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Here is audio. The audio is from video at 2:10.

I have subtitles:

Anybody want to log on to second life and go swimming? I just build a virtual pool.

I'm an English learner. For me, it's hard to identify the word "anybody" due to the speed of its speech. However, even I play the audio in 0.2x speed, I still can't hear it clearly, especially the syllable "dy". Is there a phonetic change? Could anybody give me some advice?

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  • i doubt he is saying "anybody" here. But we would probably need more context to know what he is actually saying.
    – Daniel Roseman
    Commented Mar 2, 2021 at 8:40
  • It doesn't sound like "anybody" to me. It sounds more like "You know when I". But the audio is not very clear, and the beginning of the sentence gets "swallowed" a bit.
    – stangdon
    Commented Mar 2, 2021 at 12:12
  • the audio is from video at 2:10. Could you help me identify what he said? Thanks a lot! @Daniel@stangdon
    – yllgl
    Commented Mar 2, 2021 at 13:15
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    It is 'anybody'. He's saying something like am.bdy: he dropped the terminal vowel in any so it became an and then the n got assimilated to an m in anticipation of the following b. (Take it with a pinch of salt, though.)
    – Rayan Khan
    Commented Mar 2, 2021 at 13:50
  • Agree with @Void. A very unclear pronunciation in this instance. TIP: You can use the YouTube player to change the playback speed (I used 0.5 in this case) to hear the syllables more clearly.
    – JMB
    Commented Mar 2, 2021 at 13:52

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I can hear the word being said very quickly. I'm a British native English speaker and this TV show is American English, but we are very used to understanding American accents due to the far-reach of US TV and movies.

When certain words are spoken really, really quickly, it is arguable whether native speakers actually 'hear' them at all, but we may not need to. It is a widely-accepted scientific fact that the human brain 'compensates' for missing information, such as omitted words. Maybe you've seen internet memes which invite you to read something, and then read it again more closely - only on second inspection do you notice that words or letters are omitted. I would imagine that this probably only happens when receiving languages you are familiar with.

I would ask you though - can you understand what was said without the word "anybody"? It is common in colloquial speech to drop words like this. If he'd just said to his friends "wanna play?" it would have been quite commonly understood, as much as "anybody wanna play?" If your answer is 'yes', you could understand the gist of what was said, then congratulations, you've understood it as much as any native speaker probably would.

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