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.

What do you want from me?

Yes?

My, my grandma wanted me to tell you

that she missed you at Christmas.

Yeah, well, I couldn't have gone anyway.

My mom was pissed about Thanksgiving.

Your mom is crazy, I'm scared of her.

She's not crazy, she's just, y'know, she,

she has a big heart, she's very warm.

Now, the analysis.

What do you want from me?

I love this phrase, it's a little bit sassy.

There's one really clear stressed word,

and she does a movement on it, as she says it.

She puts her foot down on the stressed word.

Watch it again and listen for that.

What do you want from me?

And the most stressed word is want.

What do you want from me?

What do you want from me?

So the energy goes up towards the peak of want.

What do you want from me?

And then it falls down away from that peak.

What do, we have a T and a D.

How are these two words pronounced?

Let's go ahead and throw in this word, too.

How are these three words pronounced?

What do you want from me?

What do you want from me?

What do you want from me?

They're pronounced

what do you, what do you, what do you.

So the vowels in do and you are not reduced.

You could hear that whaddya, whaddya.

You could hear them as schwas,

but she's making them both OO vowels.

what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you.

But notice the T here is dropped,

and she's just using the D to link the two words together.

Wha-do, wha-do.

So it's a flap because it comes between two vowel sounds.

And the T is also a flap

when it comes between two vowel sounds.

So it's sort of like she's combining the two,

or you can think of it as dropping the T.

But this would be a pretty common way

to pronounce the phrase, what do you.

What do you, what do you, what do you,

what do you, what do you.

I would say it's the most common way.

You can just forget about the T and link it into the D.

What do you, what do you want from me?

What do you want from me?

What do you want from me?

What do you want from me?

Want from me, want from me.

So we have a stop T, want from, want from.

And the word 'from' is reduced.

It's not from, it's from, from.

I would write it with a schwa.

From me, from me.

Then here we have ending M, beginning M,

links together with just a single M sound.

Very smooth, no breaks, no skips or jumps

in the intonation here.

Uhh, just a smooth up and down.

What do you want from me?

What do you want from me?

What do you want from me?

What do you want from me?

Yes?

Yes?

And she does a head gesture, she's impatient.

Why is this guy showing up at her work, yes?

Upward pitch shows that it's a yes-no question.

She's saying, I'm expecting you to talk here.

Yes?

Yes?

Yes?

My, my grandma wanted me to tell you

that she missed you at Christmas.

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 going 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 learned about pronunciation in this video.

Back to the lesson.

Yes?

My, my grandma wanted me to tell you

that she missed you at Christmas.

So we have several stressed words here.

My, my grandma wanted me

to tell you

that she missed you at Christmas.

So I'm hearing those as our four most stressed syllables,

little bit longer, up-down shape,

the energy goes towards them then it comes away.

But we have lots of other interesting things

with pronunciation that are happening here.

My, my grandma wanted me to tell you

that she missed you at Christmas.

My, my grandma wanted me to tell you

that she missed you at Christmas.

My, my grandma wanted me to tell you

that she missed you at Christmas.

My, my grandma, my, my, my, my.

Both the words 'my' are unstressed,

they're said really quickly, they're low in pitch.

My, my, my, my, my.

So you have to simplify the mouth position.

You can't do this big jaw drop for the AI diphthong,

like you might do in a stressed syllable, my, my, my, my.

My, my grandma,

Grandma, so it's a stressed word,

and yet we don't say the D.

Very common to drop the D in this word.

We often drop the D between two consonants,

here it comes after N, before M, and it's dropped, grandma.

My, my grandma,

And actually, he's dropping the N, too.

So this can be pronounced with the N,

grandma, but you know what?

It's actually not that common either

in this particular word, grandma,

grandma.

AH vowel,

followed by the M consonant,

when AH is followed by M it's not pure, we add an AH vowel.

Grandma.

Grandma, grandma, grandma, try that.

My, my grandma,

My, my grandma wanted me to tell you

that she missed you at Christmas.

Wanted me to tell you,

actually, I really need another line here,

another curve on wanted.

Now, it's interesting, it is stressed, it's the verb.

Usually we don't reduce stressed words, but you know what?

Sometimes we do and that's happening here, wanted.

The T is not there.

Sometimes we drop the T after N, that's what's happening.

Wanted, wanted.

But the ED ending still follows the rule for ED after T,

and that is it adds an extra syllable.

It's the IH vowel plus D sound.

Wanted, wanted,

wanted me to, wanted me to.

The other thing that you might notice is

the word 'to' is not pronounced to,

it's pronounced duh, duh, duh.

It's a flap T and the schwa, wanted me to,

wanted me to, wanted me to tell.

Wanted me to tell you,

wanted me to tell you that she missed you.

Tell you that she missed you,

tell you that she missed you.

Okay, so the word That, tell you that she,

it's reduced, it's not that, but it's that, that.

It's the schwa instead of the AH vowel, that, that, that.

Tell you that she.

So, between the stressed words Tell and Missed,

we have three unstressed words,

and they're all said really quickly,

and they're flat, lower in pitch,

you that she, you that she, you that she.

Tell you that she,

tell you that she missed you at Christmas.

Now the ED ending after S is pronounced

as a T sound, so it does not add an extra syllable.

Missed you, missed you.

But that's not what's happening, is it?

Let's listen.

That she missed you at Christmas.

That she missed you at Christmas.

That she missed you at Christmas.

Okay, so what's happening here?

We do drop the T sometimes

when it comes between two consonants

just like I said we do with the D here,

although we were actually dropping the N

and the D in that case.

But we do drop the T between two consonants.

So here T comes after the S sound,

it comes before the Y consonant.

I'm not really hearing the T.

I'm certainly not hearing

(softly makes T sound) a released T.

So I'm actually gonna go ahead and say

you can drop that sound, you can drop the ED ending.

And this is something that my students ask me sometimes.

They say, "I don't hear the ED ending sometimes."

And I think that when they don't hear it

is when it makes a T sound,

but it comes between two consonants.

I think this is a case where it gets dropped a lot

in conversational English.

She missed you at Christmas, she missed you at Christmas.

I know exactly what's being said,

I know that it's past tense.

I'm not hearing it and thinking it's not past tense.

Because I know the context,

and I'm used to T's being dropped between two consonants.

That she missed you at Christmas.

That she missed you at Christmas.

That she missed you at Christmas.

Missed you at Christmas,

you at, you at, you at.

So here we have two more unstressed words together,

they're flat in pitch, they're said very quickly,

the AH vowel is reduced, it's the schwa,uh, uh, uh stop T.

So that and at are similar

in that they both reduce often

with the AH vowel becoming the schwa,

and then the T is a stop T when it's followed

by a word that begins with a consonant.

That she missed you at Christmas.

That she missed you at Christmas.

That she missed you at Christmas.

Like Christmas.

Okay, let's keep talking about our T's between consonants.

How is this T pronounced?

Christmas.

It's dropped.

Christmas, Christmas.

Christmas.

Yeah, well, I couldn't have gone anyway.