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What does English sound like to Foreigners? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Keilan Senior Member Canada Joined 5087 days ago 125 posts - 241 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 25 of 25 02 August 2011 at 5:21am | IP Logged | ||
I'm sorry, but you are wrong. Not in the absolute sense, as we're arguing about points on a continuum. But you severely underestimate how common of a problem this is. Yes, English speakers stop turning everything to diphthongs. Nobody is claiming anglophones are not capable of learning. What it is fair to say is that almost ALL (like... 99.9%) of anglophones BEGINNING a foreign language will make things diphthongs that are not supposed to be. And yes, once they have training in the diphthongs they often stop. Same goes for aspiration. Once you tell someone what it is and how to recognize it, it becomes easier to stop. This takes specific linguistic training (not hard training mind you, but it needs to be done). Nobody is claiming that all anglophones make every vowel into a diphthong and they never ever stop. However, we are making the generalization that most anglophones learning another language have trouble with this at some point because that is the case. Even having studied linguistics for several years, and being very aware of the difference between a diphthong and a monophthong, I and my classmates still often have the problem in pronouncing words. You may be gifted but that would make you the exception, not the rule. It holds true much more frequently than other generalizations like "women are shorter than men", but I can't imagine you'd go crazy over that one. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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