Cyanidefree
How can I understand slurred English? I wouldn't say my English is poor, though it's not perfect. I took the IELTS test for many times, and I got a full mark, and sometimes nearly full marks in my listening part. I understood almost every single word in the test, even if the speakers had unfamiliar regional or foreign accents. I thought my listening was fine. But two months ago, I arrived in Australia and found out that many people kept confusing me. With some native speakers who spoke to me over the phone, poor me could just catch a few words. They did seem to try to help me, slowing down, repeating, using shorter expressions and avoiding or explaining slang, but these hardly ever worked. Then I listened to many Australian public speeches. Guess what, almost every word was clear to me. I watched some American films, and then I seemed to have discovered my problem. It was I could only understand about 30% of their words no matter how hard I tried, how many times I watched, how loud the volume was, and even when the speed was slowed down to 50% of the normal. I then tried to do the job with the subtitles, at 50% of the speed. Something unbelievable happened! With some phrases, this is English? All I heard was just random noise that didn't seem to match the subtitle. I believe the random noise could be slurred/reduced/compressed/relaxed form of the phrases, or is it? I suppose this is also the problem that prevents me from understanding Australians in person. Dear learners on italki, how do you understand native speakers' natural pronunciation? If you also experienced a hard time when they're using slurred English, what was your way to overcome the difficulty?
Nov 30, 2015 8:30 AM
Corrections · 2

One of my Australian friends once told me something, which I've never forgotten. In most countries, English is spoken reasonably clearly. People often pronounce words clearly, in a way that is easy to listen to. However there are some accents which are the opposite - and the Australian accent is a great example.  This means that the Australian accent can be difficult to understand - the words are much less clear (on average) compared to more formal accents.  Public speeches will be different - politicians (for example) will tend to put more emphasis on clearly pronouncing words (rather than slurring them together).

 

It is very difficult to communicate what I'm trying to say in writing, it's easier to explain vocally... but I will try. In the USA or UK people might ask "how are you today?" but in Australia the pronunciation is more like "heeeyaoow yaa go-arn maaayyytttt", but with a very lazy tounge/mouth/voice. Some people often try to imitate an Aussie accent by repeating the words Australians say, but that doesn't work very well. A better way to imitate an Australian accent would be to copy the words, copy the sounds, and then try to move your mouth as little as possible, and make the words blur together in the laziest way possible! For example if I say "how ya going mate" out loud, the only time I need to move my mouth is to say the "m" of "mate";  the word "going" becomes "go-arn", etc.

January 14, 2016
Part of the problem may be getting used to the different language. is it possible for you to watch the regular tv programs with English subtitles so that you can read while you listen. This may help you.
November 30, 2015
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