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Problems with English pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4740 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish | Message 17 of 23 14 May 2012 at 2:17am | IP Logged | |||||
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Where'd you go? = Where did you go?
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| Pisces Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4613 days ago 143 posts - 284 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish*, French, SwedishC1, Esperanto Studies: German, Spanish, Russian | Message 18 of 23 14 May 2012 at 10:31am | IP Logged | |||||
I can think of situations in which someone would say "I open the box" although they are somewhat exceptional. Some people tell stories in the present tense. "So, I open the box and a giant spider jumps in my face." "You open the box" would be more common, e.g. - "What do I do next?" "You open the box." The pronunciation difference between "opened the" and "open the" may disappear in very fast speech, but English speakers don't tend to speak that fast. Not only do I hear a difference but in my opinion I can feel that pronouncing them feels different. I understand that learners of English find it difficult to hear the difference, because the /th/ sound of the next word 'the' is very similar to /d/ and doesn't exist in many other languages, so it can be difficult to hear the difference. In some forms of Spanish 'd' is pronounced a bit like 'th' in English but the distinction between /d/ and /th/ is not made, so again it can be difficult. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gosiak Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5117 days ago 241 posts - 361 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, German Studies: Norwegian, Welsh | Message 19 of 23 14 May 2012 at 12:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Pronuncing them should feel a bit diffrent but this difference may not be distinctive enough to be heard, it depends on the speed and accuracy. In 'opened the door' the 'd' obstruent influenced by 'th' (ð) undergoes assimilation of place and changes from alveoral to dental. When both 'd' and 'th' are voiced and have the same place of articulation they may be 'pronunced in one airflow'. This makes them blend into one and 'd' sound may just disappear.
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| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4856 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 20 of 23 14 May 2012 at 7:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
Like I said, the sentence "I open the box." does not normally occur in English. Your sentence, "So, I open the box and a giant spider jumps in my face." has a present text context wrapped around the clause "I open the box". I agreed that "I open the box" appears as a clause but it does not appear as a bare sentence, except in the rare instance of a present tense narrative, and even then the speaker or author would normally do exactly what you have done, which is to make it a clause in a longer sentence that has more contextual clues for tense. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4856 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 21 of 23 14 May 2012 at 7:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
I hear something more like "wareju go?". The 'd' gets swallowed up and replaced by "j", and the 'y' vanishes completely leaving "ju" instead of "jyu". It's no wonder people have trouble learning English! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| eilis91 Bilingual Tetraglot Newbie France Joined 4567 days ago 28 posts - 54 votes Speaks: English*, Irish*, French, Italian Studies: German, Yoruba | Message 22 of 23 15 May 2012 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I sympathise! Although I am a native English speaker, when I moved to the UK from Ireland in 2009 people there
had a huge amount of difficulty understanding my English, and while I had less difficulty understanding their English, the main difference I have found between Hiberno-English and British English is that in British English it is much harder to distinguish the present from past tense, because the "ed" has less emphasis on it. I got used to it after a few months, though. There is a difference in the way every English speaker pronounces present and past tenses, that difference is just harder to discern in some accents than in others. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| getreallanguage Diglot Senior Member Argentina youtube.com/getreall Joined 5462 days ago 240 posts - 371 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Italian, Dutch | Message 23 of 23 20 May 2012 at 2:32am | IP Logged | |||||
Your English is quite good, at least in writing. I'm gonna have a go at answering your concerns. First, as you have very well noticed, the 'h' in "asked him" tends to disappear. This is because the pronouns he, him, her, his, when they are not stressed, they 'lose' their 'h' in pronunciation. So you will hear things like "I ASKED im, I ASKED er, THAT'S what e THINKS, THAT'S er CAR, He BROUGHT is CAR", where capitals indicate the words that are stressed in the sentence. This same h-dropping affects the verbs 'have' and 'had' when they're not stressed. 'Them' also has an unstressed form 'em' as in "I TOLD 'em". So if I follow you correctly you have a hard time hearing the /t/ and /d/ when you have a past tense verb ending in those sounds when the next word begins with a consonant. As others have already pointed out, pronouncing "He asked me to go" not as "He askt me to go" but as "He asst me to go" is perfectly natural and natives do it, so I would recommend you just go for it and pronounce it like that. However that regards pronunciation, not listening. So let's talk about understanding what you listen to. Let's look at your examples: "It rained too much" Here there are two possible ways natives are going to pronounce it. One is "It raint too much", but instead of two separate /t/s, just with a longer /t/, like the TT in Italian (fatto, etc) where the /t/ sound is held a little longer before it's released. Basically, you are going to hold your tongue in place for a fraction of time longer before you 'explode' the /t/ and move on to the next sound. The other way to pronounce it is, indeed, "It rain too much". But, you see, there is no possible ambiguity, because in the present tense, you would say "It RAINS too much". "I played the violin" "I opened the box" Here you get the same possibilities. Natives are either going to pronounce "I playd de violin" or "I opend de box" with a "longer" /d/, or, yes, "I play the violin" or "I open the box". If they pronounce them the second way, context will tell you what the speaker means. I hope this helped! 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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