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Pronounciation in a language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| rjh5791 Newbie United States Joined 5732 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes | Message 1 of 19 13 May 2009 at 2:56am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello, I was wondering what is an easy language(s) for English speakers to pronounce and what ones you find hard? I persoanly find swedish hard to pronounce despite the ease of reading. Any opinions?
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| TerryRoberts Diglot Newbie Spain languagelearningworl Joined 5692 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 2 of 19 13 May 2009 at 8:05am | IP Logged | ||
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Although I have never tried them, I imagine the tone languages of Asia would be extremely difficult, since it's a concept that we simply don't have in English.
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| pmiller Account terminated Groupie Canada Joined 5676 days ago 99 posts - 104 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 3 of 19 13 May 2009 at 8:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Based on my information -
Easy: Spanish, Italian, German, Japanese, Indonesian, Persian, Hindi (most of these also have the benefit of highly phonetic alphabets, which certainly help with pronunciation). Hard: everything else, including French, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, and especially Cantonese, Thai, Vietnamese, Arabic & Russian 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rjh5791 Newbie United States Joined 5732 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes | Message 4 of 19 13 May 2009 at 11:57am | IP Logged | ||
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I also hear that japanese as well as persian are easier to pronounce.
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| 40pancakes Newbie Australia Joined 5807 days ago 38 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, French | Message 5 of 19 13 May 2009 at 12:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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I find Japanese to be deceptively similar to English. When I was learning in school, I only thought that one sound (the r/l/る consonant) was not present in English. Little did I realise, the f/ふ sound is different to our f, slightly breathier. But it seems that a fair few of the sounds differ very slightly. I'm sure this is the same in other languages, where the differences are so slight that you don't even realise that you need to make a different sound.
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| ericspinelli Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5785 days ago 249 posts - 493 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Italian | Message 6 of 19 13 May 2009 at 6:01pm | IP Logged | ||
Japanese has the appearance of being simple, and most English speakers find it easy enough to approximate the sounds well enough to communicate, but there are quite a few slight differences. r/ら行 is the most obvious, but f/ふ, hi/ひ, shi/し, and n/ん are also different. The nasalized g/が行 isn't commonly found in English, though it's not required in Japanese either. Mastering pitches (especially in the various dialects) and long vowels and other aspects of pronunciation take some time as well, though overall I think it's quite manageable. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6374 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 7 of 19 13 May 2009 at 7:49pm | IP Logged | ||
Common mistakes... It is common for people to try to describe phonemes in other languages by saying 'like the English 'f' but breathier' or 'like the English d but...' This is almost always wrong. I don't know how you do an English 'f' but breathier but that is not the Japanese 'f'. Phonetically it's a unvoiced bilabial fricative. That means you pass air over your lips in a process of friction that makes the sound. The English 'f' is done with the teeth on the lips to make the friction noise. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_bilabial_fricative Due to weakening the Japanese g can turn into a velar fricative. The process is very natural but many non-natives speaker would simply ignore it. 'sh' is also different. One of the worst was in 'Teach Yourself Icelandic' which said 'fullu nafni'- full name - was pronounced 'fudlu nabni'. I could hear that the 'dl' was clearly not 'dl' but something else like the 'll' in 'Sæll' - hi. It turns out that the 'l' position in the mouth is made before the 'l' comes about and air comes out which makes a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative. Apparently this sounds something not totally unlike a 'd' to English speakers or something. I can hear the 's' is different and that the 'r' is different from the normal rolled 'r' especially in words like 'maður' or 'grannur'. This might be due to the common belief or unconscious assumption that other languages are simply English sounds put together differently. People don't seem to realize that other languages are just that - 'other' than English. -------- Back on topic. I would say Dutch, German and other Germanic languages are the easiest to pronounce for English speakers. People say Indonesian is easy to pronounce but I can't say. Looking at the phonology of Finnish, I'd say that'd be easy too. But I'm not sure so don't take my word for it. It's easy to pronounce Japanese to the point that you are 100% understandable but like I have pointed out it probably not the right way - resulting in a thick accent (if that floats your boat) - Another thing about Japanese is that it has pitch accents on words. This is not unlike tones in Mandarin since it alters the meaning of the words. On some words the pitch is pronounce before the sound that is perceived as accented by native speakers. This delay has to be learned since Japanese natives will say 'the accent is on the last sound' when the last sound is not even voiced. Non-natives must learn to perceive this - but it is not a major thing since you can still get by. http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~hasegawa/Accent/accent.htm l "As Neustupný reported, F0 fall sometimes delays with respect to the accented syllable, without listeners detecting such a delay This phenomenon of illusory pitch accent explains why native listeners perceive an accent on a devoiced vowel. Even though a high F0 cannot occur on a devoiced vowel, the F0 fall on the following syllable forces native listeners to associate an accent with the preceding syllable containing the devoiced vowel. " I apologize for the long post and if is is irrelevant and/or annoying then please PM me and I will delete it. Edited by zerothinking on 14 May 2009 at 5:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 19 14 May 2009 at 3:53am | IP Logged | ||
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It is one of the best posts I have seen lately, - not least for the reference to Icelandic
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