How To Say Common English Expressions Small Talk PART 1
Well hey there! I’m Emma from mmmEnglish!
In this lesson, we’ll go over the pronunciation of some
really common English expressions that native speakers
use when they first meet someone.
Hello, how are you?
I am well, thank you.
Do you have plans today?
Would you like to get a coffee with me?
I’m afraid I can’t today.
Perhaps we could meet another time.
That’s not a problem.
I suggest you call me when you are available.
Did you understand that whole conversation?
I think that you probably did
and I also think that most native English speakers
that you come across, they don’t actually speak like that,
right?
If only everyone spoke as clearly and with such
good pronunciation.
But let’s take a look at a more realistic conversation,
something a little similar to what you’d
hear in the real world.
Hey how you going?
Hey, not too bad.
What are you up to today, do you want to grab a coffee?
I’d love to but I’m a bit busy today.
I’ve got a few things on later.
That’s cool.
How about you give me a call when you’re free?
So native English speakers have a habit of
reducing and contracting words when spoken
and we linked sounds together when we speak
so it’s really difficult to know where one word ends
and another word starts. It’s especially common
when we use everyday expressions,
really common ones. We use them so much
that we get lazy with our pronunciation.
But that can make it really hard for English learners like
you who are practising with conversation that’s like this
but most of the time this is the actual situation.
So in this lesson I’m going to go over some common
and natural English expressions that you’ll hear
and maybe even use yourself every single day.
By the time that we’re done, you’ll have a better idea
what these expressions mean and how to respond
but you’ll also know how they’re pronounced naturally
by native English speakers.
And it could be quite different to what you think
and make sure that you hang around until the
end of the lesson because I’ve got a surprise for you
and a few bonus expressions to practise with me.
Let’s start at the beginning. There are lots of different
English greetings. Things that we say when we first
meet someone.
Good morning. How are you? All of those things.
But let’s focus on ‘How’s it going?’
So this is kind of a strange one.
How’s what going? I’m not going anywhere.
‘How’s it going’ is a really common greeting.
It’s an informal way of asking someone how they are.
So you might even say this to your boss,
if you get on well together.
But you probably wouldn’t use it in formal situations
You would use it when you call your friend.
Say “Hey, how’s it going?”
If you ran into your neighbour at the supermarket,
they might say to you “How’s it going?”
It’s informal it’s friendly and it’s used all the time.
So let’s take a closer look at the pronunciation.
So firstly, we don’t pronounce the full verb ‘is’,
we combine ‘how’ and ‘is’ together
to make a contraction ‘how’s’.
It’s really unnatural to say ‘How is it going?’
in this context so make sure you use the contracted
form like native English speakers would.
So notice how the letter S is pronounced
as the voiced /z/ sound, right?
Next trick. When a word starting with a vowel
follows a consonant sound, any consonant sound
but in this case /z/
then we can link those sounds together.
Not
Bit
They should push together those sounds ‘how’s it’
and finally you may not hear a native speaker
pronounce the final G here in ‘going’.
So this expression is really casual you’ll often just hear it
pronounced with /n/ at the end instead of
So that’s ‘goin’ instead of ‘going’
So let’s put it all together.
‘How’s it going?’
The intonation goes down at the end.
You try it!
Awesome! That sounds really good!
Alright let’s try another now.
When this happens all the time, a time when you’re
getting introduced to someone new.
Someone that you’ve never actually met before
but you know a lot of information about them.
So maybe it’s the husband of your colleague
and your colleague talks about her husband all the time.
You don’t know them, you’ve never met them before
but you know of them. You know some information
about them.
Well then when you meet them it’s really common to say
“I’ve heard a lot about you”
It’s a really nice way of saying my friend tells me
about you all the time.
I feel like we know each other already.
Really friendly and it’s so common
and it’s a very polite response.
I’ve heard a lot about you.
So for example
“Hey this is my friend from uni that I always talk about.”
Ah, yeah I’ve heard a lot about you!
So nice to meet you.
Let’s take a closer look at the pronunciation.
‘have’ at the start of the sentence.
It usually joins together with the subject
in spoken English so it becomes a contraction.
for example.
Not ‘I have’ but ‘I’ve’.
Make sure you have that consonant sound
coming out right it’s one that you sometimes forget
isn’t it? On the end.
Now the H of ‘heard’,
it often gets a little lost here.
It’s like the sound from the end of ‘I’ve’
links directly to the vowel in ‘heard’
Now these words all pull together, don’t they?
You can hear those sounds coming together
and in fact we hear the flap T there as well.
Well in my Australian accent you do and it’s also
really common to hear that in American accents as well.
But the T almost sounds like a /d/ sound
and that happens often in English when the letter T
is between two vowel sounds like here.
Now even though the letter T is at the end of the word
‘lot’ it’s followed by a vowel sound and in spoken English
these words would pull together
so you get a T between two vowel sounds.
It makes /d/ sound.
With that T at the end, you’ll hear a stop T.
So I don’t fully release the air after that T
to make a complete T sound. Not
but
Don’t release the air.
Let’s try it all together now.
Your turn.
I’ve heard a lot about you.
Now if you said that to someone, it’s really common
for them to say back to you
all good things I hope,
like “I hope that everything you heard about me was
positive”.
So be ready for that. You might even decide to say “Yeah
Of course all good things!
I’ve heard all good things about you!”
All right so we’ve broken the ice a little there but now
where do we go? What next?
What are you up to? Up?
What are you up to?
If you’ve ever been confused by this expression,
you’re not alone,
it’s even confusing for me when I think about it.
‘What are you up to’ is another way of saying
what are you doing now?
If you’re curious about what your friend is doing,
you could say “Hey, what are you up to?”
Or you can use it with another time expression
to ask about future plans.
Do you have any plans tonight?
What are you up to on the weekend?
Do you have any plans on the weekend?
So this expression has a couple meanings.
So when we start looking a little closer at the
pronunciation, it gets really interesting.
Now remember that flap T from before .
Here it is again.
In spoken English, ‘what’ and ‘are’ come together.
The two vowel sounds make the the T sound
turn into a D.
The word R is unstressed here so it reduces right down
to become the schwa sound.
And ‘you’ also reduces down as well.
We hear the schwa.
So ‘what are you’ becomes
And you’ll hear that question all the time
in spoken English.
It’s kind of confusing, isn’t it? But understanding
how these words are spoken will help you to understand
more native English speakers.
But let’s get back to this question.
So the unstressed schwa and the
vowel sound that you hear in ‘up’ are very, very similar.
So they actually pull together.
So you really just hear ‘you’ as the
sound.
Crazy huh?
And you wonder how sometimes it’s really difficult
to understand native English speakers, right?
You have a go.
Now it’s important to note that there are a lot of
different variations between accents
so you may hear
where the ch consonant sound is used.
Try it.
So this is such a common expression in English.
If you hear a whole lot of mumbling at the
start of a conversation with a native English speaker,
don’t freeze because they are probably just using
these really common expressions
and being lazy about it.
So for you, understanding how the natural expression is
different from the written words
is really, really important.
Now to answer this question,
you would simply explain what you are doing
at that moment or your future plans
if there was a time reference.
But if you’re not doing anything particularly interesting
or you don’t really have anything planned
then how do you answer this question?
You say..
Now it’s hard to believe that even these quick responses
actually reduce down.
So we don’t hear the T in ‘not’
Again that -ng when spoken quickly at the end of a word
it sounds more like just
instead of
You might also say
or
So this is the unstressed form of ‘just’ and it sounds like
So this also helps to explain that the activity that you’re
doing at that moment, it’s not really important
and notice as well that I’ve completely dropped
the pronoun and the auxiliary verb.
I didn’t say “I am just finishing this email”
I could but often native speakers will drop this
information if it’s unnecessary.
So the question that was directed at me
“What am i up to?”
I don’t really need to clarify that in my answer.
I’m talking about myself right?
So I dropped it, it’s not that important.
So tell me what did you think of this lesson?
I hope that it was useful for you.
In a minute,
I’m going to take you on a bit of an adventure
outside of my studio to practise some more
common expressions - ones that I use all the time.
But before I do, I want you to add some common
everyday English expressions that you want me
to include in a lesson just like this in the future.
If there is any that you want to understand more then
add them into the comments below
so that I can make a lesson.
Hi!
I’m ready to practise!
Okay! Hey I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we practise
outside? I’ve never really filmed outside before but
it’s probably going to be really windy, bit of traffic,
but I’ve been meaning to do it for a while.
Do you want to try it?
Let’s just give it a go, yeah?
Sure!
Alright so, ‘give it a go’ is something that I use
all the time.
It means to try something new, right?
Like right now, I’ve never filmed outside before
and I’m not really sure how it’s going to turn out but
I want to just see how it goes anyway.
I would say all the time give it a go.
So depending on who you talk to,
you might hear people say “I’ll give it a shot”
or “I’ll give it a try” or “I’ll give it a crack”
All of these expressions that have really
similar meanings. For me I always say “give it a go”
It’s really easy to just roll off the tongue. I’m going to
talk about how all of these words kind of push together
when they’re spoken naturally because
you will never hear someone say “let’s give it a go”
but instead “give it a go”
and so what’s happening is all of the words that end
in the consonant sounds, are actually linking to the ones
that follow that are vowel sounds.
So instead of
and notice how it’s unstressed so it reduces down
to the schwa sound.
And also that T is a stop T which means that I’m not
fully pronouncing it, I’m not letting the air go afterwards.
I’m not saying
but
So it’s stopping, I’m not releasing the air.
So that article,
its a schwa and it reduces right down.
You might even hear that T, that flap T
sounding more like a D there because naturally in my
pronunciation, with my accent,
it’ll reduce to that flap T sound.
instead of
So why don’t you give it a go? Try it.
Let’s give it a go.
Right now, let’s go.
Hang on a second I’ve got to get my phone.
Okay now let’s go give it a go.
I’m going to take this. Hi mum.
Hey. Can I give you a call back?
I’m a bit busy. Yep.
Alright I’ll talk to you soon.
Hang on a sec, I’m not coming to dinner tonight.
I’ll come over tomorrow. Okay. See you.
Alright so that, I said “hang on a sec”
and I say that all the time.
It’s a really casual informal way of saying
just wait a moment. It’s a little bit more, you know,
because we’re friends and we’re just hanging out,
it’s much easier, you know and much more relaxed
to use that expression so ‘hang on a sec’
What’s a sec?
Well a ‘sec’, is it’s a short version of the word ‘second’
so we’re going to focus on the first three words
So they kind of all come together, don’t they?
When I say them quickly.
And that’s because the consonant sounds at the end
of these words links straight to the vowel sounds
that follow.
So the ‘a’, the article links straight on behind.
It’s just a schwa, it’s unstressed.
It’s really soft and flat.
Try it with me.
Nice one!
Let’s try another!
With those clouds, we might be running out of time.
We’ve got time for one more but let’s do
‘running out of time
because we are, look at these clouds.
It’s a really common expression, it’s an idiom
that you might already know but we’re going to focus on
the pronunciation so first up we’ve got a contraction.
‘We are’, the auxiliary verb ‘are’
comes together with the subject ‘we’re’
So instead of saying ‘we are’ - it sounds quite sort of
stiff and formal
but you know if you’re speaking more naturally
just like a native English speaker would, you would
probably just contract those two things together.
And then at the end of ‘running’ usually what happens
with native English speakers is instead of pronouncing that
sound at the end, they get really lazy
and they’ll just pronounce the
Then we’ve got ‘out of time’.
Now if they’re pronounced really clearly you can hear
all of those words but instead
when spoken naturally you’ll hear
‘out of’ becomes
And thats, you’ll see the flap T there. You’ll see
that will reduce, that will become the /d/ sound.
That’s my accent anyway. The Australian accent,
will use the flap T, same with the American one,
you might hear people say
but most commonly
And ‘time’ is a stressed word there,
so we hear it really clearly.
or
Why don’t you try it?
Well I hope you enjoyed that lesson. It’s been fun
taking you outside and I think we’re going to keep going
with this we’re going to keep giving it a go.
If you enjoyed this lesson, then make sure you
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check out some new lessons with me,
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natural English expression,
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and I’ll see you in the next lesson!