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Slurred languages vs clear languages | ||
Tags: Comprehension/understanding | Listening | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Mikael84 Bilingual Pentaglot Groupie Peru Joined 5301 days ago 76 posts - 116 votes  Speaks: French*, Finnish*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Arabic (classical), German, Russian | Message 49 of 55 27 July 2012 at 11:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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It would be interesting to analyze why certain languages "respect" the written forms more than others. I've thought about it for a couple minutes and can't come up with a decent answer.
I was about to say that a lot of consecutive consonants instead of a vowel-consonant-vowel scheme can lead to slurring... but that doesn't prevent French speakers from completely botching the phrase "je-ne-sais-pas" for example, in casual speech, where it becomes "ché pas"! Finnish is full of those too... "minä" becomes "mää", etc, even though most words don't have consonant clusters. Contrary to what the original poster said I don't think there is much slurring in Spanish... except in rare cases, usually only in certain regions, like how "para adelante" becomes "pa'lante" in the Carribean region. Maybe one could say that the natural tendency in any given language is to shorten and synthesize everything (which produces the "slurred" impression for someone that has studied it using mainly written material or formal speech), as long as it can still be understood (ie, not mixed up with other words or expressions). The way Arabic dialects evolved from Classical Arabic is a great example IMO, with plenty of vowels disappearing from oral speech in the process. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 50 of 55 28 July 2012 at 4:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Chilean Spanish is very known for ''being slurred''.
Most L2 Spanish speakers can't understand it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Dagane Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4512 days ago 259 posts - 324 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishB2, Galician Studies: German Studies: Czech | Message 51 of 55 29 July 2012 at 10:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I don't agree at all xD. When I read in the first post that you don't understand Spanish while knowing all of the words, I thought: that's exaaactly what occurs to me with English!!!
From my opinion English has got a very wider range of pronuntiations than Spanish, so it's more difficult to understand. But it's true that Spanish has got a lot of "sinalefas". A sinalefa occurs when there're a "diptongo" (diphthong) between two words. As a result, if the language is spoken fastly, words are mixed, and because of the few number of vowels and the amount of them, it could sound confusing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| nuriayasmin70 Diglot Senior Member Germany languagesandbeyoRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4522 days ago 132 posts - 162 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: SpanishB1, Portuguese, Czech, Hungarian | Message 52 of 55 29 July 2012 at 11:40pm | IP Logged | ||
I don't have the problem with British or American English but understanding Africans or Indians can often be quite difficult. I recently had to deal with a guy from Nigeria at work who spoke very slurry English and very low, a combination which was desastrous for me, I constantly had to ask him to repeat a sentence and found that very embarrassing. As for Spanish, I wouldn't say it's a slurred language. Sometimes people speak very fast which makes understanding difficult and people from certain countries or regions are more difficult to understand, that's also true. I had a time when I watched a lot of Mexican telenovelas and until now I understand Mexican Spanish best. On the other hand I've only recently started to listen to European Spanish and still find it difficult to understand - but not slurry. Well, I wouldn't generalize at all, it depends on so many factors if a language is well understood or not and the individual speaker also has to taken into account. When I listen to certain groups of teenagers, I could go crazy when I hear how they use my native language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| thephilologist Tetraglot Newbie United States Joined 6035 days ago 26 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German, French Studies: Portuguese | Message 53 of 55 10 August 2012 at 9:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Of the languages I've studied, (European) Portuguese seems the most slurred to me. Often I hear words and phrases where vowels are left out no only at the beginning and end of words, but also in the middle. Even in newscasts it often sounds like a string of consonants. French is of course "slurred," but this is intentional.
The good news is that no matter what language you are learning and no matter how slurred it seems, if you continue practicing you will be able to catch every word. Edited by thephilologist on 10 August 2012 at 9:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6438 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 54 of 55 11 August 2012 at 7:33am | IP Logged | ||
When I took Spanish in high school I remember thinking it was slurred. My teacher was from Chile. Hmmm. But even the recorded lessons we used were slurred and I don't think the speakers on those were from Chile. I remember noticing that certain sounds were dropped or blended and it gave me a very hard time understanding spoken Spanish. My reading and writing were always good, but my speaking and understanding were pretty bad. One example I remember is that is one word ends with a vowel and the next word begins with that same vowel, you only pronounce it once. So instead of "para amigos" it would be pronounced "para migos." That confused me. "What are 'migos'? Why is this listening exercise using a new word we haven't been introduced to yet?" Spanish is crazy slurred. Who thinks otherwise? I fully admit that English is also slurred very heavily, such as my example of "I'm going to go to the store" being pronounced as "Im'ma go-duh-the store." 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Afgjasmine16 Triglot Newbie United States Joined 6007 days ago 29 posts - 55 votes Speaks: Pashto*, English, Hindi Studies: Bengali, Tamil, Indonesian, Turkish | Message 55 of 55 15 August 2012 at 1:15am | IP Logged | ||
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In Hindi, I don't usually notice a lot of slurring and when it's done it is usually done for comedic affect (especially in movies when a person is drunk. For me, Hindi sounds like a very slow language, I don't if it's because I'm used to the language or the rhythm of Hindi is just slow. But I hardly hear any slurring. Colloquial Persian is a nightmare to try and understand, everything to me sounds slurred and shortened. Persian isn't a very hard language but it is difficult to understand everyday talk. The language that I think is the most slurred and fast is Tamil. Even if I know all the sounds and vocabulary of a dialogue I'm learning, it still takes a couple tries to follow along completely and understand it, they speak so fast!
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