Pronounciation in a language (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Pronounciation in a language
Tags: Multilingual \| Difficulty \| Pronunciation
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Language Learning Forum : General discussion

19 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3

mick33
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5926 days ago
1335 posts - 1632 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Finnish
Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish

Message 17 of 19

21 May 2009 at 9:14pm | IP Logged

zerothinking wrote:

I apologize for the long post and if is is irrelevant and/or annoying then please PM
me and I will delete it.

Your post is not overly long (I've read much longer, and often less informative, messages in this forum) nor is it irrelevant and/or annoying. The problem you described at the beginning is similar to one I've run across learning Dutch and Afrikaans; because they can sound, especially at first, so much like English. I was very frustrated once when I read that the Dutch diphthong "aa" should be made by opening my mouth very wide while pronouncing the letter "y" like in the the English word "by". The above explanation did not help me produce the correct sound and may have prevented me from hearing this diphthong correctly.

Also your initial impression of Finnish is spot on; the spelling is very phonetic, and only the "y" and "ö" sounds are unusual for English speakers, though the "y" sounds very much like the Dutch rounded "u".

Edited by mick33 on 22 May 2009 at 6:41pm
1 person has voted this message useful

WFU03
Groupie
Norway
Joined 6677 days ago
62 posts - 70 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Norwegian, French

Message 18 of 19

21 May 2009 at 10:21pm | IP Logged

Of the languages I've studied, I would say German is pretty easy to pronounce and French isn't bad either after some practice. Norwegian is much harder, however, with the vowel sounds and some consonant clusters like "kj" consistently difficult.
1 person has voted this message useful

kimchicurry
Super Polyglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 5997 days ago
12 posts - 29 votes
Speaks: English, Cantonese*, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Spanish, Nepali, Urdu, Taiwanese, Shanghainese, Kannada, Gujarati
Studies: Biblical Hebrew, Arabic (Egyptian), Sinhalese, Swahili, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Arabic (Written), French, Persian, Bengali, Malay

Message 19 of 19

24 May 2009 at 7:10am | IP Logged

I'm personally having trouble with Hindi because of the retroflex/dental distinction and also a little bit because of the voiced aspirated series. Is there some trick to acquiring a mental phonemic distinction between the retroflex/dentals (like listen to the same sound repeated continuously for x number of months)? I can't even imagine starting to learn a Dravidian language like Malayalam which has retroflex, alveolar, AND dental all contrasting with each other. Two sets of Ds and Ts is enough for me.

Anyway, I have to say, at least most people who have some understanding of music should be able to catch on to the tones after a little bit. Also, non-tonal languages still use tones to convey feeling or mood at least, if not meaning. Therefore, I don't think tones is harder than the retroflex/alveolar/dental distinction for people who start out with a language which doesn't have either feature.

Also, I have trouble trilling my Rs (alveolar trill) as in Spanish or Italian. I can get the French R okay. I guess my tongue is just too tense.

Anyway, I'm real jealous of my Indian friends whose native languages (Hindi, Gujarati, etc.) already have so many consonants, and can pretty much pronounce anything without much trouble.

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