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Slurred languages vs clear languages | ||
Tags: Comprehension/understanding | Listening | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Pisces Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4623 days ago 143 posts - 284 votes  Speaks: English*, Finnish*, French, SwedishC1, Esperanto Studies: German, Spanish, Russian | Message 41 of 55 19 May 2012 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It's very typical of English to keep words separate like this: building permit, high school teacher, etc. Compare other Germanic languages.
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| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6660 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 42 of 55 19 May 2012 at 7:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Swedish can be very slurred and incomprehensible for foreigners who know Swedish.
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| Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4750 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish | Message 43 of 55 20 May 2012 at 10:07am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Danish because of its complex phonetics (even in the standard form). Swedish because of various accents (I'm not saying dialects, but even when reading a text in standard Swedish aloud you can hear striking differences in pronunciation and tonal realization across Sweden). Norwegian,..Well. except for the Baerum-West Oslo area, all Norwegian speak dialect; even in East Oslo they speak dialect (or at least radical Bokmaal and not Riksmaal foreigners learn). But the case of Norwegian is not really different than British English. Only 3 % of Britons speak standard English (with received pronunciation), according to the Cambridge Encyclopaedia of language. So, all nonSoutheastern British accents may be difficult for foreigners to understand (but even Cockney which is from the Southeast of England can sometimes be impossible to understand). In order to pass the C1 test in Norwegian (Bergenstesten) you have to be familiar with spoken Norwegian/dialects, otherwise you will fail it. 40% of all audio materials used in the listening part of the test is from Bergen (No wonder, Bergenstesten is sponsored by the University of Bergen, so they want to make sure students understand bergensk).. Students should be happy the test is called Bergenstesten and not Trondheimstesten. ;) Edited by Camundonguinho on 20 May 2012 at 10:19am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4700 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 44 of 55 20 May 2012 at 6:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
The spaces are supposed to go to many places where we don't naturally hear word boundaries, there are often spaces in what we feel as one word. There are even some words that are divided differently depending on meaning - nahoře/na hoře. Most of these rules are not dificult to learn, but there are some problematic words like "kdybyste" which is often misspelled as "kdyby jste", because "-ste" is usually spelled separately as "jste", except few words where it's written together. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| PillowRock Groupie United States Joined 4735 days ago 87 posts - 151 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 45 of 55 21 May 2012 at 8:10pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
While the exact point at which a pair of words becomes a single compound word is a bit hazy, I would point out another distinction that is more intrinsic to the way the language is used. In almost any sentence where you would find "scuba diver" one could remove the "scuba" without significantly altering the meaning. (Of course, the obvious exception would be sentences where the point was to draw a distinction between sub-groups of divers.) A person using scuba gear often is referred to simply as a "diver". On the other hand, that same simplification / generalization does not work with "bookkeeper". Sentences that include "bookkeeper" would not be perceived as being basically the same if they had used "keeper" instead. I haven't done anything like an exhaustive study of this distinction. However, from just a quick, off the cuff examination of cases that occurred to me, that seems to be the general pattern. So when you suggest that "scuba diver" may be treated as one word in a few generations, you may well be talking about a possibility that hinges on whether the common usage changes to the point that "diver" alone is no longer perceived as reasonable way to refer to such a person. Edit: Just to be clear, I'm talking about how this seems to tend to work in English; not necessarily any other languages. Edited by PillowRock on 21 May 2012 at 11:15pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| stmc2 Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6252 days ago 45 posts - 58 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German | Message 46 of 55 21 May 2012 at 8:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Anybody who thinks that Japanese is clearly spoken should go to a bar in Osaka on a Saturday night. Also, anybody who thinks that German is clear should watch 'Berlin Alexanderplatz'. So basically, it's all depended on the class, education, dialect, who the speaker is talking to etc. When two pleople from the same area talk to each other, they naturally become lazy and slur a bit.
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| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 47 of 55 22 July 2012 at 7:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Some books claim that in Russian there are pauses even in words. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Jappy58 Bilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member United States Joined 4639 days ago 200 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Guarani*, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Maghribi), Arabic (Written), French, English, Persian, Quechua, Portuguese Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 48 of 55 22 July 2012 at 8:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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In my experience, Maghrebi Arabic dialects are quite slurred compared to Middle Eastern Arabic dialects - consonant clusters, vowel patterns, and overall speed combined make it difficult for other speakers to understand them, and it's perhaps just as important (if not more) when it comes to why the dialects have limited mutual intelligibility.
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