MULTIMEDIA-ENGLISH
Simple weather forecast in song
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2:57
Video page URL
https://multimedia-english.com/videos/esl/simple-weather-forecast-in-song-1756
Description

A simple weather forecast sung with subtitles. Very good for practise, since it uses the normal language of weather forecasts on TV, but at very low speed, so you have time to look at it carefully.

Explanations

When singing opera or other high-voice songs, like this one here, the accent must change a little so that people can understand better. For example, the /r/ sound is so soft that it is very difficult to hear from a distance without a microphone, so this English sound is traditionally substituted for a rolling R like the one you have in Scottish, Spanish or Italian in the word "rosa". This rolling R can also be heard in classic plays (for instance, Shakespeare's) for the same reason (the microphone is a very modern invention).


Another shocking thing here is the way they spell the words "situation" and "torrential": situa-cion / torren-cial. This is because they are dividing up the words to match the musical pattern, and if they wrote situa-tion, then the pronunciation of the second part would be /tjən/ with a T instead of a S (or SH). So writing a C, they avoid misunderstanding.


In this song they use the old fasioned pronunciation of the word:  /sɪtjʊsjən/ instead of the modern pronunciation: /sɪtʃʊʃən/. The present pronunciation derives from the simple rule of assimilation that says that T+Y=CH (/t+j=tʃ/) and S+Y=SH (/s+j=ʃ/).