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Hardest phoneme you’ve ever faced

 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room Post Reply
48 messages over 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6  Next >>
Scratch
Groupie
United States
Joined 5235 days ago
45 posts - 57 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: French

 
 Message 17 of 48
11 October 2010 at 7:53pm | IP Logged 
Levi wrote:
Scratch wrote:
Yeah, I've been sometimes browsing the material I've assembled to begin studying Finnish next year and I've been amazed by that. I'm so used to aspirating k, p, and t that it feels absolutely weird to say them without aspiration. That's got a big giveaway for accent, because it's probably always creeping in for native English speakers learning to speak Finnish. And especially P, English aspirates that strongly -- that's why we have the word puff, I bet.

Just so you know, p/t/k are also (usually) unaspirated in French (I often hear some aspiration before "i" and "u").


Merci. I don't have so much trouble with t, but now that you've said that, I've certainly been aspirating the p. I'll have to listen for that closely now, in the French I listen to and when I'm speaking.
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hribecek
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 5349 days ago
1243 posts - 1458 votes 
Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish
Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian

 
 Message 18 of 48
11 October 2010 at 7:59pm | IP Logged 
The Czech Ř is unique and in certain combinations with other consonants it is beyond my best efforts. I think most foreigners just settle for about a 75% version of the real thing.

I´ve also always had big problems with the Spanish RR when in the midst of a sentence.

Mandarin sounds aren´t as difficult as the above mentioned for me.
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Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 6439 days ago
4474 posts - 6726 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 19 of 48
11 October 2010 at 10:25pm | IP Logged 
Cainntear wrote:
doviende wrote:
Ya, I thought the German ch was easy until I learned there were two. I'd been saying the "ich" sound for "ach" in all cases, apparently.

But that's a non-phonemic difference, so you'll be understood and you'll understand other people. It's only when two phonemes "fall together" in your speech that you start to have problems.


I wish.

Merging two phonemes is a problem, but it is not the only way to start to have pronunciation problems that impede understanding.

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fireflies
Senior Member
Joined 5181 days ago
172 posts - 234 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 20 of 48
12 October 2010 at 12:25am | IP Logged 
The Spanish rr took some practice. I used the following tongue-twister a lot:

Erre con "erre" cigarro,
"erre" con "erre" barril.
Rápido corren los carros,
Cargados de azucar del ferrocarril.

I am happy with my rolled r's now but it took awhile (years). Initially I rolled them at the back of my throat (the German/french way from what I have read) but I quickly corrected that. I am glad I have a grasp of where both types of rolled r's come from now.

I find some french sounds difficult to duplicate but I am not sure there is anything quite as daunting as tones.
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Jinx
Triglot
Senior Member
Germany
reverbnation.co
Joined 5693 days ago
1085 posts - 1879 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, French
Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish

 
 Message 21 of 48
12 October 2010 at 4:33am | IP Logged 
I've just started studying Mandarin and I find the tones quite easy (and fun!), but the many different consonant variations really get me confused. Especially the word 人. I'm finally getting pretty good with the "qi" sound (it actually reminds me a bit of the Italian "ci"), but generally the Mandarin consonants are still a source of huge confusion for me.
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Old Chemist
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5173 days ago
227 posts - 285 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German

 
 Message 22 of 48
12 October 2010 at 9:27am | IP Logged 
hribecek wrote:
The Czech Ř is unique and in certain combinations with other consonants it is beyond my best efforts. I think most foreigners just settle for about a 75% version of the real thing.

I´ve also always had big problems with the Spanish RR when in the midst of a sentence.

Mandarin sounds aren´t as difficult as the above mentioned for me.

Ha ha, you beat me to it. I don't speak Czech, but I remember a documentary where they said even 10 year olds were struggling to pronounce it. I have heard the same for some American Indian (Native American) languages are very difficult to learn even for native speakers, but I think this is due to very heavy inflection, very difficult verb forms, so a grammatical issue.
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BiaHuda
Triglot
Groupie
Vietnam
Joined 5363 days ago
97 posts - 127 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Vietnamese
Studies: Cantonese

 
 Message 23 of 48
12 October 2010 at 10:10am | IP Logged 
Vietnamese is pretty tough. I've had problems with the ng sound, the way I used to say ngựa, the word for horse, was hard for people to undertstand. Some of the double vowels like in bưu điện, post office are really weird since you have to pronounce both of them. Being an isolating language doesn't help, you really have to get the rythym down and group the words together properly to be understood.
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hribecek
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 5349 days ago
1243 posts - 1458 votes 
Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish
Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian

 
 Message 24 of 48
12 October 2010 at 12:20pm | IP Logged 
Old Chemist wrote:
hribecek wrote:
The Czech Ř is unique and in certain combinations with other consonants it is beyond my best efforts. I think most foreigners just settle for about a 75% version of the real thing.

I´ve also always had big problems with the Spanish RR when in the midst of a sentence.

Mandarin sounds aren´t as difficult as the above mentioned for me.

Ha ha, you beat me to it. I don't speak Czech, but I remember a documentary where they said even 10 year olds were struggling to pronounce it. I have heard the same for some American Indian (Native American) languages are very difficult to learn even for native speakers, but I think this is due to very heavy inflection, very difficult verb forms, so a grammatical issue.


I know or have met a few Czech adults that can´t pronounce ř completely correctly and my 14 year old Czech nephew still can´t 100% hit it. Most natives have no problem with it though.


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