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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| duschan Bilingual Triglot Newbie Australia Joined 6083 days ago 18 posts - 22 votes Speaks: Bulgarian*, Macedonian*, English | Message 57 of 59 26 March 2010 at 12:22pm | IP Logged |
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Oh, I'm sure I'm subjective, I agree with you on that. I can identify at least a dozen
of consonants in my native language that either do not exist (љ,ж,ш,ѓ,ќ,ц,ѕ and џ) or do not sound alike in Spanish (б, в, ч). So, you can imagine the kind of challenge I'm facing - when you plunge into learning a language that from the start misses 8 frequent sounds from your native language. 8 sounds is a huge number, we are not talking about 3 or 4. plus I can identify half a dozen of other consonants that sound very different in Spanish than in Macedonian. And maybe that's why I'm more comfortable with Italian, which has 6 of the above ones in regular use. Only two of them are unique in Macedonian. So of course when I'm listening Spanish I'm baffled by all those sound combination and elisions that happen with relatively so few sounds, and all spoken at the speed of light, it's very hard to follow. It's always your native language lurking behind and serving as a point of reference in any language study. Especially when it comes to mastering the phonology and developing listening comprehension skills. And I also agree with the above poster, it must be partly a dialect issue, no doubt about that. I watched a movie filmed in Toledo the other night (Te doy mis ojos) and surprisingly it wasn't as hard to understand as I find most of Almodovar's movies (especially the early ones). So some are harder, some are somewhat easier. But generally speaking I find all dialects hard, Iberian or Latin American. I have never encountered a dialect that I can feel comfortable with. Edited by duschan on 26 March 2010 at 12:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 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 58 of 59 26 March 2010 at 5:08pm | IP Logged |
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I found that with Spanish, in order to be able to understand a sound I had to be able to produce it. So I started underpronouncing my consonants, and once I understood how a strange blurry sound was actually just an "incomplete" D, I started to understand it when I heard it.
But your problem is not that Spanish is very different from the way it's taught, your problem is that you were taught Spanish in a very different way from how it's spoken, and that's not the language's fault.... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 59 of 59 28 March 2010 at 4:48pm | IP Logged |
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I always find it amusing that learners often remark how fast natives speak. Sure, some people speak faster or slower than others, but the real issue is that when one does not understand, everything is too fast.
Part of the problem stems from the fact that as foreign learners we always start out with the written language. Native speakers learn to speak first then learn to read and write afterward. And remember that some languages are not written at all. For many languages, the written form is not a good very guide to the spoken form. We all know that English has one of the worst writing systems of the Western languages. When we approach a language through its written form we tend to get mixed up trying to match the sounds with the letters, especially at full speed. Plus there is the interference of the sounds of our native writing system when we read the foreign language. The other problem is that informal spoken speech is not as cleanly structured as the written form. Language professionals such as journalists, professors, actors and writers can speak in a structured way that resembles the written form. They will often attenuate strong dialect features. But most ordinary people do not speak like that. That is why we can understand television or radio announcers but not ordinary people interviewed in the street. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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