ENGLISH LANGUAGE TIPS

Why You Can’t Understand Native Speakers

If you are speaking to a native speaker of English and cannot understand them, it might be because of the following reasons:

• Native speakers don’t finish all their sentences (because we said enough for you to guess the rest of the sentence)
• They don’t let others finish their sentences (because we already know what they were going to add)
• They link their words together quickly (“soup or salad” sounds like “super salad”) and drop some sounds completely (“Whacha doin on the weekend?” = What are you doing on the weekend?), and many sounds are reduced (“in’n out” = in and out)
• They may have bad speaking habits like mumbling, repeating, speaking too quietly, only saying a few words instead of a full sentence or expression

For more tips, take a look at our English Language Tips page.