How native speakers pronounce “couldn”

college tuition after 6 months I couldn't see the value in it I had no idea what I wanted to do with

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement 2005 · Stanford

"We think Gillian has a learning disorder." She couldn't concentrate; she was fidgeting. I think now they'd say she had ADHD.

Do schools kill creativity? — Ken Robinson · TED

We walked in this room, and it was full of people like me -- people who couldn't sit still, people who had to move to think."

Do schools kill creativity? — Ken Robinson · TED

and it was cold. I couldn't go back to my friend Jeff's house for the night because I had an early flight to Europe the next morning,

Inside the mind of a master procrastinator — Tim Urban · TED

the reality stayed hard, complicated, unsafe, and I couldn't do anything about it. And a few months later,

The Missing Ingredient in Every Peace Deal | Hiba Qasas | TED · TED

And I was so touched. I just couldn't believe it. And that video got over five million views on Youtube.

What I Learned from 100 Days of Rejection | Jia Jiang | TED · TED

And that video got over five million views on Youtube. The world couldn't believe that either. (Laughter)

What I Learned from 100 Days of Rejection | Jia Jiang | TED · TED

it actually demonstrates what superhuman performance is. SK: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I actually do assume most of the people I know

Waymo’s Case for a Driverless Future | Tekedra Mawakana, Sal Khan | TED · TED

I thought once we got into the car he'd fall asleep, but he didn't. He couldn’t, and that scared me. So I pulled over,

How I Set Myself Free | Keke Palmer | TED · TED

I carried the load, not because I had to, but because I couldn’t un-know what was at stake. Once you've seen life on the other side of poverty,

How I Set Myself Free | Keke Palmer | TED · TED

you can't unsee the contrast. I couldn't live with the fact that we had a shot and I didn't take it, so I didn't fail.

How I Set Myself Free | Keke Palmer | TED · TED

I remember one time I was doing "Cinderella" on Broadway, and I couldn’t remember how I got to the stage while on stage. It's clear that system didn't know how to stop.

How I Set Myself Free | Keke Palmer | TED · TED

Building software felt like playing a video game. I couldn't stop. Until I did.

How I Created OpenClaw, the Breakthrough AI Agent | Peter Steinberger | TED · TED

in the capital city. He couldn't see the trash polluting our rivers or our broken school bus

What I Got Wrong About Changing the World | Malala Yousafzai | TED · TED

the optimism I had as an 11-year-old activist was gone. But I couldn't walk away. Because I knew exactly what Afghan girls were going through.

What I Got Wrong About Changing the World | Malala Yousafzai | TED · TED

you have to start with something. While I couldn't undo the catastrophe that had just happened in Afghanistan, I knew I had to get out of my hospital bed

What I Got Wrong About Changing the World | Malala Yousafzai | TED · TED

But it was only an issue because for us, affection is a reflex. And I knew it couldn't be just us. I went out and interviewed dozens of people

Why Friendship Can Be Just As Meaningful as Romantic Love | Rhaina Cohen | TED · TED

That's what they cared about? I couldn't understand when I was working so hard to deliver quality work, and I wish I could say I underwent some immediate transformation

3 Simple Ways to Build Stronger Relationships at Work | Alyssa Birnbaum | TED · TED

or asking you questions but couldn't care less about your answer, others notice when you're doing it back.

3 Simple Ways to Build Stronger Relationships at Work | Alyssa Birnbaum | TED · TED

Someone invited me to a meeting, but couldn't manage to fit me in to a regular sort of conference room meeting, and said,

Got a Meeting? Take a Walk | Nilofer Merchant | TED · TED

But once Emily brought me a huge stack of peer-reviewed science, I couldn't deny anymore, yes, stress manifests in the body and can turn into symptoms of illness.

Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski: The cure for burnout (hint: it isn't self-care) | TED · TED

(Applause) And community-based design works in places that couldn't be more different. It's how Matthew, a high school senior in rural North Dakota,

Schools Urgently Need a Redesign. Here’s How | Aylon Samouha | TED · TED

by joining communities who couldn't care less about what you do for work. For example, I love to play pickup basketball,

How to Reclaim Your Life From Work | Simone Stolzoff | TED · TED

Because like all ancient villages, Villagrande couldn't have survived without this structure, without its walls, without its cathedral,

The secret to living longer may be your social life | Susan Pinker

like, for example, too much narcissism, right? If your work was brilliant, you couldn't take all the credit for it, everybody knew that you had this disembodied genius who had helped you.

Your elusive creative genius | Elizabeth Gilbert

once the horse has given the correct 18 taps. So Hans couldn't do math, but he had learned to watch the people in the room who could do math,

How to Get Inside the "Brain" of AI | Alona Fyshe | TED · TED

including robbing 22 homes after I got sober I just couldn't look people in the face she said

Accept

wasn't up to the task. It really couldn't even decode the image. So for the sine qua non of the human mind,

Can AI Master the Art of Humor? | Bob Mankoff | TED · TED

successful and happy on his left he told me I knew I couldn't go back to farmer with that on my hands

Mark

But of course, a Luddite would have thought the same thing. They couldn't have imagined a future in which the average worker is literally leading a healthier

I’ll Probably Lose My Job to AI. Here’s Why That’s OK | Megan J. McArdle | TED · TED

giving us the tools to fight ecological disaster. But we couldn't have predicted any of that from the outset. We kind of had to live the change in order to understand what it meant.

I’ll Probably Lose My Job to AI. Here’s Why That’s OK | Megan J. McArdle | TED · TED

rather than huddled by a smoky fire knitting stockings to sell. The mill owners couldn't have imagined what was coming, any more than Henry Ford understood

I’ll Probably Lose My Job to AI. Here’s Why That’s OK | Megan J. McArdle | TED · TED

We have a network for grateful living, and it has mushroomed. We couldn't understand why it mushroomed. We have an opportunity for people to light a candle

Want to be happy? Be grateful | David Steindl-Rast

who drove the coffee beans to the coffee shop. But he couldn't have done his job without the road. So I would thank the people who paved the road.

My journey to thank all the people responsible for my morning coffee | A.J. Jacobs

And I thanked them. And they said, "Well, we couldn't do our job without 100 other people."

My journey to thank all the people responsible for my morning coffee | A.J. Jacobs

to presumably manage it, but I couldn't find anything like that to measure all the dimensions that mattered in life.

What Happened When I Started Measuring My Life Every Day | Chris Musser | TED · TED

And he always used to say that when he couldn't enjoy life with me, my brother and my mom, he would die. And I took this at face value until one afternoon when I was 16.

Lessons from My Father’s Final Days | Laurel Braitman | TED · TED

joy, awe, love, wonder -- that I couldn't even let myself experience them. I needed to find a new way to be.

Lessons from My Father’s Final Days | Laurel Braitman | TED · TED

but with connection and with conversation. And the woman said she couldn't even remember the last time somebody had asked her her name.

How Acts of Kindness Sparked a Global Movement | Asha Curran | TED · TED

than what people actually wanted, and we couldn't point to real-world harm, so we made that change. I'm proud of that.

OpenAI’s Sam Altman Talks ChatGPT, AI Agents and Superintelligence — Live at TED2025

scientist who got her degree at Berkeley I mean you couldn't find you couldn't dream up a demographic that would be

The Biggest Global Risks for 2025 | TED Explains the World with Ian Bremmer · TED

I always felt that I was effortlessly hilarious in Austrian German, but I couldn't bring that same energy to English, and I was so disheartened that my husband would never know

Why Love Is Harder in a Second Language | Magdalena Hoeller | TED · TED

and that was where it turned the case on its head, because it meant I couldn't defend that judge's meaning. So I then had to defend on the public interest

Can Big Tech and Privacy Coexist? | Carole Cadwalladr and Chris Anderson | TED · TED

At that point, I was living an experience outside of his experience. Like, I couldn't go to him as the person that could give me all of the advice. And he always has opinions.

A Filmmaker + a Therapist on People-Pleasing | TED Intersections · TED

But I figured, it couldn't hurt to start planning for something so big, so early. But now,

Black life at the intersection of birth and death | Mwende "FreeQuency" Katwiwa

a shell that sang ♫ ♫ So sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles ♫

Natalie Merchant sings old poems to life

and then did not write another poem for at least seven years because he couldn't rectify the life of a poet with the life of a priest.

Natalie Merchant sings old poems to life

who said, "Common sense is not so common." Turns out this quote couldn't be more relevant to artificial intelligence today.

Why AI Is Incredibly Smart and Shockingly Stupid | Yejin Choi | TED · TED

that can take a very large language model as shown here that I couldn't fit into the screen because it's too large, and crunch that down to much smaller commonsense models

Why AI Is Incredibly Smart and Shockingly Stupid | Yejin Choi | TED · TED

And he closed with two things. Number one: he couldn't imagine any life more beautiful than that of a Stoic.

Why you should define your fears instead of your goals | Tim Ferriss | TED · TED

But if you ask the average American what the optimal formula of longevity is, they probably couldn't tell you. They've probably heard of the South Beach Diet, or the Atkins Diet.

How to Live to be 100+ | Dan Buettner | TED · TED

was now inevitable. The next morning, I couldn't get out of bed. Every step sent lightning through my leg.

The Roots of Resilience | Misty Copeland | TED · TED

They figured out this thing for urban cattle where they couldn't feed them grass so they would feed them slop from whiskey distilleries --

Steven Johnson: How humanity doubled life expectancy in a century | TED · TED

and then one day I realized I was only pretending to be happy. But I couldn’t blow up my good life in my prime earning years, right? Wrong.

How to Discover Your Authentic Self -- at Any Age | Bevy Smith | TED · TED

I hit the lowest point of my life. I was having panic attacks, I was depressed, I couldn't sleep, I felt completely broken in mind, body and spirit.

What Losing Everything Taught Me About Resilience | Jane Marie Chen | TED · TED

I dove with sharks so I could learn to relax. I don't know why I couldn't just get a massage like a normal person. (Laughter)

What Losing Everything Taught Me About Resilience | Jane Marie Chen | TED · TED

instead of playing footsie with your phone. Ask something to someone you thought you couldn't learn from, or someone you think you know everything about.

3 Habits to Practice Curiosity — and Escape Your Phone | Nayeema Raza | TED · TED

in ways that pharmaceutical calculations never did. That night, I couldn't stop researching. Not to become an expert, but to feed my curiosity.

The Thrill of Not Knowing All the Answers | Harini Bhat | TED · TED

by listening for echoes bouncing off of prey. I couldn't believe it. And it didn't seem like she caught anything that time.

A Whale’s-Eye-View of the Ocean | Eric Stackpole | TED · TED

We could not believe our ears, and then we couldn't believe our eyes. Rui and I were losing it.

A Whale’s-Eye-View of the Ocean | Eric Stackpole | TED · TED

And how he could make infinite amounts of chocolate at home. And why Pi couldn’t yet play I Spy. "Well," I said, "it's a clever piece of software

What Is an AI Anyway? | Mustafa Suleyman | TED · TED

But that would actually get you oriented pretty fast, right? Because you literally couldn't get past "hello," if you didn't know which way you were going.

How Language Shapes the Way We Think | Lera Boroditsky | TED · TED

Now, in lots of languages, you couldn't use that construction unless you are a lunatic and you went out looking to break your arm --

How Language Shapes the Way We Think | Lera Boroditsky | TED · TED

Digital dressing is a thing. This is me during the pandemic when I couldn't get to any stores, but I could get a dopamine hit and, of course, share it on social media.

What’s the Point of Digital Fashion? | Karinna Grant | TED · TED

if they were in trouble. Some people couldn't list anyone. There wasn't a person on the planet who they could turn to

The Secret to a Happy Life — Lessons from 8 Decades of Research | Robert Waldinger | TED · TED

But five months after the breakup, Kathy still couldn't stop thinking about Rich. Her heart was still very much broken.

How to fix a broken heart | Guy Winch | TED · TED

really wanting to focus on the work that was right in front of me, but I couldn't shake it. So I eventually pulled together a proposal,

Ask Dumb Questions, Embrace Mistakes — and Other Lessons on Innovation | Dave Raggio | TED · TED

and they weren't turning into second dates. I figured that I couldn't be the least dateable person in New York City, but I had to admit that there was some room for improvement.

How to Unlock Your Flirting Superpowers | Francesca Hogi | TED · TED

And I felt really badly, because I couldn't give her a good answer. So I get off the plane, and I come to TED.

Secrets of success in 8 words, 3 minutes | Richard St. John

Why are you crying? I couldn't understand why they were so emotional, especially given my relationship to the South.

How Dolly Parton led me to an epiphany | Jad Abumrad

WIthout a strong grasp of the rules of debate, the students simply couldn't recognize when or how often their arguments broke down.

Why incompetent people think they're amazing - David Dunning

"Where is your home?" I literally couldn't point to any physical construction. My home would have to be whatever I carried around inside me.

Where Is Home? | Pico Iyer | TED · TED

had really been crying out for stillness, but of course I couldn't hear it because I was running around so much.

Where Is Home? | Pico Iyer | TED · TED

otherwise, every individual government would have this built-in excuse mechanism that they couldn't possibly carry the burden of global action alone. And so this is what we embarked upon.

What does it mean to be a citizen of the world? | Hugh Evans

so that leaders who need to hear our voices couldn't possible ignore them. But there was a twist:

What does it mean to be a citizen of the world? | Hugh Evans

But there was a twist: you couldn't buy a ticket. You had to earn it.

What does it mean to be a citizen of the world? | Hugh Evans

was a single, bold decision. Firefighters in Waterton couldn't have anticipated exactly what would happen.

How to Make Big Decisions in Challenging Circumstances | Jonathan Reimer | TED · TED

And so I committed to providing the best information for our incident commanders. But I kept encountering situations that I couldn't make sense of. Where adding more information

How to Make Big Decisions in Challenging Circumstances | Jonathan Reimer | TED · TED

And no one did. They couldn't see what Wag saw. They were blinded by their intuitive reaction

How to Make Big Decisions in Challenging Circumstances | Jonathan Reimer | TED · TED

learned to make themselves smaller. We couldn't be too loud, too smart, too attractive, too bold.

R. Alan Brooks: When the world is burning, is art a waste of time? | TED · TED