Tips to understand native English speakers

What's covered in this article?

What constitutes a native English speaker?

What are the challenges you might face when speaking to native English speakers?

How to understand native English speakers better?

Have you ever been part of English conversations where you struggled to understand what was being said? Up until then, did you believe you have a fair grasp of the language? If the answer to the question is yes, chances are you hail from a country whose native language is not English and the others were native English speakers.

What constitutes a native English speaker?

A native speaker of any language is someone who has learned to speak that particular language as a first language, rather than as a foreign language. English is designated as the native language of the United Kingdom, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the Republic of Ireland. It is also widely used at various levels of education, governance and commerce in parts of South and Southeast Asia, Africa and the Caribbean.

Even with this context, it gets slightly unclear for at least a small percentage of Indians as to what their main language is. After all, English is one of the official languages of India and is widely used in the higher echelons of education, commerce, the judiciary and parliament, and as a link language at times between citizens hailing from different states within the country. Those with parents of different regional ethnicities in India, at least among the ones who can afford private education, often end up with English as one of their main languages. In a lot of cases, they are fluent in English communication. However, even for this lot of people, it can be quite a tricky task to fully comprehend a native speaker’s speech in its entirety.

What, then, are some of the reasons that even those who have basic English speaking skills, struggle while having English conversations with native speakers?

What are the challenges you might face when speaking to native English speakers?

Observation 1: Native speakers tend to talk faster than non-native speakers.

Note that the observation says ‘faster’, not fast. It’s a relative thing because any language can be spoken fast or slowly depending upon a variety of factors. It’s just that native speakers tend to be that bit faster, probably because they are more fluent and confident in communicating in their tongue. This is true of most languages and is not particularly unique to native English speakers.

Observation 2: Native speakers use unique words, phrases and slang.

Though this observation is also probably true of all languages, it is particularly so in the case of English. Sample these:

·      “My old man (father) would never allow me to come to the party tonight”. (American)

·      “I screwed up (committed a mistake in) the project”. (American)

·      “Rachel’s idea seemed a bit daft (silly/impractical) to me.” (British)

·      “Sara was chuffed to bits (extremely thrilled or happy) when she spotted Michael at the airport”. (British)

·      “Oh, wow. These chocolates are fair dinkum (of great quality/ appropriate for the occasion).” (Australian)

·      “What’s a summer lunch get-together without a barbie (barbeque)?” (Australian)

Observation 3: Native speakers have distinct accents and different dialects, which leads to words being slurred and shortened.

A lot of Indians are probably used to hearing the American drawl, as in paaardy (party), or the clipped British pronunciation, such as in muhtuh (mother). Other distinct accent-related differences probably not as common to Indian ears, include the L-vocalization in the Cockney accent of London’s East End where a word such as ‘pal’ can sound like pow, and the Australian tendency to have an oi or aai sound in place of an ‘i’ or ‘a’ sound respectively in words like ‘mate’, ‘right’ and ‘today’, e.g. “Do we have a game on todaai? Roight then, I’ll see you at 6 maaight.”

These and other variations - American contractions like wanna and gonna (‘want to’ and ‘going to’), the Scottish and Welsh accents in Britain and various French-influenced Canadian accents, all of which are mostly unique to certain regions - can throw up a challenge when trying to understand a native speaker.

Observation 4: Native English speakers tend to pepper their speech with cultural references and more advanced vocabulary

How many of us immediately get it if someone calls us a leprechaun or a muppet? A leprechaun is a supernatural being who features in Irish folklore, while a muppet is a puppet character, originally from the early days of American television.

What about if you are asked to quote a ‘ballpark figure’? This originates from the American sport of baseball and denotes a rough estimate in numerical terms – of the price of something, a budget, expenses etc. Watch out for Indian and other references that have crept into the language too, thanks to British colonization – a quirky one being ‘mulligatawny’ soup, which actually derives from the Tamil term melagu thanni which literally translates to ‘pepper water’!

Native speakers also lean towards more advanced vocabulary, not necessarily to show off their proficiency but for greater emphasis. You’re more likely to hear words like ‘magnanimity’ and ‘devastated’, in place of the more widely-used ‘generosity’ and ‘saddened’ respectively, from a native English speaker. They are simply speaking English like a native.

How to understand native English speakers better?

Improve your vocabulary

There are no shortcuts to expanding the number of words you know – the way forward is to read and listen more and more, and across varied topics and fields if possible. You should ideally increase your geographical span too and try and make sure you consume material from all over the English-speaking world at least, if not literature and audio content in English from all over the world, even if translated. Parallelly, you could try and practice whatever you pick up, in conversations with those who have a firmer grasp of the language used by native speakers, whether they are from your own country or region or the Anglosphere (collective term for English-speaking parts of the world).

Immerse yourself in as many ways as possible

Languages, and in particular slang and references, are culturally rooted. Therefore, to understand these nuances and speak like a native, you have to try and ‘inhabit’ the world that a particular language belongs to, in whatever way possible.

Possible actions could include:

• Making a trip to one or more of these English speaking countries and conversing with the natives there.
• You could also attempt a few dietary experiments for culinary references – what simpler way to grasp the meaning of ‘as flat as a pancake’?
• Other, more affordable actions to build your English to a native level could include catching up on recommended movies and shows. This is an opportunity to listen to native speakers.
• Learning about, if not indulging in, fashion choices of the Western world,
• Following political trends in these countries and much more.

The underlying assumption behind these recommendations is that as you navigate through some or all of them, you will get both a historical sense and a current-day understanding of all these – and that could expose you to many cultural references which might be useful.

Make smart personal choices in terms of material

Do not feel compelled to pick something or stick to something in terms of material, if you feel it isn’t working at all for you. While a certain amount of reading and media consumption may be unavoidable, try and stick to fields, topics and genres that interest and engage you, at least initially. This could mean a particular genre of movies or shows, interviews of your favourite sportspeople or celebrities, the cookery show of a chef you find interesting, books and magazines on particular topics – maybe fashion and automobiles, academic or informative lectures on the internet, such as Ted Talks – anything.

The end goal is to increase your exposure to the language used by native speakers, and any material that helps you move forward a step towards that is good material.

Make extensive use of technology

YouTube, Wikipedia, Duolingo – need one say more?

In this era of virtual living, there is no excuse to not fully explore all the avenues that technology can lay bare before you. It might help to get a subscription to at least a couple of streaming services, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, to be able to access movies and shows. Applications and podcasts that cater to this very need of people, i.e., to understand native English conversations, are now available dime a dozen (a phrase to mean widely and easily available!) – so what are you waiting for? Get yourself equipped and geared as best as possible for the fun journey ahead.

Be patient and do not be unduly harsh on yourself

This is to all those outside the Anglosphere – you are not native speakers of English and will never be, by definition at least. So, it is completely natural to not progress at a pace you’d like to. Putting pressure on yourself or worrying about being out of place in a group is hardly going to help, so relax and keep working at getting better with your language fundamentals, comprehending pronunciation basics, and overcoming any anxiety you may have in expressing yourself.

Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day – now, there’s a reference you should remind yourself of!