Give it to him

[svetlana14]

Could you please listen to this recording. I cannot catch the following.

The subtitles are "Got to give it to him His food might suck...". I hear that "to him" is reduced to "tu: plus m" so that "him" is reduced to "m". Then a strange "s" follows after "m". I would say that "m" merges with "s" for me. To sum up, I hear something like GIVE IT TU:MS FOOD... I would like to know what actually is dropped out in this fast speech episode. Thank you.

 

[GoesStation]

Gotta give it to him. His food might suck, but ….

Both Hs are elided, and "his" is reduced to 's. This is common in casual American speech.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Yes, you've described his pronunciation well. This is a good example of typical conversational American English.

As other languages do, we talk in phrases, not words. So to understand what he's saying, you often have to recognize the phrasing, not the individual words.

 

[svetlana14]

Thank you. Where could I read more on "his" being reduced to 's? The thing is that I managed to find reduction of just "him" to "im" and "his" to "is". I explored a lot of youtubes clips but there are silent exactly on this stuff.

 

[jutfrank]

You won't be able to find anything on that. It isn't normal to drop the whole syllable (reducing 'his' to 's'). It's more normal to reduce just the initial 'h' sound, and keep the vowel, however weak. In fact, I'd argue that the speaker here doesn't drop the vowel, even though it sounds as if he does.

 

[svetlana14]

For me as a non-native English speaker "m" from "him" mergers with 's from the following "his" so that I hear "ms food...".

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

For me as a non-native English speaker "m" from "him" mergers with 's from the following "his" so that I hear "ms food...".

Yes, I think you described it well.

Remember that in English, as in other languages, people talk and listen in phrases, not single words. So a native English speaker will have no trouble recognizing a familiar phrase that might be hard for non-native speakers to piece together.