29 messages over 4 pages: 1 2 3 4
montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4819 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh
| Message 25 of 29 04 November 2013 at 7:09pm | IP Logged |
I'm an English native speaker, and I have absolutely no idea how many vowel sounds we
have!
I think it's true that we dipthong-ise a lot where some other European languages tend
to have relatively pure vowel sounds, and as you've suggested, local accents can really
throw a spanner in the works.
I heard a fellow British English speaker on the radio in the last couple of weeks,
saying a fairly simple word like "do", but for some reason, whether it was for
emphasis, or just to give herself thinking time, she both elongated it and changed the
pitch about 3 times, and probably made it into a complete mixture of vowels or
dipthings or whatever.
I meant to try to go back and see if I could record it, but I think it's no longer
available. That was an extreme example, but you do hear a lot of that sort of thing
quite often.
2 persons have voted this message useful
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4656 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 26 of 29 04 November 2013 at 8:21pm | IP Logged |
tristano wrote:
Also, since English has 16 vowels sounds (right?) and Italian only 7, I
guess that English speakers have huge advantage to learn how to prounounce vowels
properly. |
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I think that's only true if the vowels they're trying to pronounce map directly onto
the ones they know already. By your logic an English speaker should have perfect vowel
pronunciation when speaking Italian. I think your logic might have a few holes :-)
As for the number of vowels in English, I expect it depends on where you are from, but
at least 15 and possibly into the 20s would be good estimates.
tristano wrote:
And, being Italian (from the north) I have the impression that by
studying I will have to
struggle less with Dutch pronunciation than with English one (that for me it's like a
mistery, since I don't hear not one single person to talk it with the same accent and
pronouncing the words in the same way).
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Is there anywhere with uniform pronunciation? Certainly not Italy - I've no problem
with the variations and don't notice them so much (as long as we're talking Italian and
not a dialect) but my daughter noticed huge differences between Milano, Venezia and
Sienna.
2 persons have voted this message useful
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4038 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch
| Message 27 of 29 05 November 2013 at 12:32am | IP Logged |
@dampingwire:
- about the vowels stuff in English, I was ipothizing about vowels pronunciation of Dutch
(that can be obviously completely wrong)
- about pronunciation it's true (of course :) ), also in Italy there are big differences
in different region (that can be subtle or even huge also in different cities of the same
region. About Dutch anyway, I have the impression that the differences can be significant
even in cities that are really next each other. As a curiosity: the accent of which city
is considered to be the 'standard Dutch'?
1 person has voted this message useful
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4281 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan
| Message 28 of 29 16 November 2013 at 5:16am | IP Logged |
I have been addicted to watching episodes of 3 Op Reis everyday, but I noticed that the
"r" differs almost between all the presentes in the programme. The woman here has an
"r" like it is half r and half h with a hint of w:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=2XwWSVari0A
To me it sounds like at the start:
"Welkom bij een nieuwe aflevehing op dhie op weis"
However she pronounces "jaar" with a harder "r".
But then there is another bloke in the programme in other episodes who has an "r" like
the North American r in "water" pronounced with a strong guttural "wadrrrr"
Watching programmes helps with the g and ch a lot also.
Edited by 1e4e6 on 16 November 2013 at 5:17am
1 person has voted this message useful
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4698 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish
| Message 29 of 29 17 November 2013 at 2:05pm | IP Logged |
tristano wrote:
. About Dutch anyway, I have the impression that the differences can be
significant
even in cities that are really next each other. As a curiosity: the accent of which city
is considered to be the 'standard Dutch'? |
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Plenty of Dutch vowels do not exist in English "ij" "ui" to name a few, and English often
glides at the end of diphthongs whereas Dutch doesn't.
Haarlem is popularly said to be the closest. I cannot think of any city that speaks
standard Dutch, really.
2 persons have voted this message useful
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