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Sounds you can’t produce? | ||
Tags: Phonetics | Pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Carlo Diglot Newbie Italy Joined 6775 days ago 9 posts - 9 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: German | Message 9 of 43 01 November 2006 at 4:06am | IP Logged | ||
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Same problem with uvular R....
and with the english TH (Problems with 'thought' and 'though') 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 10 of 43 01 November 2006 at 4:15am | IP Logged | ||
Well, I know that it is a controversial question. But it is not just something I invented on the fly. For inscrutable historical reasons the correspondances between nasalized and ordinary vowels have been described in terms that rather reflect Old French and the present spelling system than what I can hear with my own ears. If you take for instance "va" and nasalize it without altering the degree of mouth opening or the tongue position, do you then really end up with "vent" or "vant"?. I don't, I end up with "vin" (or "vint"). This is in fact one of the areas that I checked thoroughly when I studied French long ago, because I could see and hear that the traditional description didn't fit the sounds I heard. There are some regional differences in the way the French pronounce their nasal wowels, - the tendency is to reduce the system to just three phonemes (a continuation of the slow death of the closed nasals). But the 4-phoneme variant of the nasal vowel system in French can be illustrated as follows: vie ---> (dead, - no nasalized i in modern French) v ---> (dead) vais ---> (no nasal wowel in European French, - maybe in Québec??) va ---> vin open va-* ---> vend (*as in variété) mou ---> (no nasal) clos ---> (no nasal) maure ---> mon (** without the r, that opens the preceding vowel) bu ---> (no nasal) queue ---> (no nasal) leurre ---> l'un -e (shwa) ---> (nothing) In the traditional system the correspondances are proposed in a way that doesn't take in account the general opening of nasal vowels since the 17. century or before ("J'accuse..."). If you want to see the famous trapezoide of the French vowels (which I would have liked to use for the illustration above, but I can't do the graphics), then try this article Edited by Iversen on 01 November 2006 at 6:43am 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 11 of 43 01 November 2006 at 4:52am | IP Logged | ||
"vin" having the same vowel, but nasalized, as "vais" is still the official pronunciation, isn't it? At least, that's how I was taught. I don't think you can go wrong going by the standard French pronunciation, which is explained fairly well at Wikipedia. Interestingly, Wikipedia claims that the in-ein-ain nasal has merged with nasal /œ/ in some places, not /a/. 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 12 of 43 01 November 2006 at 5:18am | IP Logged | ||
The last part of Captain Haddock's post is absolutely correct, - young people in France generally pronounce "l'un" and "lin" in the same way, - which significantly enough not is like "l'an" (or the city name "Laon"). The nasal in "l'un" (in the 4 phoneme systeme) is simply dying out these days, leaving "l'an", "lin (/l'un)" and "long". As for "vin" having the same vowel, but nasalized, as "vais" then I think it is one of the rare cases where I trust my own ears more than what I'm being told. Of course you may hear something else than I do, but the exercise where you keep your mouth and your tongue absolutely immovable while you open and close the passage to your nasal cavity (by moving the velum) is the key to what really happens. And even if I risk being guillotined by the French Academy next time I risk a visit to Paris I cannot make the nasal variant of "vais" sound like "vin", - the result is simply too closed to be any decent present-day French vowel. With "va" the correspondance is perfect. Edited by Iversen on 01 November 2006 at 12:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6905 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 13 of 43 01 November 2006 at 5:21am | IP Logged | ||
This is excellent advice and I fully support it. To the poster who was unable to hear the difference between two supposedly different sounds: don't despair, because: a. You can train your ear to hear the difference. b. Practicing how to produce them, eg. with the aid of anatomical explanations, will help recognition, and vice versa. Just be prepared to spend a fair amount of time and effort. But you are not alone. Barring some lucky freak cases with exceptional talents, we all have to go through this. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6676 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 14 of 43 01 November 2006 at 5:35am | IP Logged | ||
This shouldn't surprise you, as it's always the same vowel. ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6676 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 15 of 43 01 November 2006 at 5:43am | IP Logged | ||
Don't worry, Germans will still understand you, as they are used to dialectal variations, especially in the sounds you mention (r can be pronounced in several different ways, 'ch' might be pronounced like 'k' by some). This shouldn't be an excuse to stop trying, at the end of the day you'll learn how to pronounce those sounds. It takes a lot of effort and can be quite frustrating, but it's definitely worth to aim for a good pronunciation. I myself can't pronounce the trilled 'r' in Italian or Spanish. I just can't do it and it really bothers me. However, no one really explained me what to do, for them it's just natural. Is there anyone in this forum who had the same problem and overcame it. Can you please explain how you did it? (And how it works with regards to tongue position and so on...) Edited by Marc Frisch on 01 November 2006 at 5:48am 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 16 of 43 01 November 2006 at 6:40am | IP Logged | ||
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To Marc Frisch: if you say "Matterhorn", the two t's represent one tongue flap, and that will be very close to a simple one-flap frontal r in the Romance languages.
If you want more flaps - but there is no need to produce those - then you have to experiment with your tongue position against the alveolar ridge. You start with the tt of "Matterhorn" and move your tongue gradually away from the alveolar ridge, - somewhere through this movement the opening at a given airpressure will be just big enough to make the tongue flap repeatedly. Maybe it is easier if you start with a very open 'a' as in "Marterhorn". But only if you can avoid saying the R as the deep uvular sound of the Southern German dialects. Edited by Iversen on 01 November 2006 at 6:53am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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