Most Common Sound in a Language X (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Most Common Sound in a Language X
Tags: Pronunciation
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Language Learning Forum : General discussion

12 messages over 2 pages: 1 2

Bruno87
Diglot
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Argentina
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Speaks: Spanish*, English
Studies: German, Portuguese

Message 9 of 12

04 September 2013 at 3:11am | IP Logged

Fuenf_Katzen wrote:

It seems as though the "r" sound is one of probably many that will
give somebody away as a non-native speaker. I have no idea how common either of these
sounds are, but at least for English, if you've mastered the "r" and the "th," you're
probably a pretty good speaker (as far as pronunciation goes).

Yep, but English's vowels are particularly tricky as well. You are doing well in
pronunciation if you are able to say "bitch" and "beach" without being misunderstood.
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garyb
Triglot
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ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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Speaks: English*, Italian, French
Studies: Spanish

Message 10 of 12

04 September 2013 at 10:51am | IP Logged

The "th" sounds are an interesting one. Neither French nor Italian has them, yet while French people infamously struggle with them, Italians seem to mostly pick them up quite easily. I've never understood why; maybe just a difference in teaching?

As for the beach/bitch distinction (/i/ vs. /ɪ/), despite having studied some phonetics, I don't even know how to explain that to people when they ask me. From the IPA chart, the latter is slightly more open and slightly more central, but in practice that doesn't seem to mean a lot, and a few successful learners have said that they see it as a difference in length rather than in the phoneme - /ɪ/ is "short i" and /i/ is "long i". Probably doesn't help that my Scottish /ɪ/ is more open than the English one, so non-native speakers often mishear it as an /ɛ/ even though to me they're very different sounds.
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tarvos
Super Polyglot
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China
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Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans
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Message 11 of 12

04 September 2013 at 10:54am | IP Logged

Italians don´t pick them up, they usually just go to d and t instead of s and z.

For most languages English needs to do a LOT of adapting because all their stops tend to
be so aspirated. I can transfer k, t, p nearly unchanged to another language because in
Dutch they are k t and p, and there is no aspiration.

Edited by tarvos on 04 September 2013 at 10:56am
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schoenewaelder
Diglot
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Germany
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Speaks: English*, French
Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch

Message 12 of 12

04 September 2013 at 4:30pm | IP Logged

garyb wrote:

As for the beach/bitch distinction (/i/ vs. /ɪ/), despite having studied
some phonetics, I don't even know how to explain that to people when they ask me.

I think the /ɪ/ is close enough to "é"

[edit] from an anglophone's point of view anyway, i.e a short "é" in the middle of an
english word will get categorised as a short "i" as being the only realistic
interpretation.

Edited by schoenewaelder on 05 September 2013 at 3:27pm

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