

kind of exaggerate that stop. Happy new year!

Happy new year!

But it does still link together smoothly. The  EE vowel right into the N consonant. Happy new year.

Ppy new year-- ppy new, ppy new, ppy new,  ppy new, ppy new, ppy new, ppy new. Smooth links.  

Happy new year!

Year, this word can be tricky. How is year  

different than ear? Well I have a video on that.  So if you're not clear on the differences between  

year and ear, just look it up on youtube, 'year  ear Rachel's English' and you'll find that video.  

And everyone kisses, hugs,  celebrating the change of the year.  

Happy new year!

know, I, uh-- You know, I, uh-- You know, I, uh--  

All linked together really smoothly. The  word you, not you, ye-- said so quickly,  

you barely even notice it. You know--

You know, I,  

uh-- You know, I, uh-- You know, I, uh-- You know, I, uh-- very smooth. The OH diphthong,  

right into the AI diphthong. You know I-- when  you're doing a link like that, with the OH  

diphthong into another vowel or diphthong, it can  help to think of saying the W consonant to link.  

You know I-- And of course the K in this word is  silent. You know, you know, You know, I, uh--