Speak English Fast
Our advertisers here on Ricochet just proposed to me a fail-safe system for learning to speak English fast. This gave me pause. What on earth about my browsing habits, I wondered, might prompt Google to believe that speaking English fast poses a problem for me? In fact, of all the concerns I might ever have had, or ever might have, I'd say this is the least of them. Well, I thought, I could always hope to achieve terminal velocity, so I clicked on the advertiser's site, and found this appeal:
Close your eyes. Now see yourself speaking excellent REAL English. Imagine yourself talking to native speakers.
Imagine understanding their slang, their idioms, their fast speech.
Imagine speaking fast. Imagine using slang and idioms correctly. Imagine speaking with excellent pronunciation.
It is possible in only 6 months!
There's something poignant and touching about that, isn't there?
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Comments :
Jul '10
Re: Speak English Fast
There is a Fed Ex commercial in this bit, somewhere.
May '10
Re: Speak English Fast
But do they have a Türkçe course ? How do you work to overcome the excessive Turkish agglutination and still speak fast?
Re: Speak English Fast
And what's interesting is that a native speaker of English still has no problem understanding it. It would be the rare non-native speaker who could.
May '10
Re: Speak English Fast
When in foreign lands, I find the key is to speak English slowly. And loudly. With much gesturing.
Really, the Romance languages are all you'd want to speak fast. Like an opera. Trills and thrums. As Talleyrand-Perigord notes, speaking German fast would be a train wreck.
Dec '10
Re: Speak English Fast
In conversation with some co-workers who are native Spanish speakers, one of them remarked how efficient English is. I hadn't thought about it in that sense but then he mentioned our propensity for acronyms and it suddenly made a lot more sense! It must be completely bewildering. I do find that ad touching, Claire.
Jul '10
Re: Speak English Fast
Perhaps, instead of diving right in to speaking English fast, the student should acclimate first. Say, in west Texas, or Maine, or anywhere else that says "house" with four syllables.
Nov '10
Re: Speak English Fast
Daily study of grammar and vocabulary, in addition to immersion. One without the other will get you sounding good, or understanding well, but no one would mistake you for a native. I know this from personal experience.
Nov '10
Re: Speak English Fast
At one time I also worked with native Spanish speakers. They envied English for its vast vocabulary. Spanish is very poor in synonyms.
Dec '10
Re: Speak English Fast
DTIP: Don't take it personally, Claire.
These ads are served based on the contents of the page on which they're showing, not on the viewers browsing habits.
Since there is always a lot of academic-type-stuff being mentioned on this site, it makes a certain amount of sense that ads from online degree offerers are being displayed.
May '10
Re: Speak English Fast
Like yacht salesmen say: Sell the dream, not the boat.
May '10
Re: Speak English Fast
Lady Kurobara
At one time I also worked with native Spanish speakers. They envied English for its vast vocabulary. Spanish is very poor in synonyms. · Dec 29 at 6:56pm
The Google n-gram server estimates that there are 1 million words in contemporary English, half of which are not in dictionaries.