Doing

[tree123]

A Chinese guy in a YouTube video says Americans actually pronounce "doing" as "do wing".

Many Chinese including me pronounce it as "do ing".

- Do Americans really pronounce in this way?

- Do English people say "do ing" or "do win(g)"?


My listening is not good. I think he probably is correct about this, but I'm not quite sure.

 

[tree123]

A slight /w/ intrudes into the glide from the /uː/ to the /ɪ/ of ˈ/duːɪŋ/ in BrE.This is not considered to be a separate sound - most native speakers don't even realise they produce it.

This is one of problems of our listening. Many Chinese don't understand some very simple words though we learnt how to spell each word. There's a comment beneath that video from another Chinese viewer. She says she has been living in the USA for around 10 years, and many people think she is a native speaker of English, however she can't understand some sentences Americans say either.

Similarly, there is a slight intrusive j/ in for example the glide between the vowels of I am.

Do you mean that is pronounced as [ai jam]?

 

[emsr2d2]

Do you mean that is pronounced as [ai jam]?

I don't do phonetics but "I am" sounds like "I yam".

 

[tree123]

I don't do phonetics but "I am" sounds like "I yam".

Does this mean native speakers would add a certain consonant between two words if the first word ends with a vowel, and the second word starts with a vowel, except for "I am"?

 

[emsr2d2]

That "y" sound generally appears between "I" and any word starting with "a".

I always do that sounds like I yalways do that.
I ambled along the road sounds like I yambled along the road.

It doesn't appear between just any vowel and another vowel.

The llama always does that doesn't have the "y" sound. Nor does The llama ambled along the road.

 

[jutfrank]

The llama always does that doesn't have the "y" sound. Nor does The llama ambled along the road.

The intruding sound there is a /r/ sound (the other one along with /j/ and /w/), which makes your second example sound like The llama rambled ...

An example I like is Law & Order, which when I say it sounds like Laura Norder.

 

[emsr2d2]

The intruding sound there is a /r/ sound (the other one along with /j/ and /w/), which makes your second example sound like The llama rambled ...

An example I like is Law & Order, which when I say it sounds like Laura Norder.

I said that sentence out loud a few times and I didn't have an intrusive "r". However, I realise that some people do.

Going back to "I am", look what just popped up on my Facebook feed:

 

[probus]

The cartoonist who drew Popeye the Sailorman expoited the y-glide as a joke. The bubble above Popeye's head said "I yam what I yam." That was actually the title of the 1933 Popeye movie, as I have just learned.

 

[tree123]

The cartoonist who drew Popeye the Sailorman expoited the y-glide as a joke. The bubble above Popeye's head said "I yam what I yam." That was actually the title of the 1933 Popeye movie, as I have just learned.

Could you explain what this joke is about? I don't understand.

 

[probus]

Jokes are famously difficult if not impossible to explain. I wasn't even born in 1933. Even I wasn't born in 1933. (Tiny little joke). The American accent has certainly evolved since 1933 to judge by old movies. I suppose the movie exaggerated the glide, but can't be sure why it was funny at the time.

 

[Raymott]

I imagine it's a joke because Popeye even thinks "I yam what I yam" - since it's in a thought bubble, much as Piscean's thought bubble might be “aɪjæm wɒt aɪjæm”

 

[tree123]

Are the pronunciations such as "I yam", "do wing" etc. considered as informal, colloquial like "I'm gonna buy a book"?

If I exactly pronounce "I am", "doing/ˈduː.ɪŋ/ ", does my English sound rigid, less flowing or foreign accent to the ear of native speakers?

 

[GoesStation]

If I exactly pronounce "I am", "doing/ˈduː.ɪŋ/ ", does my English sound rigid, less flowing or foreign accent to the ear of native speakers?

Yes, it would. Native speakers would barely be able to produce that pronunciation.

 

[probus]

This is all very interesting to me. Tree, could you please post a link to the Youtube video about the do-wing pronunciation?

 

[tree123]

This is all very interesting to me. Tree, could you please post a link to the Youtube video about the do-wing pronunciation?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmR6evKDm4o&t=189s

The target viewers of the video are Chinese learners of English, so he teaches English in Chinese. "Doing" is one of the pronunciations he points out. It is not in the beginning of the video.

It's from 2:59 to around 4:23.
Edit: add the timing for "doing".

 

[emsr2d2]

Instead of telling us that it's not at the beginning of the video, please tell us where it is. Give us the minute/second marker.

 

[tree123]

Instead of telling us that it's not at the beginning of the video, please tell us where it is. Give us the minute/second marker.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmR6evKDm4o&t=189s

from 2:59 to around 4:23

 

[probus]

Thanks tree.

I would discount somewhat the examples in song. Some distortion of normal pronunciation in singing is common.

But all those spoken examples from American television are very convincing. I guess I've been hearing and using that w-glide unconsciously all my life. As Piscean has pointed out (more than once I think) sometimes we native speakers produce sounds without really noticing them.