Episode Transcript

Why Trump Pronounced ‘Oranges’ Instead Of ‘Origins’ (And How Can He Improve?)

Hey everyone, it’s Hadar. Thank you so much for joining me. Today, I have a very important lesson for you, and that lesson is “how to pronounce the word “origins”. And I created this lesson for one person in particular, and that person is president Trump.

See, I recently discovered watching The Daily Show by Trevor Noah, now known as The Daily Social Distancing Show, that they held a competition and selected one word among 64 words that Donald Trump slaughtered, massacred, mispronounced.

And since I don’t distinguish between native speakers and non-native speakers, I decided to offer my help because, obviously, he needs it. As you can see here.

The winner of this competition was the word “oranges”, which Trump pronounced instead of “origins”. Now, before we talk about the difference between oranges and origins, I just want you, my viewer, especially if you’re a non-native speaker, to take a moment and just feel proud and happy, and know that even native speakers mess up. So you should feel good about yourself for messing up because English is not your native language. You’re totally entitled to do that.

The reason why Trump confused the words is because he took the N from one place and he put it somewhere else. No, you can’t do that with sounds, someone needs to tell him that.

Okay, so to say the word ‘origins’ and ‘oranges’, you begin the same, okay? So that’s pretty safe. You start with an ‘aw’ sound as an ‘daughter’, ‘aw’, so you drop your jaw around your lips just a bit. You can also relax it completely and pronounce as ‘ah’ sound, depending where you’re from. ‘ah’ or ‘aw’.

Then you move on to an R sound, don’t forget to round your lips, and a schwa ‘r’, ‘r’. ‘aw-r’. ‘aw-r’. Now, this is the tricky part: for the word ‘origins’, after the ‘aw-r’, you just move into ‘g’nz’, ‘g’nz’. A ‘g’ sound, a schwa, an N -‘g’n’ – and a ‘z’ – ‘g’nz’. ‘aw-r’-g’nz’. “Origins”.

For the word “oranges”, the N comes right after the schwa sound – ‘aw-r’n’, ‘aw-r’n’, and then you have ‘g’z’ – no N in it. ‘aw-r’n-g’z’.

‘aw-r’-g’nz’ – this is where the N is. And ‘aw-r’n’ – this is where the N is – ‘g’z’ – ‘aw-r’n-g’z’. “Origins” – “oranges”. Now, the placement of the N is important, as you can see.

Okay. That’s it. I hope this was helpful. And president Trump, I want you to know that it is possible. All you need to do is just break it down to the smallest units, practice it slowly, again and again. Be in control of your mouth, which is something that we all need to learn how to do. Okay. Even you.

And then say it again and again and again until you make it your own and until it is no longer a challenge. I hope this helps. If you have any more advice for president Trump, please post it in the comments below.

Thank you so much for watching and I’ll see you next week in the next video. Bye.