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Sounds you can’t produce? | ||
Tags: Phonetics | Pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| unlocked87 Groupie United States Joined 6631 days ago 42 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 1 of 43 31 October 2006 at 4:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am currently very frustrated.
I can't pronounce some sounds of German. For instance I have trouble making that throaty sound in "auch" and "machen." It comes out very loud and unnatural when I can do it and I've been practicing a lot. I also can't produce the trilling R sound in German at all... It's like in the back of the throat in words like "trinken." This really frustrates me. What if I can't learn to produce these sounds; will people be able to understand me? Anyone else having problems like this learning alien sounds from their mother tongue? Also, any specific advice on those sounds I can't produce properly would be of much help. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| shyopstv Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6731 days ago 86 posts - 91 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Esperanto | Message 2 of 43 31 October 2006 at 5:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I used to have the same problem with the r in trinken and other words. I tried speaking to a native German speaker and she could understand me. Usually it is pretty obvious just throgh the context (i.e. Moechten sie Wodka trinken? is not difficult to understand even if you pronounce trinken slightly incorrectly) Although, unless all you want is to be understood, I would reccommend learning to say the sound correctly.
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| lady_skywalker Triglot Senior Member Netherlands aspiringpolyglotblog Joined 6901 days ago 909 posts - 942 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian | Message 3 of 43 31 October 2006 at 5:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have a particular hatred of the 'sch', 'g' and 'eu' sounds in Dutch. So the city name 'Scheveningen' is deadly one for me!
I've also tried to replicate the ejective consonants of Georgian. Needless to say, I failed on most counts and am convinced I will never be able to get those sounds down to perfection. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kubelek Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland chomikuj.pl/Kuba_wal Joined 6863 days ago 415 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 4 of 43 31 October 2006 at 5:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm not sure if I can even hear all sounds of French. Some conjugations which are supposed to have different spelling AND pronunciation sound the same to me.
Same with word endings. I can hear no or only slight modulation at the end of "rien" "fin" "faim" and so on. My teacher insists that it's a very strong nasal, she already sees that she'll have to work very hard to eradicate my American accent (funny. All I did was listen to French people speaking on tapes. I never repeated after my actual American teacher, because she spoke with a strong regional accent and it was blatantly apparent in her French too) I think I'll stick to the tapes :) I'd love to dabble in Thai one day, but I know that without a tutor I'll never learn how to produce aspirated and unaspirated pairs of sounds. I find Japanese pronunciation difficult at times too because of their nasal N. Some of their words I just can't pronounce. It took me a long time to learn to distinguish English words using "th" and "f" (fought - thought) and even longer to pronounce both kinds of "th" more or less correctly. Same with vowels that don't exist in Polish. Edited by Kubelek on 01 November 2006 at 12:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6714 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 43 31 October 2006 at 6:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My advice to the preceding authors would be to use a textbook in phonology where the sounds are explained not through comparisons with sounds in another language, but through anatomical explanations. Combine that with a bit of listening, and then practice.
For instance that uvular R (which may be more or less prominent in different German dialects) is made by making the tongue fairly flat and dragging it to the back out the mouth, then close gradually until the uvula begins to flip. If it doesn't then don't despair, - many Germans just make a throaty sound in back of the mouth. The other "ch" in German is made by pressing the middle of the tongue towards the palate, leaving only a narrow flat opening. The ch-sound sound in Dutch is made almost in the same way, - and in my opinion it sounds almost hilarious in connections like "Scheveningen" (the Dutch probably made up that name - and Enschede - just to taunt foreign visitors including Lady Skywalker!). The kind of German r that is made in the front half of the mouth is made by putting the tongue tip so close to the front part of the palate that it flips or almost flips, - again there are big differences as to how much the tongue flips. Just to complicate matters I will also mention the Dutch 'soft' g, which is made by spreading the middle of the tongue across the mouth and letting very little air pass. It is fairly close to a German frontal r, though of course without any tongue flapping. Maybe some people prefer just to hear the sounds in question and then try to make something that ressembles, - the art of ventriloquism is based on the fact that you can make most of the sounds of a language in more than one way. But personally I prefer a kind of map of the mouth, much as I prefer a map if I'm driving around in a complicated landscape. To Kubelek: if you don't think that French nasal vowels are strongly nasalized, then compare "ma" to "main" or "va" to "vin" or (open) "Mau" (as in "Maurice") to "mon" or "-ra" (as in "fera") to "rang". The difference is all due to nasality. Edited by Iversen on 31 October 2006 at 7:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| AML Senior Member United States Joined 6836 days ago 323 posts - 426 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Modern Hebrew, German, Spanish | Message 6 of 43 31 October 2006 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Persian 'ghain' is very diifficult.
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| laiwai Diglot Groupie SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6853 days ago 66 posts - 71 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 7 of 43 01 November 2006 at 2:05am | IP Logged | |||||
What? The nasal equivalent of "va" would be "vent" or "vant" , of "ma" it'd be like in "menthe" but without the "t" at the end (those two vowels being (ã)). To get the sounds in "main" and "vin" (ɛ̃ ) you'd have to nasalize something like "Mai" and "vais" respectivly. edit: those tildes are sure hard to write here... Edited by laiwai on 01 November 2006 at 2:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6779 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 8 of 43 01 November 2006 at 2:24am | IP Logged | |||||
Learning your first foreign language (or first language with difficult phonology) is a challenge because you have to become conscious of the shape of your tongue and lips. Even once you know how to make a sound, it might still seem terribly weird at first, and be inconsistent. That's okay; learning to say the 'ch' sound in German is like learning to whistle. Practice makes perfect, and idle moments during your daily live should let you get in hours and hours of just practicing difficult sounds. If you have to, find a book that teaches you to acquire these tongue positions, and find a tutor with enough patience to spend a few sessions on pronunciation. By the way, having good pronunciation — regardless of how well people understand poor pronunciation — helps immeasurably with fluent speech and your understanding of nuance later on.
Poor pronunciation of N is the biggest cause of misunderstandings when foreigners speak Japanese, I've noticed. If you can correctly say 雰囲気 (fun'iki), you've got it licked. :) That's one of my "practice words" for Japanese pronunciation, because it's one of the hardest. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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