Why can't I understand REAL people in my target language?

Summary

In this discussion, the speaker addresses the common challenge of understanding native speakers in real-life settings compared to podcasts. They explain that podcasts often feature clearer speech due to controlled environments, while natural conversations involve faster, more casual speech with incomplete sentences and mumbling. The speaker highlights the importance of focusing on meaning rather than individual words, emphasizing the role of inference and context in understanding street conversations. Real-world interactions, with distractions like background noise, require adapting to these less structured forms of communication.

Takeaways

• 🎧 Listening to podcasts can prepare you for understanding Spanish, but real-life conversations can be more challenging.
• 🗣️ Native speakers often mumble, speak fast, and devoice sounds, making it harder to understand them in real life.
• 📍 Context is key: understanding the topic of a podcast helps, whereas street conversations lack that context.
• 🎤 Podcast speakers enunciate clearly into a microphone, unlike spontaneous street conversations.
• 💡 The clarity of thought in speech is crucial; scripted speeches are easier to follow than unstructured conversations.
• 🧠 Careful speech versus casual speech: people unconsciously articulate more clearly when they are more aware of what they're saying.
• 📚 Linguistics differentiates between careful speech and casual speech, affecting how ideas are conveyed.
• 🌐 Focusing on meaning rather than individual words can help understand fast-paced, real-life conversations.
• 🤔 Inference is essential: understanding incomplete sentences requires inferring the intended meaning from context.
• 🌆 Real-life practice is necessary: podcasts can only prepare you up to a point; actual conversations in noisy environments are different.

Q & A

Why does Courtney have difficulty understanding native speakers in Spain despite understanding advanced podcasts?

Courtney finds it challenging because native speakers mumble, speak fast, and devoice sounds, which is different from the clear enunciation in podcasts.

What is the difference between speech in podcasts and speech on the street?

Podcasts are usually pre-planned with clear ideas and spoken into a microphone, whereas street conversations are spontaneous, fast-paced, and may involve tangents.

Why does the person in the video mention 'careful speech' in linguistics?

Careful speech is when someone is more aware of what they're saying, which is different from regular speech and affects how sounds are produced.

How does the context of a conversation affect the ease of understanding?

Knowing the context of a podcast makes it easier to follow, while street conversations lack this context and can be harder to understand.

What does the video suggest as a strategy for understanding fast-paced, real-life conversations?

Focusing less on individual words and more on the overall meaning can help understand the conversation.

What is the role of inference in understanding incomplete sentences or ideas?

Inference is crucial as it allows understanding the meaning of a sentence even when some words are missing or sentences are incomplete.

Why does the video mention that understanding speech in real life is a different skill set?

Real-life speech often involves background noise, mumbling, and incomplete sentences, which require a different level of abstraction and inference.

What is the significance of 'abstraction' in understanding speech mentioned in the video?

Abstraction refers to the ability to grasp the general idea or meaning behind speech, rather than focusing on specific words.

How does the video explain the difference between a scripted speech and a spontaneous conversation?

Scripted speech is well-structured and clear, while spontaneous conversations can be disorganized, with ideas going off on tangents.

What does the video suggest as a way to improve real-life language comprehension?

The video suggests practicing by talking to people in real-life situations, despite the challenges of noise and unclear speech.

Why might transcriptions of street conversations sometimes include 'inaudible' sections?

Transcriptions may include 'inaudible' sections because the speech is often incomplete or obscured by background noise, making it hard to understand every word.

Outlines

00:00

🎧 Understanding Podcasts vs Real-Life Conversations

The speaker discusses the difficulty of understanding native Spanish speakers in real life despite being able to comprehend advanced podcasts. They note that street conversations are often mumbled, fast, and lack clear enunciation. Podcasts, in contrast, are typically spoken clearly into a microphone with a known context, making them easier to follow. The speaker also highlights the difference between 'careful speech' and regular speech, explaining how people unconsciously alter their speech patterns depending on the situation. They suggest focusing on the meaning rather than individual words to better understand real-life conversations.

05:00

🚶‍♂️ Real-Life Conversations and Language Artifacts

The speaker continues to elaborate on the challenges of understanding spoken language in real-life situations, such as incomplete sentences and background noise. They emphasize the need to infer meaning from partial information, which is a skill that podcasts do not fully prepare one for. The speaker shares personal experiences of struggling with understanding fast, mumbled speech in public places and suggests that engaging in real-life conversations is essential for developing this skill.

Keywords

💡Podcast

A podcast is a digital audio file made available for downloading to a computer or mobile device, so you can listen to it at your convenience. In the video, podcasts from Spain are mentioned as a resource for learning Spanish. The speaker notes that while the listener found it easy to understand advanced podcasts, real-life conversations proved more challenging, highlighting the difference between structured, clear speech and spontaneous, everyday language.

💡Native speakers

Native speakers are individuals who have spoken a language from birth. The video discusses the experience of understanding podcasts intended for native Spanish speakers, which were easier to comprehend than actual conversations with native speakers in Spain, indicating that the context and manner of speech can significantly affect comprehension.

💡Mumble

To mumble is to speak in a way that is not clear or is difficult to understand. The script describes how people on the street mumble and speak fast, which makes it hard for the listener to understand them, contrasting with the clear enunciation in podcasts where speakers are more deliberate and mindful of their audience.

💡Devoicing

Devoicing refers to the reduction or elimination of vocal fold vibration during speech production, which can make speech sound less clear or more guttural. The video mentions that speakers on the street might devoice sounds, contributing to the difficulty in understanding them compared to the clear articulation in podcasts.

💡Context

Context is the circumstances or setting in which something occurs. The video script explains that understanding a podcast is easier because the listener has context about the topic and the speaker's intention, unlike street conversations where the context is less clear and more challenging to infer.

💡Careful speech

Careful speech is a term in linguistics referring to speech that is deliberate, clear, and articulate. The video contrasts careful speech with casual speech, noting that people are often unconsciously more careful with their speech in certain situations, like when they are being recorded or are aware of their audience.

💡Inference

Inference is the act of deriving understanding from what is implicit rather than what is explicitly stated. The script discusses the need to infer meaning from incomplete sentences or ideas when listening to spontaneous speech, as opposed to the more complete and structured language found in podcasts.

💡Abstraction

Abstraction in language refers to the process of understanding the general idea or concept behind the words, rather than focusing on the literal meaning of each word. The video suggests that understanding speech in real-life situations often requires a level of abstraction, where the listener must grasp the overall meaning despite incomplete or unclear expressions.

💡Script

A script is a written plan for what the speaker will say. The video contrasts the clarity of a scripted speech with the more disjointed nature of spontaneous conversation. The speaker mentions that a scripted speech, like a podcast, has clear ideas that are easy to follow, unlike the tangents and lack of clarity in unscripted speech.

💡Tangents

A tangent is a digression from the main subject. The video describes how conversations can go off on tangents, making it difficult to follow the main idea, especially when the speaker jumps between different topics without a clear structure, unlike the more focused and linear nature of a podcast.

💡Inaudible

Inaudible speech is speech that cannot be heard or understood. The video mentions that in real-life conversations, parts of speech can be inaudible due to background noise or the speaker's manner of speaking, which is in contrast to the controlled environment of a podcast where every word is intended to be clear and audible.

Highlights

Courtney finds it easier to understand advanced podcasts in Spanish but struggles with real-life conversations in Spain.

Street conversations are often mumbled, fast, and lack clear enunciation compared to podcasts.

Podcast speakers are aware of the context and speak clearly into a microphone, making it easier to understand.

Real-life conversations can be more challenging due to varying contexts and speakers going off on tangents.

Difference between 'careful speech' and regular speech affects comprehension.

People unconsciously change their speech patterns depending on the situation.

Linguistics study shows emotional storytelling affects speech patterns.

The same person can sound different in various contexts due to the nature of speech.

Scripted speech is easier to understand than spontaneous conversation.

Focusing on meaning rather than words can help understand real-life conversations.

Inference of meaning is crucial for understanding incomplete sentences or ideas.

Real-life conversations require more abstraction and inference than scripted content.

Listening to podcasts can prepare you for real-world language use but has its limitations.

Background noise and incomplete speech are common challenges in real-life language use.

Transcriptions often have 'inaudible' parts, showing the difficulty of parsing real speech.

Understanding real-life conversations is a different skill set from listening to podcasts.

The challenge of understanding fast, mumbled speech in real-life situations is acknowledged.

Transcripts

[Music]

oh here's here's an interesting question

I'm going to go to chat again so

Courtney says that they've been

listening to podcasts from Spain and

they're really easily able to understand

things even though like it's for native

speakers um and at an advanced level

congrats but they just went to Spain and

had a lot of trouble understanding real

life Spaniards yep

why uh I feel you I feel this problem a

lot

um

so what I found is that uh when people

speak just in the street they Mumble and

they talk very fast and they just

like they

just I guess they just devoice a lot of

the sounds that you would expect they

don't enunciate particularly well um and

the context of being on the street is

very different than the context of being

in a podcast when you have when you

understand what the podcast is about or

the context of the conversation

generally and they're speaking clearly

into a microphone uh it is easier to

follow that than if you bump into

somebody on the street and they

immediately start talking to you about

something um actually somebody in our uh

in our course server posted a video of

Ben talking on one of our videos versus

a an interview between two people and he

was like I can understand Ben perfectly

and I cannot make any sense of what's

happening in this

conversation um even though both of them

were miked up and the audio quality was

great and the difference was Ben had

written a script that had clear ideas

that were clearly expressed whereas this

conversation the person

speaking they would talk about an idea

and then go off on a tangent and then go

off on another tangent and then come

back to the main idea and so it wasn't

enough to just follow one sentence at a

time or understand the broader context

you had to keep multiple different

contexts in your head in addition to the

entire um past 30 seconds or 1 minute of

the

conversation uh all readily available so

that you could follow all the different

trains of thought that were happening so

it wasn't even an issue of the language

being difficult it was an is issue of

this person's this person was not

expressing their ideas with a Clarity of

thought that was easy to follow um

there's something in linguistics called

like careful speech versus I don't

actually remember the opposite of it but

careful speech is basically when

somebody's more aware of what they're

saying and there is a a marked

difference between how people speak in

careful speech versus just regular

speech um

and it's it's an unconscious thing

everybody does it like I think it was a

fairly famous study where somebody would

ask people to like tell a story just

about their life usually something that

was like more emotional and it would

record and listen to it but then also

ask that same person to like read

something or to quote something or

something like that where it's a lot

more mentally intensive and sounds would

change all over the place this person

would just save these sounds differently

depending on if you're thinking or not

um and so that is one of the reasons

why the same person might sound

different in different

contexts but then also so there's that

added level of at a certain point we do

just speak in ideas right if you're not

if you haven't prepared ahead of time

like a script or you're trying to get a

point across you it's edited down to be

more understandable if you're just

trying to say stuff and get it out there

and hang out with your friend or

whatever there's a lot more stuff going

on and for me what's helped understand

that easier so understanding like Market

vendors and following conversations out

in the in the Stream

has actually been focusing Less on the

words and the sentences and more just on

the

meaning because that is easier to follow

along with If you're sort of with the

conversation and listening to the person

who's speaking you can usually figure

out what's happening and follow along

and make a joke and whatever and that's

relatively normal versus if you're

trying to say okay I'm learning Spanish

I'm here in Spain I'm going to listen to

this person I got to understand the

words and then then figure it out and

then you miss a couple words you go oh

no what's happening right there's this

different level of of ability that

requires some more abstraction I think

is a good

word um and I would say also inference

of

meaning that is separate from the actual

words being used um because if somebody

only gives you a third or half of what

is a what would otherwise be a complete

sentence

you have to be able to infer the other

half of the sentence um not by the words

but the meaning of the entire sentence

um so there's an enormous amount of

inference that your brain has to do in

order to practice uh understanding

people on the street because they don't

speak often incomplete ideas and they

don't say all of their words or they

they don't finish their

sentences yeah so it's more real right

right yeah so you know it can definitely

prepare you you know listening to a

podcast will prepare you for the real

world but only up to a certain level at

a certain point you really do have to

just go and talk to people in real life

uh when there is music in the background

or cars on the street or they are

mumbling and not completing their words

or they're talking in a different

direction um all of these things

create uh artifacts in the language that

are really difficult

to um make it difficult to parse the

actual sort of correct version of what

they're saying if you were to transcribe

it um and and you'll see this in like

transcriptions where sometimes you just

won't be able to hear what people say

and then it'll say like just inaudible

um and

it's even though that word was inaudible

the sentence as a whole is

understandable yeah um so it's it is

definitely a challenge and I I uh I feel

for you because I experienced the exact

same thing like trying to understand

some of the uh like the folks that I run

into like at the park or on the street

um speaking Spanish oh man some of them

are just

like they speak so low and

so um their words just run together in a

way that is unusual for like an actual

piece of cont content where someone has

a microphone is enunciating um it's just

a completely different skill set

honestly yeah

mhm it's but that's part of the reason

we do it right yeah