Sounds You Can’t Pronounce (Philological Room) Language Learning Forum

Sounds You Can’t Pronounce
Tags: Difficulty \| Pronunciation
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51 messages over 7 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next >>

vonPeterhof
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Message 9 of 51

10 November 2012 at 8:44am | IP Logged

tanya b wrote:

My advice for the "gh" sound is to remember how the French pronounce the "r" in Paris, and that is a close approximation.

tanya b wrote:

My understanding is that the French "r" and "gh" are very similar. I remember the first time I tried to pronounce "ghooghan" (rolling pin) in my Armenian grammar book and it was really difficult to get the hang of.

Actually, in many languages the "gh" sound is exactly the same as the French "r", as long as we're talking about the Standard French [ʁ] and not the exaggerated Parigot [ʀ]. It depends on how the language in question realizes the so-called "gh". In Eastern Armenian, Kazakh, Abkhaz and other languages it is realized as [ʁ], whereas in standard Arabic, Georgian and eastern Persian it is realized as [ɣ]; then there's also the standard Tehrani Persian [ɢ]. The same applies to "kh" with [x], [χ] and maybe [ħ].
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Марк
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Message 10 of 51

10 November 2012 at 12:00pm | IP Logged

Arekkusu wrote:

I don't think there is such a consensus. French R is hard for many
learners, so are
Mandarin x and q, Czech ř, Russian shch, etc.

French R is obviously quite an easy sound. I wonder why the alveolar trill is a freqent
sound. Many people replace it with a throat sound.
Russian "shch" is not so difficult as is its hard equivalent, at least for English
speakers. They (and many other foreigners) soften ш, ж. I don't think there is a great
difference between Russian щи and English she.
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stifa
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Message 11 of 51

10 November 2012 at 1:16pm | IP Logged

Japanese し...

And I agree about the "th" sound in English - I pronounce it more like "d" in tough
consonant clusters.
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Mooby
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Scotland
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Message 12 of 51

10 November 2012 at 1:21pm | IP Logged

This Polish video clip (Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz) always cracks me up.
Perhaps the individual consonant clusters are manageable, but one after another is tricky.
I totally sympathise with the Nazi officer!

Edited by Mooby on 10 November 2012 at 4:19pm
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Volte
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Switzerland
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Message 13 of 51

10 November 2012 at 2:31pm | IP Logged

I found the Persian 'kh' fairly easy; it took a few minutes with some patient Persians. The Czech 'r', on the other hand, evades me.

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Марк
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Message 14 of 51

10 November 2012 at 3:09pm | IP Logged

tanya b wrote:

Conversely, it seems that many Russian speakers are suffering from the opposite problem
and are unable to pronounce the "h" sound so when they say "happy ending" it sounds like
"kheppy endink".

They do not hear the difference between [h] and [x]. For a Russian ear they are
completely the same.
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Medulin
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Message 15 of 51

10 November 2012 at 8:26pm | IP Logged

I don't know, [x] has a hissing / air flowing quality to it.
In Croatian, H is normally [h], only foreigners pronounce it as [x] (Slovenians, Belgians...)
In old(er) Croatian H was [x], but the sound disappeared, and then it reappeared thru standardization in the 19th century, the recuperated sound value was changed to [h], since it's easier to pronounce than [x]. My final -H is so weak some people may call it silent: Ja bih ---> Ja bi (I would); Before a voiced consonant [h] may sound like [x], but in fact it's [ɦ] strah ga je ---> [str:aɦgaje] he's scared

Brazilian Portuguese [x] to me sounds like a variant of R ;)
[h] sounds like [h] to me: [hiju] Hiu ;)

When I heard [x]ala in a Brazilian song, it sounded to me like Croatian RALA (as spoken by Croatians who can't pronounce the R correctly)...When I heard [h]ala,
it sounded like Croatian HALA to me ;)

In Brazilian Portuguese, [x] and [h] are alophones of a strong R,
[h] being more common in Minas, in Northeast and in the North,
while in São Paulo and Rio, [x] is more frequent.

In Argentine Spanish, both X and H are used, and they are not allophones of the same phoneme: justo [xuhto] :) In Venezuelan Spanish: justo [huhto].

Edited by Medulin on 10 November 2012 at 8:42pm
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LaughingChimp
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Message 16 of 51

10 November 2012 at 9:22pm | IP Logged

tanya b wrote:

Consensus or not, in the English-speaking world many find the above mentioned sounds very challenging.

I believe the only real problem is that most of them mistakenly try to pronounce it as a strong H.

limey75 wrote:

Medulin wrote:

English TH between consonants, especially between two S's in fast speech: this iS THE City I like
The isolated TH sound is easy, but the one within a consonant cluster is not.

Germans I knew always had trouble with "clothes" - they pronounced it "cloezes".

?? Unless I'm mistaken, there is no th sound in "clothes". It's pronounced "close".

Edited by LaughingChimp on 10 November 2012 at 9:24pm

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