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Foreign alphabets and new phonetics | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5218 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 9 of 21 31 January 2011 at 7:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, where descriptions actually come in *very* handy is in illustrating differences between sounds that could easily be perceived by language students as being the same one.
If at first you can't hear the difference between A and B because the foreign phonemes are too close, you are far better off with a description of where everything goes (mouth position, lips, tongue) rather than with tons of audio samples which you don't discriminate unless you're told there is a difference. That's (the only language learning field) where kids beat adults hands down: they're much more used to (as in 'have prolonged AND recent experience in') playing around with their mouths to imitate sounds, so they're better. And they haven't come yet to the false conclusion that 'everything you'll hear has to be one of this ~40 sounds', which also helps. The usual way to start these descriptions is from a difference the learner is familiar with, like 'a in father vs a in man', and then work your way with things like 'move the tongue tip down a bit' and 'stiffen up your upper lip' ;) Then again, sometimes language learners will chase red herrings, and then it is tremendously useful to tell them 'so you think it's different from the "v in TV" but can't tell how exactly? well, it's precisely the "v in TV" sound'. Examples I can think of: -An English 's' may sound as either /s/ (sound), /z/ (easy), /ʃ/ (sure) or /ʒ/ (casual). Try to make a Spaniard who has only heard the /s/ (if anything) all of his life to pick up all of them by ear. Then come back and tell me how well you did. -The opposite: someone has been using /ð/ and /d/ as allophones of /d/. Now he has to use one or the other because 'day' and 'they' don't sound the same. Perhaps explaining how his usual /d/ differs from the English /d/, which is why it is not so easily confused with /ð/, would be a good idea. -I know there's a difference between Russian Ш and Щ, and I could even hear it right from the start; but making that work was a completely different kettle of fish. An initial description of trying to pronounce like things I knew how to pronounce got me on the right track (not there yet, though). -Japanese people and the /l/ vs /r/ thing. So, if you can do without descriptions of sounds, fine; but don't discard them without checking if they may help you. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tornus Diglot GroupieRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5135 days ago 82 posts - 113 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish, Swedish, Danish | Message 10 of 21 31 January 2011 at 9:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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don't worried about that. i like when there are some specials letters in languages, and it don't annoy me but i never learn a language with a complete different alphabet.
however on of my friend took rusian at high school (1 hour a week while 1 year) and say it take very few time to get used to it. and also not all additionnal letter are commonly used. french has 16 special letters ( é è ë ê ç à â ô ï î ù û ü ÿ æ œ) but we usually use only 3 of them and sounds/phonemes doesn't change in general from its related letter( ë ê sound like e ; à â sound like a ;ô sounds like o; ï î ÿ sound like i; ù û ü sounds like u ; only é è doesn't sound like its related letter e, they sound like "ay" in English ) what i mean is don't be affraid by alphabet look since a language with the latin alphabet can be hard to pronunce whereas a language with a more complexe alphabet can be easier Edited by tornus on 31 January 2011 at 9:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6574 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 11 of 21 01 February 2011 at 4:23am | IP Logged | |||||
This is true, and a good point, but I've never found such descriptions in language learning books. Rather, they tend to work the other way, saying that two phonemes that really are different are actually the same. Take Mandarin, for example. The only place I've seen good descriptions of the way you should produce the sounds was in a blog post on Sinosplice where the author was complaining about how all the descriptions in books and on the Internet are wrong and misleading. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5218 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 12 of 21 01 February 2011 at 4:46am | IP Logged | |||||
Yeah well, I've undertaken too many projects in my life because no one else was doing things the right way (if at all). That's so... frustrating. Anyway, that's not a shortcoming of sound descriptions per se (is this good English?), it's a matter of luck (or lack thereof) getting good ones. But that's life, I guess. The idea really is that audio samples and descriptions should complement each other to give you the best possible idea of what each real sound is when either item is not enough. But of course, even with the best materials around it is always better to check with real speakers, if only for the detailed feedback they can provide. After all, they'll always be more objective than yourself in assessing how close you are to the target sounds. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| aabram Pentaglot Senior Member Estonia Joined 5525 days ago 138 posts - 263 votes Speaks: Estonian*, English, Spanish, Russian, Finnish Studies: Mandarin, French | Message 13 of 21 01 February 2011 at 1:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
You're gonna love this then: tynnyrikylpy. It was in my Gmail text ads today for some inexplicable reason. I'll add it to my favourite Finnish words collection along with käyttötuntimittarinvaijeri, vastusvastaventtiili, ominaisvarastointikapasiteetti and hybridiaurinkoenergiajärjestelmä. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5641 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 14 of 21 01 February 2011 at 9:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Korean was the first language I started learning that I gave a crap about (they tried teaching us Spanish in school.) I read the "'a' like in father" descriptions, and especially in Korean, the consonants are different. It took me a lot of Kdramas to be able to differentiate the sounds better. For Japanese, I had watched subbed anime and listened to Jpop for years before even learning it, so it wasn't anything new to me.
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| tibbles Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5183 days ago 245 posts - 422 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean | Message 15 of 21 05 February 2011 at 7:19am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes. When I studied Mandarin I learned Zhuyin first, not Pinyin. Even though there is some learning curve with Zhuyin, it guaranteed that I would not apply any of my built in English bias as to how a character should be pronounced. On the other hand, go to any beginner Chinese class in the US and listen to the students pronounce the Pinyin "si" like a Spanish word and the Pinyin "can" like an English word. To this day all my Chinese dictionaries are Zhuyin based for punctuation. However, I do prefer Pinyin as an input method on the computer. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| starrye Senior Member United States Joined 5086 days ago 172 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 16 of 21 07 February 2011 at 6:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well for Japanese kana, I used flash cards with audio clips of native speakers pronouncing each individual character, along with some example words to demonstrate the character in action. Personally, I find starting with some simple vocabulary really helps a lot, because it gives you a frame of reference.
For practice, I used a white board and a notebook with graph paper, where I would write down rows of one character per box, while repeating the sound out loud or in my head. Then once I had enough characters memorized, I would start writing simple words and reading them. It is slow going at first, but eventually you get used to the new characters and begin to read them quicker and quicker. Many textbooks will give you charts like these, showing each character and it's "English" approximation in the roman alphabet. These can be useful for comparison purposes, but it's important to remember charts like these are approximations, so you don't want to get too hung up on them. To really get a good grasp on pronunciation you need to listen to native speakers and try to copy what you hear. Kanji are a bit different--because they are not really an "alphabet" but I learn pronunciations through kana, and again, through example words. Since Japanese kanji can have several different pronunciations, I study them together with 2-4 example words, representing the most common pronunciations for each. I find this works much better than trying to learn them in isolation. And while it's true you can't always predict with 100% certainty how all compounds are pronounced in Japanese, there are patterns and there are some pronunciations which are a lot more common than others, so you can begin to make educated guesses. Edited by starrye on 07 February 2011 at 6:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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