Why can't I understand REAL people in my target language?
Summary
TLDRIn 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
🎧 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.
🚶♂️ 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.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Podcast
💡Native speakers
💡Mumble
💡Devoicing
💡Context
💡Careful speech
💡Inference
💡Abstraction
💡Script
💡Tangents
💡Inaudible
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
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