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Tonal Languages Require More Talent?

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40 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 
Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 5047 days ago
2096 posts - 2972 votes 
Speaks: Russian*

 
 Message 33 of 40
03 May 2012 at 9:06pm | IP Logged 
viedums wrote:


In terms of pronunciation, the thing that gives me the most trouble in Thai is
producing d vs. t and b vs. p in a clearly distinct way. Most mainland Southeast Asian
languages, including Thai, have a three-way distinction in the stop phonemes – voiced,
unvoiced, aspirated. This seems simple, since in English we have all three sounds,
though only two are phonemes. But no, there are differences, and as a result the
voiced and unvoiced ones sound very similar. I’m sure other forum members have
experienced this kind of problem with certain sounds in their target language that they
just can’t seem to get right. For me, contour tones don’t fall in this category.

It means, in fact, that in English aspirated stops are in contrast with unaspirated,
not voiced vs unvoiced as we were taught at school. I wonder if you hear the difference
between t-d, p-b, k-g, if they are distinguished only by voice without aspiration?
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Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 5047 days ago
2096 posts - 2972 votes 
Speaks: Russian*

 
 Message 34 of 40
03 May 2012 at 9:11pm | IP Logged 
zhanglong wrote:
My observation (however demented it may be):

I've found that I "think too much" as the Chinese say, especially when it comes to
tones.

If I'm consciously trying to see the written representation in my brain while I'm
speaking, it's too slow and I get the tones wrong. Sometimes you can use body language
to practice the motions, using your hands to approximate where your vocal intonation
should be going.

But I've found that the best thing to do is to forget for a moment what tone something
is "supposed" to be, and just imitate as much as possible the way a native speaker is
saying it.

Many times I have no idea what tone something is, but can approximate how someone else
said it. I avoid the stilted speech and let it go, and when I think it sounds the
worst ever, others will say "THAT'S IT!" Umm...what?

Most of all, be patient. When you are on the lonely language plateau, it seems that
you're not getting better but you really are. You're getting better in such small
increments that you may not really notice, but after a certain time, you can just DO
it.

Okay, end of ramble. Time to go DO language instead of writing ABOUT it.

Tones and intonation have this feature: it is very hard to produce them correctly using
descriptions but they are learnt well by repetition, it differs from vowels and
especially consonants.
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Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 5047 days ago
2096 posts - 2972 votes 
Speaks: Russian*

 
 Message 35 of 40
03 May 2012 at 9:16pm | IP Logged 
Beysic wrote:

That's a completely different breed of 'tone' though. It's more about emphasis and
stress used to express an emotion - which is pretty much the same in any language -
whereas tones in tonal languages completely change the word being spoken.

It's not. For example, it is different in tonal languages. Many languages do not allow
stressing words in any way, they often use emphatic constructions instead. Not to say
that questions can have completely different intonations and so on.
4 persons have voted this message useful



LaughingChimp
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4690 days ago
346 posts - 594 votes 
Speaks: Czech*

 
 Message 36 of 40
03 May 2012 at 9:47pm | IP Logged 
Марк wrote:
Beysic wrote:

That's a completely different breed of 'tone' though. It's more about emphasis and
stress used to express an emotion - which is pretty much the same in any language -
whereas tones in tonal languages completely change the word being spoken.

It's not. For example, it is different in tonal languages. Many languages do not allow
stressing words in any way, they often use emphatic constructions instead. Not to say
that questions can have completely different intonations and so on.


True, most native English speakers don't realize that sentence stress is part of English grammar and not something that is universally understood.
1 person has voted this message useful



Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6588 days ago
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4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 37 of 40
03 May 2012 at 9:47pm | IP Logged 
I wonder what sort of universalities are there btw? (like the fact that all languages have vowels etc)
The intonation of listing things seems remarkably similar between languages.

Edited by Serpent on 03 May 2012 at 9:50pm
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Camundonguinho
Triglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 4740 days ago
273 posts - 500 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish
Studies: Swedish

 
 Message 38 of 40
03 May 2012 at 10:39pm | IP Logged 
Many Indians (especially those from the South) stress wrong syllables: inDUSTry, PERformance, because in Indian languages there is no stress (in Dravidian languages) or a very weak stress (Indo-Aryan languages). So, more often than not they stress a wrong syllable in a word, it's a part of the Indian English (as heard on CNN India and other Indian tv and radio programs in English). But aside from some rare pairs (desert or dessert), it's not a big problem ;)

Edited by Camundonguinho on 03 May 2012 at 10:41pm
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Peewee
Newbie
United States
Joined 5430 days ago
4 posts - 16 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Vietnamese

 
 Message 39 of 40
04 May 2012 at 6:17am | IP Logged 
In my experience, learning a tonal language is basically the same as learning
any other language, but it takes more time because there is less similarity to your L1
(usually). It takes time to be able to accurately hear and reproduce tones because
you're not used to hearing them. They're new sounds. But I think that's the same
problem that you face with any new language.

Vietnamese speakers have the same problem learning English. They have to learn to hear
and reproduce strange sounds. "Like" and "lie" sound exactly the same to a lot of
Vietnamese (because final consonants are swallowed in Vietnamese and 'k' doesn't appear
as a final consonant). I think it's the same problem.

If you can hear when someone asks a question in English, your ears are good enough to
hear tones.
6 persons have voted this message useful



viedums
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Thailand
Joined 4657 days ago
327 posts - 528 votes 
Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French
Studies: Vietnamese

 
 Message 40 of 40
04 May 2012 at 7:27am | IP Logged 
Марк wrote:
viedums wrote:


In terms of pronunciation, the thing that gives me the most trouble in Thai is
producing d vs. t and b vs. p in a clearly distinct way. Most mainland Southeast Asian
languages, including Thai, have a three-way distinction in the stop phonemes – voiced,
unvoiced, aspirated. This seems simple, since in English we have all three sounds,
though only two are phonemes. But no, there are differences, and as a result the
voiced and unvoiced ones sound very similar. I’m sure other forum members have
experienced this kind of problem with certain sounds in their target language that they
just can’t seem to get right. For me, contour tones don’t fall in this category.

It means, in fact, that in English aspirated stops are in contrast with unaspirated,
not voiced vs unvoiced as we were taught at school. I wonder if you hear the difference
between t-d, p-b, k-g, if they are distinguished only by voice without aspiration?


You may have a point. In the Wikipedia page on Voice Onset Time, it’s stated that English [b,g,d] in initial position are in fact only partially voiced, whereas in Thai they are fully voiced. Looking at the chart “Relative VOT distinctions in various languages” there are two alternatives for English, three for Thai – this may be where the difficulty lies.

I had a friend from southern Taiwan who was more comfortable speaking Taiwanese than Mandarin (even though she was working as a teacher of Mandarin in Bangkok.) Taiwanese has a tripartite stop system just as mainland SEA languages do, and this friend told me it was helpful when studying Thai. Her classmates were Mandarin speakers, and Mandarin just has two stop positions, so she felt she had an advantage over them.

Interestingly, other SEA languages, like Khmer and I believe Vietnamese, have implosive b and d – this is hard to produce, but easy to hear. Perhaps these sounds developed to clear up the ambiguity between voiced and unvoiced stops?




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