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Alex John Posted 11 years ago
Speech & Pronunciation

How to detect a name during the listening?

In the readings, we can easily detect a name by looking at its first character but what about listening. When I listen to a native speaker, sometimes it's hard for me to distinguish a name from a vocabulary. In this circumstances, my brain strives to analyse that unknown word (name) in order to find a definition just because it supposes it's a vocabulary while it's a name. This causes me to miss the remaining sentence because my attention is distracted and tries to concentrate on that unknown word. Is there a trick to distinguish such names?
  

Top answer

Generally speaking, in spoken (US) English, a proper noun tends to be pronounced with a slight emphasis, tends to be "drawled out," and there tends to be a slight pause after it. For example: I saw John yesterday. yesterday.

— Anonymous

  • Generally speaking, in spoken (US) English, a proper noun tends to be pronounced with a slight emphasis, tends to be "drawled out," and there tends to be a slight pause after it.
  • For example: I saw John yesterday.
  • yesterday.
  • I was is Paris last year.
  • last year.
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2 Answers
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Generally speaking, in spoken (US) English, a proper noun tends to be pronounced with a slight emphasis, tends to be "drawled out," and there tends to be a slight pause after it. For example:

I saw John yesterday. --> I saw ^Jawwn...yesterday.

I was is Paris last year. --> I was in ^Parris...last year.
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Alex John sometimes it's hard for me to distinguish a name from an ordinary word
All it takes is more listening practice. Maybe you need to learn to say typical English names for starters.

CJ
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