Gonna is extremely common. You can say: going to, going to, to, to, to. Now the kinds of videos that usually show up on Youglish tend to be talks. Ted talks, presentations, that kind of thing. So perhaps a little bit more professional than conversational English.
But still, even in these professional settings, gonna is dominant. The other examples had a different reduction. So much gonna. Get really comfortable with this pronunciation. True T, schwa, going tuh— going tuh— This happened 24 out of times. G consonant, UH vowel, very relaxed, guh guh guh, low placement, guh, not gah, gah, gah, not high placement, guh, guh, guh, gonna, gonna.
The tongue flaps quickly on the roof of the mouth for the N. Gonnnanananananana— Gonna. And a schwa at the end. That second syllable should be as short, as fast as you can make it. No longer than that. First syllable, a bit longer, second syllable just as short as you can make it.
I say it, then you repeat it back out loud. Train it with me focus on the rhythm and making that second syllable as short as you can. An amazon search returned almost one thousand books with the word Gotta in the title; they include:. Still, I'm not sure if these authors would assert that gotta is standard English, just because the term has worked its way onto the covers of their books; the use of non-standard English appears to be purposeful.
Still, I gotta admit, I was surprised. I cannot think of a time I would ever pronounce "going to walk" as written, except if talking slowly to a foreigner or a child who didn't seem to understand me. Moreover, pronouncing "going to" carefully before a verb is a good mark of a foreigner. When they don't come before verbs, the phonetic collapse is prohibited. For instance "I'm going to school" cannot be pronounced with "gonna;" this is descriptively wrong in every dialect of English, no matter how informal unless school is being used as a verb.
In writing, putting "gonna" is non-standard. Thus, even when we transcribe someone clearly saying "gonna," we write "going to. Maybe the implication is, "this person is so folksy, that even if she were writing this, she'd still say gonna. I think they are spoken very frequently by Americans. Even well-educated people say things like, "Well, I gotta go" when ending a phone call. But all of these words are very informal and slangy.
I'm adding this as an answer because it's too long to fit as a comment The odd thing to me about gonna , gotta , and wanna and their close relative hafta , and their more distant relative gimme isn't that these words have become mainstream in both spoken and informal written American English; it's that the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary series refuses to acknowledge their existence.
The Eleventh Collegiate does include entries for two related nouns— gimme and wannabe —but it doesn't provide entries for the common contractions from which those terms arose. Ultimately, if one purpose of a dictionary is to identify and define commonly used words in a language, Merriam-Webster's diffidence toward this class of contractions is hard to explain.
In contrast, the Encarta World English Dictionary , the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition and the New Oxford American Dictionary include entries for four of the five contractions I've mentioned the exception in all three cases is hafta , although they don't agree entirely about the status of those four words. Encarta calls gimme , gonna , and wanna "nonstandard," but characterizes gotta as "informal. Perhaps Merriam-Webster fears that, if it were to acknowledge any of these terms, it would be obliged to open its doors to an indefinite number of other common unpunctuated contractions: oughtta , coulda , woulda , shoulda , kinda , sorta , dammit , and so on.
It's not a very compelling reason, though, so perhaps some other rationale lies behind the policy. Slurring or runnings word together is common in practically every language. Were that not the case, speaking would be unduly time consuming with little increase in meaning. If you ever try watching subtitles in Spanish or French you will be amazed at how much reading seems to drop away from the speaking.
Realistically speaking, those words you offered are exemplary of pronunciation the great majority of the time; such that perfect elocution is comparative very rare. Now, public speaking or acting can be quite different but precise enunciation is a skill developed only with considerable training and practice. Listening today to actors and actors in the thirties gives a good view of how much more precise speaking was expected to be then as opposed to now, partly because of the recording equipment available then.
Your turn now! If you want to sound more casual in American conversation, how would you say: We have to leave before we miss our train. More good stuff Click the image to learn more. Christina Rebuffet says:. Will says:. Lucky says:. Leave a Reply Cancel Reply. Leave this field empty. Sign up below:. Tired of Struggling to Learn Phrasal Verbs? Click here to learn more. I would like to know please under what circumstances we should use wanna and gonna , and what exactly they mean.
Thank you. Wanna and gonna are frequently used in speech in informal colloquial English, particularly American English, instead of want to and going to. You will also see them used in writing in quotes of direct speech to show the conversational pronunciation of want to and going to. Gonna to express the going to form of the future is used with first second and third person singular and plural.
Note that in the interrogative, are is omitted in second person singular and first and second person plural. Wanna can be used with all persons singular and plural, except third person singular. This term derives originally from the US, but is now used extensively in British English. A wannabee literally a want-to-be is someone who is trying to copy somebody else.
Usually the person they are trying to copy is somebody famous. Gotta is used in a similar way to gonna and wanna , in this case to show the conversational pronunciation of have got to , or as informal alternatives to have to or must.
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