How to improve your pronunciation of foreign languages

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Translations:
5:04 (Spanish) [bdg] lenition between two vowels; [n] agrees with the next sounds; [s] almost disappears before a consonant; others depending on the dialect
5:08 (Hebrew) [those 3 letters] change sound; the vowels around [those 2 letters] change; Hebrew’s system is so historic that I don’t know how to show the allophones without breaking the rules, because everything depends on the letter.
5:10 (French) R loses its voice; If you’re wondering why I didn’t write the silent letters at the ends, it’s because they still appear at the ends in other cases (feminine words), so just like in Hebrew, the system is too historic.
5:12 (Arabic) All vowels change to... ; I couldn’t do the formatting with more IPA characters or [the formatting] would be weird.
5:13 (Swedish) All front vowels (3x)
5:15 (Russian) Reduction (2x); Fricatives lose their voice at the ends [of words]
5:16 (Dutch) The “L” thing from earlier; on the ends (3x)
5:18 (Portuguese) The “L” thing from earlier; in the middle positions; before [i]; reduction
6:31 (Hebrew) My brain when I speak Hebrew
6:49 (Spanish) Uhhh, I don’t wanna try
7:04 (bad Spanish) And then uhhhhh, my dad picked me up from the airport and like, brought me home.
7:50 (Hebrew) I have no rights to these images, I’m not claiming ownership of them, and there’s no copyright infringement intended. The images that will appear will be used only for educational purposes, and in fact, this is free advertisement for the creator, because I’m a fan of him.

[machernspanish]

We don't pronounce "Guadalajara" as "Gua'alajara", and "Me gusta" is only pronounced as "Me guhta" in only a couple of regions.

[AnIcySwtnss]

I found your channel through the vid on future American (which was fantastic, btw), but I got to say I'm so glad I stumbled upon this one as well! This is by far the best guide to learning L2 pronunciation I've ever seen full stop. It's always frustrated me how criminally underutilised the IPA is when it comes to language learning, and your advise on observing mouth shapes really complements that, especially since narrow transcriptions aren't always available to the average learner. Everyone talks about shadowing, but shadowing can only get you that far if you don't understand the technicality of how sounds are actually produced. Great work and I'll be off to watch all the rest of your videos!

[XTSonic]

Dutch is only closing in the Netherlands. In Belgium it's stationary.

Crazy how both are very similar in vocabulary, but the way most sounds are made is very different to the point foreigners often don't recognize Hollandic Dutch and Flemish Dutch as the same language.

[purple_purpur]

ok just a tiny correction: there's a difference between [ʟ] and [ɫ]. The first is fully velar, whereas the second is a velarized alveolar (equivalent to [lˠ]). [ʟ] is extremely rare, [ɫ] is quite common.

Also, the Dutch text at 5:15 should be "aan de eindes", not "op de eindes".

[Victor]

Hey, just wanted to say that the way you're reducing the S and Ds in Spanish is a little exagerated. It usually only happens if you're speaking very fast.

[JohnORose-qrbe]

Great video, Sam. My favorite so far. It elucidates clearly the problems I've had with other languages, some I knew about and was working to correct, many I never even noticed. Your tips on how to improve are excellent. Keep up the great work.

[sallylauper]

I'm happy to have found your channel. I'm pretty good at aping pronunciation from audio and skipping the notes although I'm no slouch at phonics. But you've demonstrated control and production of pronunciation that is, dare I say it, better than mine.

[fghsgh]

4:00 so my problem here is that I don't even know what my native language is. I was raised in Slovak but went to a Flemish school, but these days I actually have the most fluency (when constructing sentences) in English. My pronunciation of all of these is imperfect.

[MedK]

I found a little mistake on 5:18. You say /a/ becomes [ɛ] because of reduction. But [ɛ] is the sound that an open E (é) makes. I believe you meant [ɜ], although [ɐ] is a common transcription too.

[yanhoerey]

I don't understand why you use the velar lateral approximant to represent the dark l, because I mostly see it as the Velarized alveolar lateral approximant

[benhetland]

For example at 5:13 I think you confuse the term allophone with what are still perceived as different phonemes by a native, but where some of the phonemes occur in certain places (sound changes) and the spelling convention dictates when/where that phoneme is to be used instead of the phoneme (and its allophones) that the letter combination. The /g/ before /i/ simply is subject to the rule (in both Swedish and Norwegian) that the phonemes [j][i] are to be used, not [g][i], like in the word "gi" (give). In Norwegian the word "gear" is borrowed from English but spelled "gir". It uses the phoneme [g] though, and it is not perceived as just another realization (=allophone) of the [j] phoneme.

[Crw]

What vowel/phoneme sequence is the french example [yu̯] supposed to be a realization of?
Is it (word-final) /y/ without following schwa?

I do hear a slight centering and maybe increase in friction there, but i'd not transcribe that as an [u] sound, maybe [yɥ] (sparsest description in my eyes, which gives a good idea of the slight binding glide in e.g. <tu as> [ty ɥa] -- certainly not [tyua]), [yɥ̝̽] (pedantic) or [yʏ̯] (does not describe the friction)

[yackaquacker]

algo que aún no entiendo es que ¿cómo se pronuncia la g suave en español? ¿
Me puedes ayudar?

[xXJFARGAMERXx]

5:12 the transcription of ظ is not [z] with pharygilization, it's [ð] with pharygilization.

[bowl]

Youre using the wrong symbol for dark L. Dark L is ɫ, not ʟ. ʟ is the velar lateral approximant, not the dark L's co-articulated alveolar lateral approximant & velar approximant (l and ɰ).

[ptsaturn]

In standard Italian we don’t have the schwa, nor the sound the French write “eu”; however, we use them in disfluencies. I’m wondering if they are remnants of local dialects (speaking from the perspective of a northern Italian)

[mr.flibblessumeriantransla]

Excellent video. Too bad I can’t use most of these tricks with the language I’ve been studying…

[pdaibert]

Don’t say Portuguese has a dark l an show the Brazilian flag. In Brazil we have light l’s (the intervocalic ones. The ones in coda aren’t really l’s). In Portugal they have dark l’s.

[MonolingualBeta]

There's a programm called Praat that can help you to detect the Formants of a vowel, therefore imitate it as convincing as possible. It shows only 2 Formants, although there can be 3, but Praat can massively improve your pronunciation, there are plenty of tutorial of how to use it. It's not mobile, though. By the way, is the Author lingolizard?

[derikaem]

5:45 languages can also have several of so called 'r's as different phonemes. so does shqiptar