RealLife Pronunciation System

Simplified Phonetic Spellings

Core Sounds
Section A- Vowel Sounds
1. the “uh” / “a” sound (the vowel sound in: run, fun, done, rough)
With the RealLife Pronunciation System, we spell it as an “uh,” or other instances,
depending on the words and letters surrounding the sound, we spell it as an “a”.

For example, the common pronunciation of “what do you” could be spelled as

“whuh-duh-yuh,” (with the “uh”) or with “wha-da-ya” (with the “a”).

1a. “uh” sound

1. Nothing to tell = nothin-duh-tell

2. Just some guy = juh-some guy
3. There has got to be = There’s gaw-
duh be
(Taken from start of S1E1 of Friends)

1b. “a” sound

To make it easier to communicate, we aligned certain spellings of the “uh” sound

with other common spelling tendencies, which often uses the spelling of “a” instead
of “uh.”

We usually do this because in certain situations it’s already a common colloquial

spelling that makes it more of an intuitive way to communicate. Some examples of
this include.

 There’s got to be = there’s gotta be

 Kind of = kinda
 Nice to see you = nice to see ya?

Other times we spell it with an “a” sound because it’s easier to communicate based
on the letters surrounding it. For example, one of the most common sounds in
Friends is:
  What do you = wha-da-ya

We could spell this as “whuh-duh-yuh” and we often do, but in most cases “wha-da-
ya” is what we choose.

2. the “ih” sound (the vowel sound in: live, give, ship, rip)
Also know as the “short i” sound, apart from the above examples, this sound causes
a lot of problems when people confuse words (like shit, bitch, and piss) for their
“long e” counterpart (sheet, beach, peace).

Watch Justin’s lesson teaching these two sounds

A common instance that we may use the “ih” sound is with connected speech
examples. In many of our lessons we use this sound with the “D + Y = J” pattern (see
Native Connected Speech). For example:

 Did you = dih-jew

Given the fact that we want to show how natives completely merge the “D” and “Y”
sound into a “J” sound in natural speech, we need to change the spelling. Although
“did” communicates that sound, “di” alone somehow doesn’t seem to be the most
intuitive spelling of the “short I” so we use “ih” to say the “ih” sound.

3. the “aw” sound (the vowel sound in: awesome, aww yeah, got, talk)
If you know how to distinguish and pronounce our famous “aww yeah” sound, you
know the “aw” sound. Unfortunately, in English we don’t always spell it the same
way, so that can be confusing.

Note: A common mistake for learners is to write and pronounce “aww yeah” as “oh
yeah,” either because they can’t hear and pronounce the sound correctly.

Here’s a funny video of a woman confusing the “oh” sound with the “aw” sound, but
in the opposite way. She confuses “Coke”(oh sound) for “Cock” (aw sound). If you
didn’t know, cock is a bad word for penis.

Here are a few examples of spelling it with the “aw” sound (in the left column), as
we do, and then a variety of other spellings for the same sound.

Pronounced & Spelled with Aw Same Pronunciation, Different

Spelling
awesome Got
aweful Fought
law Talk
4. the “ow” sound (the vowel sound in: cow, how, now)

This can be confusing in some situations because the hard “oh” sound can follow the
same spelling in English, for example, the word row, snow, and low are all spelled
with the same “ow” sound as cow, how, and now, but are pronounced differently.

Pronounced & Spelled with “ow” Same spelling, different

pronunciation
cow row
how snow
now low

5. the “eh” sound (the vowel sound in: bed, fell, head, said)
For this sound, however, we usually don’t change the spelling unless there are
examples of connected speech we want to emphasize, and changing the spelling of
the word causes confusion. For example:

For example, in the case of “better,” we may spell it as “beh-dir” because we want to
teach/ communicate the flap T/ American T D (see section B).

We could have spelled it in different ways. For example:

 Bed-er
 Bed-ir
 Beh-der
 Beh-dir

In this case, we chose to change the “er” at the end of “better” to “ir” (for reasons we
explain in number 6). We could have also chosen “bed-er” or “bed-ir,” and maybe we
were wrong, but we felt the most intuitive spelling in this instance was “beh-dir.”

6. the “ir” sound (fir, were, her, sir)

One of the most common cases of the “ir” sound is the reduction of the word “your”
to “yir” in connected speech, but we also use it in examples like the one above
(better = beh-dir) to communicate other sounds.

7. the hard “A” sound (the vowel sound in: cat, ran, laugh, and that)
We communicate this sound with the capital A letter. For example “cAt”, “rAn”, etc.

8. the “ou” sound (the vowel sound in: put, would, could, should, good)
The “ou” sound is probably one of the more difficult sounds for learners to
pronounce, and in our system, the “ou” spelling is one of the more awkward and
sometimes non-intuitive spellings.

We chose the “ou” spelling to align our system with words like “would”, “could”, and
“should” and avoid the confusing double “o” of words like “good” which are often
mispronounced with the “u” sound like “good” (which we cover next)

Pronounced & Spelled Same Pronunciation, Different

with “ou” sound Spelling
would good
should put

9. the “u”/ “ew” sound (the vowel sound in: due, jew, food, rude)
Depending on the context, we spell this sound as a “u” or “ew.” In the first episode
of our Fluent with Friends course, you’ll find both. Combining the “ih” vowel sound
(#2 of this section), and the “D +Y = J” pattern (#6 of section B), we have the
following examples:

 How did you = how dih jew (how dih ju)

 What did you = wha dih jew (wha dih ju)

Notice how the “jew” from “how did you” is spelled as both “jew” and “ju.”

Section B- Connected Speech Patterns

Introduction: These are 6 very important native pronunciation tendencies that you
will not learn in traditional schools. These following sounds are the cause of many
difficulties in listening comprehension and they are extensively covered in Fluent
with Friends.

Many of these have video lessons linked below, but for a more extensive
introduction, you can watch this webinar recording (we start talking about the 7
rules of connected speech at just past 22:00 into the video).

1. Flap T (American T D)
The basic rule is that when a T sound is surrounded by two vowel sounds in North
American English (and many other forms of native English), the T becomes a soft D.
This is such a common occurrence that people (natives especially) totally forget that
it exists. For example:
  Better = be-der (we often spell it as “be-dir”)
 Beatles = be-dulls
 Seattle = See-A-dull (the hard “A” sound is explained the above section, #7)

This even happens (quite often) with separate words that link together.

 Cat and dog = cad-in-dog

 Come together = come-duh-gether

Other common examples:

 Go to = go-duh
 Goin-to= goin-duh

Watch Justin’s Lesson on this Topic

2. Reduction of the “H” Sound

When you have a pronoun that starts with an “H” (he, his, her, him) preceded by a
word that ends with a D (or N, R, or many other sounds), the “H” on the pronoun
may get reduced. For example:

 Love him or hate him = love-im or hey-dim

o Note the “t” on “hate” turns to “d” due to the last rule (American TD)
 Come here = come-ere
 But he’s your brother = bud-e’s your brother (same pronunciation as “buddy’s
your brother”)

Note: Many cases of the reduction of the “H” sound happen together with the
American TD sound.

Learn more about this rule

(10 minute audio lesson)

3. Omission of the “T” in NT words

The NT sound is often omitted in North American English when (a) the stress
is on “nt” syllable, and it’s followed by a vowel sound. For example, “internet,”
“international,” or any word that starts with “inter” (again, the stress must
fall on the first syllable- “integrity” doesn’t work because it falls on the second
syllable).

 internet = innernet
 internation = innernational
This can also happen when one word ends with “nt” and the next one starts
with a vowel.

 I went out = I wen-out

 Front end = fron-end

This also happens with nearly all “nt” contractions (most verb tenses have
them: don’t, won’t, haven’t, isn’t, doesn’t, etc)

 don’t even = don-even

 hasn’t opened = has’n-opened
 hasn’t he = hasn’e (this rule is combined with the last rule, the
reduction of the “h” sound)

Watch Justin’s Lesson on this Topic

4. The “of” and “ve” sound  uh

The OF and VE sounds are often reduced/ contracted into and “uh” or “a”
sound. For example:

 kind of = kinda
 could’ve = coulda
o also should’ve = shoulda, would’ve = woulda
 word of mouth = word-a-mouth

Watch Justin’s Lesson on this Topic

5. T + Y = Ch
Words that end in a “t” sound followed by words that end in a “y” sound often
end up merging to form the “ch” sound. A very basic example:

 Nice to meet you = nice to mee-chew (nice to me-chew)

 What you’re saying = wha-chore saying
o Note: we write “chore” instead of “chour” because it’s generally
more intuitive to read.
 I don’t want you to = I don’t-wan-chew duh
 o Note: the to is pronounced as “duh” due to the American T in
the first rule in this section (“duh” sound explained above in
section 1)

Note: the word that starts with “Y” is very often a pronoun (you, your)

There are even common colloquial expressions that originate from this rule,
for example:
 Gotcha (got you = gotcha)
o Note: the “you” is often pronounced as “ya” in spoken English

6. D+ Y= J

Similar to the last rule (T + Y = Ch), words that end with a “D” sound followed
by words that start with a “Y” sound merge into a “J” sound. For example:

 Would you = wou-jew (often pronounced as “wou-juh”)

o Also the same for “could you” and “should you”
 Too bad you didn’t come = too bA-jew didn’t come
o Note: the hard “A” in bA-jew is explained above in section 1, #7

This pattern is most common with the “could/ should/ would you” examples
above, and the simple past tense with “did you.”

For example, this rule repeats itself over and over with the following simple
past questions with question words (who, what, when, where, why, how,
which, etc). For example:

 How did you know? = how dih-jew know?

 Where did you go? = where-dih-jew go?

Watch Justin’s Lesson on this Topic