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Developing a phoneme map | ||
Tags: Language Map/Atlas | Linguistics | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6003 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 1 of 11 14 January 2010 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This came up in the thread Mistakes in Michel Thomas courses an I thought it was an important idea to discuss with people who aren't interested in the Michel Thomas courses, and so wouldn't have read it. I've talked about this briefly before, but not in any great detail.
I have long maintained that natural pronunciation isn't necessarily best for an absolute beginner, and I'd like to explain why. There are two ways of dividing sounds: phonetically and phonemically. Phonetics is about sounds as sounds -- two sounds that sound different are not phonetically the same. Phonemics splits sounds by meaning -- two sounds that sound different may be considered to mean the same thing. Phonemes allow us to understand people with different accents from us -- the sounds they make are different phonetically, but we map them to are phonemes. The French "T" is phonetically different from an English "T", but if a French person speaks English in a French accent, English speakers will understand the "T" as the same "T" phoneme and will understand. Now this seems a good thing for the learner as it means you are easily understood, but it can be a bad thing, because it can get in the way of learning. Here's an extreme example: Where English has phonemes T and D, Hindi has T, D, t, d, TH, DH, th and dh. All 8 of those Hindi phonemes are different phonetically from the English ones, but all 8 of them are heard by the English speaking ear as being the two phonemes T and D. This leaves learners potentially unable to distinguish between words either when they hear or try to say them. A less extreme example is the example Boon complains about in the Michel Thomas course -- the R in the German word "aber", which he says is normally silent. Why does Thomas pronounce a silent letter? Phonemes. "Aber" without the R rhymes with "habe", but they are phonetically different. How so? Sometimes a phoneme can be silent in some situations and sounded in others. The example we discussed in the other thread was the English word "butter". In many accents, the R is silent (this is called a non-rhotic accent). However, the native phoneme map says that there is an R phoneme in that silence, so when we use it as a verb you can have a "buttered scone" with an R that is pronounced. The "er" at the end of "butter" is like the "er" in "aber", in that sense. However, there is no English equivalent to the "e" ending of "habe" -- the ear will hear that as the phonemically identical to "er". The apparent similarity between "aber" and "habe" can confuse the development of the phoneme map, which I believe is the reason Thomas exaggerated the difference. The differences in a phoneme aren't just about silent and sounded, though. Japanese speakers can pronounce sounds like both L and R, but the nature of Japanese is that this sound depends on what vowel comes next. This means that their native phoneme map isn't capable of distinguishing between the sounds in languages where there is a phonemic difference between L or R. On the other hand, if an English speaker uses his native phoneme map, he will not understand Japanese L and R as a single sound, which could cause problems later on (for example with related words, or understanding a different regional accent). I've said before that my basic philosophy is "divide and conquer", and I see learning pronunciation as a three-stage process:
(Note that I'm not suggesting that you need to go through this rigidly -- you can complete stage 1 with a subset of phonemes and work through them on stage 2 while introducing additional phonemes at stage 1. This is something I feel that Thomas did, whether he was conscious of it or not.) For example, when I started learning Spanish, I experienced these three stages without any planning. In Spanish, there is a difference between intervocalic* and non-intervocalic** V/B (in almost all accents) and a difference between intervocalic and non-intervocalic D (in some accents). I started learning with Michel Thomas, and he taught without making either distinction. I don't think he even mentioned either one of them in passing. (Stage 1) I later read about these differences, and started attempting to make the distinction in my speech. This wasn't that hard, because the information needed to make the distinction was in the words themselves, and so hadn't been 'lost' in the teaching. (Stage 2) Having now divided and subdivided the sounds, my brain was now free to tweak them slightly without interfering and develop a reasonably good accent without too much conscious work. (But probably more conscious work than I remember). (Stage 3) This is a principle I'm currently trying to apply to Welsh. Welsh is fairly well known for having an extremely complicated vowel system. There are three positions a sound can take in Welsh: the stressed syllable, before the stressed syllable and after the stressed syllable. The phonetic pronunciation of a vowel depends on which position it is in, and some vowels are affected by some positions and not others. Writing out all the variations of pronunciation is quite scary (I wouldn't advise doing it), and in certain positions, two phonemes sound identical. However, it is clear that (unlike in English), the vowel system is phonemically regular -- if you add a suffix that changes the stressed vowel, the vowels all change as you would expect. My goal for the moment is to speak in a frankly atrocious accent, respecting the rhythm and pitch of word stress but ignoring the finer points of vowel quality until my brain knows which phoneme it's looking at. Once I can do that, I'll start trying to understand how the vowels change in the different contexts. Once I've done that, I'll try to let my brain pick up the accent from what it hears. * Intervocalic: literally "between vowels", ie with a vowel directly before and after eg uva, oval ** Non-intervocalic: not intervocalic, eg selva, hablar Edited by Cainntear on 14 January 2010 at 11:40pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6003 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 2 of 11 14 January 2010 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Now to look at what happens if you don't do things this way.
In some Spanish accents, there is a difference between S and Z (and C in CE, CI is pronounced like Z). In others there isn't. Michel Thomas taught without making the distinction, so I missed stage 1. Then I started talking to people who do make the distinction (the majority of Spanish speakers in Edinburgh are from Madrid or Barcelona), so I'd skipped straight to stage 3. Having heard the word "especial" pronounced "espesial" for so long, suddenly I was hearing "espezial" ... and I eventually started saying "ezpesial", which is completely, utterly and totally wrong. My brain didn't have the phonemes, so my attempts to change my accent failed dramatically. In order to fix this I had to go back and consciously work on making the phonemic distinction and reteach myself -- just listening didn't seem to be having any effect. If you start with a fully accurate native accent model, you are dramatically increasing the number of sounds that you are exposed to. Your brain will try to reduce the set, either by using your native phoneme map (not good) or by developing a new one. There is a risk that it will develop the wrong one, because it is unguided; starting with a simplified sound system means that it can't go wrong because it is being led by the nose. I believe that having an inaccurate phoneme map stops you developing a good accent. For example, if you identify English SH and S as a single phoneme, then when you try to pronounce "so" correctly, your pronunciation of "show" will get worse (and "shine" will become "sine", "wish" will become "wiss"), and when you try to improve your pronunciation of "show", your pronunciation of "so" will get worse (and "sink" will become "shink", "fist" will become "fished" etc). The two confused phonemes will fight each other to deadlock. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marijke Rose Newbie Germany Joined 5432 days ago 33 posts - 35 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Czech | Message 3 of 11 15 January 2010 at 10:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Regarding German, the pronunciation of the 'e' in "habe" could be described as "uh" in English ("habe" and "aber", to me, don't rhyme and never have, but I do understand that my ear and brain are accustomed to the difference).
I don't think your demonstration of the German 'er' by using "Butter" will work for Americans, as American English is, indeed, rhotic and we don't pronounce "butter" with a nearly silent 'r'. It's softer, perhaps, than the 'r' in "bread", but still more present than the German 'er'. Also, many Germans do roll their 'R's and that sounds different, still. What I'm struggling with is the German 'pf' sound, like in 'Pflaum', I have lots of trouble with (with 'Kampf", I have no problems, but when it's at the beginning of a word, it's very hard). Edited by Marijke Rose on 15 January 2010 at 10:26pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6003 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 4 of 11 16 January 2010 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
Ah, thank you -- that's useful to know before I go and start saying the two the same!
That's why I said some accents. My accent is rhotic too, but I figure every English speaker is likely to have been exposed to both, whether through personal experience, TV or music. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Javi Senior Member Spain Joined 5973 days ago 419 posts - 548 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 5 of 11 16 January 2010 at 2:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
That happens with native speakers too. Here in Southern Spain a lot of people lack the phoneme θ (th in thanks), but they hear it all the time and many think that the distinction you talk about is somehow more prestigious. As a result, they sometimes end up saying things like 'ponme una thervesa'. It's hilarious. In my case I grew up making that distinction, and although I went through a phase when I stopped making it (between 10 and 20 years old), I would never say things like thervesa, it's impossible. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5552 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 6 of 11 16 January 2010 at 4:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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According to the phonetics books, "-e" is schwa, while "-er" is schwa-a (also in prefixes "er-" and "ver-"). Schwa-a is an unstressed vowel with the tongue lower than a normal schwa. In the berlin dialect it is even transcribed as an "a".
The distinction is necessary to differentiate eg "Deutscher" from "Deutsche". Edited by schoenewaelder on 16 January 2010 at 4:18pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marijke Rose Newbie Germany Joined 5432 days ago 33 posts - 35 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Czech | Message 7 of 11 17 January 2010 at 12:42am | IP Logged | |||||
Heehee, you're welcome. If one WANTS, one can make them rhyme. I've heard those exact two words used in songs, but then the singer kind of mispronounces 'aber' in those instances. Of course, it could also be that certain regional dialects or accents can make the line between those two words blur. Around here, though, in Nordrhein-Westfalen, I hear the difference when it's spoken and they don't really rhyme.
Ah, gotcha. Yeah, you have a point there, indeed. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Maks Newbie Croatia Joined 5003 days ago 15 posts - 9 votes | Message 8 of 11 08 March 2011 at 2:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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MODERN EUROPE LANGUAGES MAP http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Simplifie d_Languages_of_Europe_map 1 person has voted this message useful |
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