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Hardest phoneme you’ve ever faced | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Aquila123 Tetraglot Senior Member Norway mydeltapi.com Joined 5306 days ago 201 posts - 262 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Italian, Spanish Studies: Finnish, Russian | Message 33 of 48 24 December 2010 at 2:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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The navajo glottalized latteral afficates are real tongue twisters.
A phoeme in the same cathegory is the Norwegian/Swedish retroflex flap Still these ar well-defined phonemes. Phonems that are difficult to define, make a special difficulty, because you are allways uncertain to where you must point the tongue. Edited by Aquila123 on 24 December 2010 at 2:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 34 of 48 24 December 2010 at 4:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Although Japanese is hailed as very easy to pronounce, the Japanese sound that's given me the most trouble is /u/. I find it hard to establish the exact boundaries of the sound and I second guess myself frequently. Even though I'm told it's usually spot on, I feel I'm still in the experimentation stage.
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| Patchy Newbie Joined 5128 days ago 25 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English* | Message 35 of 48 24 December 2010 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Tenerife, Spain.
The Russian ы was and still is a bit of a struggle for me, in that I'm never completely sure that I'm saying it right each time, although it's not a big deal to comprehension. The good thing about all the difficult phonemes discussed here is that at least the learners are aware of them. If only this were true of Irish Gaelic, in which at least 90% of the learners are never informed or never find out about a bunch of "difficult" consonant sounds, so that any revival in the language is actually not really a revival at all in that many of the key consonantal phonemes are not being learned, while the learners (being nearly all native speakers of English) assume that the actual distinguishing features are in the adjoining vowels. An example: The distinguishing phonetic feature between 'gabhar' ('goat') and 'gabhair' ('goats') is only in which type of R is used, there being two completely different R-phonemes in the language. The adjoining written vowels are simply markers for this consonant change, but learners; being unaware of this; try to differentiate in the vowel sounds, which is not really possible as they lie (or should lie) in an unstressed and therefore neutral (schwa) position. The same goes with the two sounds represented by the letters L, M, N, B, C, D, F, G, P, and T. Most learners and self-proclaimed speakers do not pronounce both the velarised and palatised ('broad' and 'narrow') phonemes of each of most of these dual-value letters. Some of these sounds are quite a challenge to learners, but are actually even more important to pronunciation distinctions than the very similar 'dark' and 'light' duality of most Russian consonants. But at least the learners of Russian are aware of them, and so can put in the time and effort to get it right. For some mysterious reason most learners and "teachers" of Gaelic seem unaware of their existence. Therefore, I reckon that for many people some of these sounds; for example the broad Gaelic L; are doubly difficult. Does the same situation of difficulty combined with ignorance happen with the learning of any other minority languages out there? 'Just a thought, Patchy. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5034 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 36 of 48 20 February 2011 at 3:30am | IP Logged | ||
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I had to work really hard at pronouncing the aspirant H at the end of a syllable in Finnish (example: huhtikuu). It's not that I can't say it. English is full of H sounds, and so is Spanish. But in neither language does it end the syllable.
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 37 of 48 20 February 2011 at 11:14am | IP Logged | ||
A similar problem occurs on the other side of the Struth na Maoile, sadly. The exact nature of the problem is slightly different, as the slender/broad distinction is more pronounced for most consonants than Irish. The R distinction frequently gets lost. Lenition (seimheachas) of L and N is frequently lost in learner speech (I was never taught it). The other thing is that Scottish Gaelic is said to be a bit more conservative in pronunciation. Voice is (almost) non-phonemic, so the distinction between D and T, B and P, and G and C is in aspiration only. Also, broad DNTL are dental sounds. But most learners pronounce the whole lot as though they're English, so the wrong point of articulation and with voicing as the distinction between DvT, BvP, GvC. And this is invading the primary school system. Learners are killing the language. * *I am a learner too. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| etracher Triglot Groupie Italy Joined 5334 days ago 92 posts - 180 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish Studies: Modern Hebrew, Russian, Latvian | Message 38 of 48 20 February 2011 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have tried various exercises to work on consonants with glottalic initiation but have so far been unable to produce one.
I am interested in learning Hausa someday, so I think sooner or later I will have to convince my glottis to be reasonable and do what I ask it to do. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Zireael Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 4651 days ago 518 posts - 636 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English | Message 39 of 48 01 March 2012 at 5:37pm | IP Logged | ||
Actually, rz and ż represent the same sound. Unless you meant ź. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Majka Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic kofoholici.wordpress Joined 4657 days ago 307 posts - 755 votes Speaks: Czech*, German, English Studies: French Studies: Russian | Message 40 of 48 01 March 2012 at 5:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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As already mentioned here - the Czech ř.
I am native speaker and despite 3 different speech therapists (at preschool, at primary school and before starting university) couldn't master it 100%. I got very close but in some words one can still hear the difference. French r is at a moment a hit and miss for me - because I sometimes overdo it. I hope this can be trained out. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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