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What ’easy’ language do you find hard? | ||
Tags: Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Hungringo Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 3985 days ago 168 posts - 329 votes  Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish Studies: French | Message 25 of 134 19 May 2014 at 10:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Other Romance languages can help you to predict circumflexes in French. I don't know if there is any rule I figured this out myself through observation: circumflexes very often mean that a letter "s" (sometimes other letter) was dropped.
I usually start from Spanish: estar-être hospital-hôpital or Italian: testa-tête 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5225 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 26 of 134 19 May 2014 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, knowing cognates makes many things easier.
I have to correct what I said before. The circumflex does have function when appearing over certain vowels, but not all. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4044 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 27 of 134 20 May 2014 at 2:09am | IP Logged | ||
Depends, without any lesson and any language background I would have used the Italian spelling. After 2 lessons of french in middle school I knew by the way how to pronounce monde. And the all the words the end with -onde are pronounced in the same exact way. But with English is a complete different story. - polite - police - mind - wind - mild - fine - engine When you see really similar words you would like to keep the pronounce of the words you already know. But you can't. You have to make mistakes and being corrected to learn an approximate pronunciation. I read complaining that French uses different representation for the same pronunciation, like parle, parles and parlent. Can be worse. Can be like in English where the same written words have two different pronunciation based on the way it is used, like read, or live. Too much weird stuff, like the th. Two consonants that sometimes are something the is similar to a d (but not exactly) and sometimes to an f (but not really an f). Or the gh. And why the s in island is silent?? Why is it written then XD Everytime I try to pronounce "Highlands" everyone understands "islands". I cannot differenciate year and here. Brake and break. Say "with her" to me is really painful. By the way, I still don't know how the word with is pronounced. Like "weef"? or "weed"? or "weev"? or the th-ish d or the th-ish f? or a strange hybrid? and grammar-wise, I was looking at a book with 4 pages of explanations, examples, exceptions, and exceptions of the exceptions of the exceptions on how to use the word "a". 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4287 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 28 of 134 20 May 2014 at 2:44am | IP Logged | ||
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About English "th", I do not find it particularly difficult to pronounce, it feels like
pushing the tongue on the front teeth, but nothing like having to twist the mouth or like the Dutch g/ch, which I can do easily now, except that it is seriously annoying if I have a sore throat from a cold or something. Pronouncing "th" as "f" sounds to me like East London accents. Here in the North-West, I rarely hear anyone having problems with "th". To be honest, I have never encountered anyone in Manchester or even Liverpool, Sheffield or Leeds who pronounced something like "thief" as "fief". A Hispanophone could pretend that "th" were like the "z" in Peninsular Spanish of «vez», «vejez», «escasez», or the "c" of «Cecilia», etc. Altho "th" was a single letter in English, and I think that there were two types depending on voiced or unvoiced, "þ" and "ð". I am no expert, but Icelandic use them very often, so how would someone who has problems with English "th" pronounce Icelandic? Edited by 1e4e6 on 20 May 2014 at 2:49am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4029 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 29 of 134 20 May 2014 at 4:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Some dialects of English have lost the th sound, ah simplification.
Don't you have an indefinite article in Italian Mr Tristano? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4662 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 30 of 134 20 May 2014 at 5:24am | IP Logged | ||
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If I recall correctly, the only IE languages that retain unvoiced "th" are English, (Peninsular) Spanish, Greek, and Icelandic. It is not typically seen as a very easy sound...Spanish speakers from Spain also remark on foreign learners' difficulties with c / z.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4096 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 31 of 134 20 May 2014 at 8:17am | IP Logged | ||
I don't know about the Þ (unvoiced) — I'm guessing T — but almost everyone I've met have lots of trouble with the Ð (voiced) in my elder dog's name and they simply pronounce it like a D. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4704 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 32 of 134 20 May 2014 at 9:15am | IP Logged | ||
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T is the most common pronunciation for not being able to produce þ, but some people would
use f or s instead. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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