Aspects learners know better than natives (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Aspects learners know better than natives
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casamata
Senior Member
Joined 4263 days ago
237 posts - 377 votes

Studies: Portuguese

Message 33 of 41

23 April 2013 at 2:22am | IP Logged

mrwarper wrote:

tarvos wrote:

[...] pronounced with an s, not with a z.

You're sure to find a lot of final consonant [de]voicing differing between places, or even single speakers of the same language within an area. For those who play exclusively by ear, that's a real minefield.

I find much harder to understand how people can consistently swap sounds and pronounce 'ask' as it were 'axe' and the like, than how they mix up things with similar sounds like than/then, man/men, etc.

Well, African-Americans here are famous for how they pronounce "ask", just as you say it. African-American English is an interesting phenomenon. It IS grammatical, contrary to what a lot of people think. It just conforms to different rules than "standard" American English.
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boon
Diglot
Groupie
Ireland
Joined 6160 days ago
91 posts - 177 votes

Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: German, Mandarin, Latin

Message 34 of 41

23 April 2013 at 1:00pm | IP Logged

tarvos wrote:

No, it's not. Loose is pronounced with an s, not with a z.

I'm aware of that. I'm referring to the "oo" part. Anyway, let's just say it's a common mistake and move on.
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Gomorritis
Tetraglot
Groupie
Netherlands
Joined 4279 days ago
91 posts - 157 votes

Speaks: Spanish*, English, Catalan, French
Studies: Greek, German, Dutch

Message 35 of 41

11 May 2013 at 11:46am | IP Logged

boon wrote:

Spanish natives sometimes make spelling mistakes, especially with the letters S, C and Z.

Actually, every single time I have seen this kind of mistake, it was in something written by a Latin American native.

However, homophony take other (terrible) tolls in Spain, as it is not uncommon to see people write "haber" instead
of "a ver". Most people who write in their native language, first think what they are going to write and they do it
phonetically inside their heads. They know how to correctly spell words because they have a visual memory, but
they do not bother to think whether word they are writing is the right homophone.
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6598 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, Finnish^C1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

Message 36 of 41

11 May 2013 at 3:13pm | IP Logged

mrwarper wrote:

I find much harder to understand how people can consistently swap sounds and pronounce 'ask' as it were 'axe' and the like,

These changes are pretty common if we look at the longer-term development. For example, the Latin percontari became perguntar in Portuguese and preguntar in Spanish. Russian and other Slavic languages also have many cases like that.
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Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 5057 days ago
2096 posts - 2972 votes

Speaks: Russian*

Message 37 of 41

11 May 2013 at 3:54pm | IP Logged

It's called metathesis.
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Gomorritis
Tetraglot
Groupie
Netherlands
Joined 4279 days ago
91 posts - 157 votes

Speaks: Spanish*, English, Catalan, French
Studies: Greek, German, Dutch

Message 38 of 41

12 May 2013 at 2:22pm | IP Logged

There are many of those in Spanish. For example, we say "Argelia" when in most other countries say something
similar to "Algeria". We also say "cocodrilo" instead of something like "crocodile". In this case the "r" decided to
travel through the word as much as two syllables away!
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embici
Triglot
Senior Member
CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4611 days ago
263 posts - 370 votes

Speaks: English*, Spanish, French
Studies: Greek

Message 39 of 41

12 May 2013 at 3:11pm | IP Logged

I often see Spanish speakers write the word "haber" when they should write "a ver."

eg "Haber si nos encontramos" instead of "A ver si nos encontramos"

Edited by embici on 12 May 2013 at 3:18pm
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montmorency
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4829 days ago
2371 posts - 3676 votes

Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Danish, Welsh

Message 40 of 41

12 May 2013 at 6:30pm | IP Logged

luke wrote:

Spinchäeb Ape wrote:

Here's an error native English speakers make a lot
and it drives me nuts. It's correct to say:
Jim gave the book to me.

A wrong usage that some native speakers say is to say "myself" rather than "me". I
imagine it makes them think they sound sophisticated. E.G. Jim gave the book to
myself. Generally a native speaker using this form sounds more fasisticated
than sophisticated.

Sometimes (native speaking) salespeople or assistants in some kinds of shop will refer
to the customer as "yourself" instead of "you". I suppose this is to try to make the
customer feel important, and to make the salesperson appear somewhat obsequious.

Of course, modern English lacks polite versus familiar forms of the 2nd person pronoun,
and normally we don't feel we need it, but in this case, perhaps the salesperson is
instinctively reaching out for something like it, and coming up with "yourself" as the
nearest available substitute.

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