Hello. In this video, we're going to learn about an important listening topic called reductions. Native English speakers use reductions all the time. So if your listening to the radio or watching YouTube videos, you'll need to understand reductions. First, we'll talk about how reductions are formed. And then we'll see some common examples. The word reduction has different meanings when we use it for different subjects. In this video, when we talk about listening for reductions, we mean words that are formed by combining other words and leaving out some of the sounds. You've probably already heard native speakers use words like going to or should have or didja. These are new vocabulary words, they're reductions. going to comes from the word going to, should have comes from should have and didja comes from did you Let's look at how these and other reductions are formed. All reductions are simply faster and easier ways to say a frequently used word or phrase. One way to do this is by leaving out some of the middle sounds of a phrase We can take a phrase that people use a lot, such as give me, and omit one of the middle sounds. The result is gimme, as in gimme the salt. Gimme is faster and easier to say than give me. Other common reductions that leave out some middle sounds include lemme, let me, want to, want to, and going to, which we already mentioned. We can use them in sentences like, lemme carry that box for you. I want to help. Or I'm going to bring this inside. Another way to make reductions is by leaving out one of the N sounds of a phrase. There's a whole group of very common reductions that are formed by leaving out the V sound in have. could have, should have, would have, musta, and mighta. These come from the phrases could have, should have, would have, must have and might have. We would use them in a sentence such as, I should have brought an umbrella. Two more common reductions are formed by leaving out a sound at the end of a phrase, kind of and lotta. They are formed from the phrases kind of and a lot of. So you could say, I'm kind of hungry or I'm not, I ate lotta chips earlier. You might notice that reductions are very similar to other words like can't or she's or I've. These words are contractions. A contraction is a word formed by combining other words and leaving out some letters. The missing letters are replaced with an apostrophe, which is a small mark at the top of the line. Although both contractions and reductions are formed by combining words, there's an important difference. You will see contractions in informal writing such as emails. For instance, the contraction I've in I've been travelling. Reductions are almost always spoken though and not ran. You may see reduction only in the most informal situations such as a text message. So, in a text message you might see the reduction want to. I want to get lunch. But in an email, you would probably see, I want to get lunch. So to summarize, reductions are spoken words that are formed by combining other words and leaving out some of the sounds. We looked at some of the most common reductions and saw how either a middle sound or an n sound was left out. Reductions are very common in spoken English, but you might not see them in most writing. Contractions are similar to reductions but they are often used in writing such as emails in addition to spoken English. Next we're going to play a game to practice with reduced forms