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Easy pronunciation ? | ||
Tags: Difficulty | Pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 98789 Diglot Groupie Colombia Joined 4853 days ago 48 posts - 55 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English | Message 1 of 24 03 February 2011 at 5:09pm | IP Logged |
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Hello everyone,
I just registered this forum, I guess this theme goes here if not please excuse me. Q: What are the easiest pronunciation languages ? I've heard German is relatively easy (not complex sounds -or not too much- and almost what you see you pronounce-) ... Italian also seems to be easy in this aspect, and obviously Spanish (it's literally "what you see you pronounce" or "what you listen you write") but I'm Spanish native speaker (I hate it because Spanish is a poor in sounds languages :( ) What languages do you know with this charasteristics ? I've tried learning chinese, arabic, russian and french (I dislike it but world loves it ...) and they're hard to learn because of pronunciation.. I don't give a damn about learning new writing systems or complex gramathical laws, I just want to find an easy (an useful) easy pronunciation language. Thanks for reading. Have nice day. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| arturs Triglot Senior Member Latvia Joined 5081 days ago 278 posts - 408 votes Speaks: Latvian*, Russian, English | Message 2 of 24 03 February 2011 at 6:16pm | IP Logged |
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Practically all Germanic languages - German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, with the exception of Danish. I find Finnish also very easy to pronounce. Edited by arturs on 03 February 2011 at 6:17pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Matheus Senior Member Brazil Joined 4891 days ago 208 posts - 312 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: English, French | Message 3 of 24 03 February 2011 at 6:25pm | IP Logged |
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I don't give a damn about learning new writing systems or complex gramathical laws, I just want to find an easy (an useful) easy pronunciation language.
Try Japanese. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| mirab3lla Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom lang-8.com/220477Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5253 days ago 161 posts - 229 votes Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Spanish, FrenchB1, Mandarin | Message 4 of 24 03 February 2011 at 7:07pm | IP Logged |
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Italian seems to me very easy to pronounce. Probably because it is close to Romanian, which is also, in my opinion, fairly easy.
Let's, of course, not forget the Germanic languages, as arturs has already mentioned, and maybe Spanish (Portuguese is not that obedient regarding pronunciation). However, any language, once you get used to its rythm (by intensive listening sessions), should seem easy to pronounce. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5576 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 5 of 24 03 February 2011 at 9:35pm | IP Logged |
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There are some languages I find pleasant to listen to and somehow believe to be 'similar' in sound. Spanish is one of them, so are Japanese, Finnish, Hawaiian and Tagalog. I'm not sure what it exactly are the features that these languages share, but it might be in the lines of small vowel inventory, small consonant inventory, few or no consonant clusters or triphtongs, no vowel reduction in unstressed position, no tone etc.
The links are to the omniglot pages for these languages; each of them has a sample recording. You could just listen to them and the try how easy or difficult you find repeating the sentences. (Finnish and Tagalog are a bit faster than the other two but it should still give you a first impression, I think?) Edited by Bao on 03 February 2011 at 9:35pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| 98789 Diglot Groupie Colombia Joined 4853 days ago 48 posts - 55 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English | Message 6 of 24 03 February 2011 at 9:53pm | IP Logged |
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well, thanks all 3 for answers.... User Arturs as your point of view is seconded by User Mirab3lla and because of German course I started a few months ago (and never came back xD) via Deutsche welle did German seems easy (as you mention) I guess you must be totally right ... and hehe... I tried danish one time ... and as I found it hard (pronunciation, I just checked that) I supposed all nordic languages were like that (and I had heard islandic is also plenty difficult, so ...)... nice to know your aclaration
User Matheus: mmm ... If my mind is not failing, I remember Wikipedia article and some websites said japanese was easy in pronuntiation and that has its difficult part respecting to learn syllabaries and characters and in order of orations (counter to chinese whom principal difficulty were tones) ... I really apreciate your answer perhaps I'll consider japanese later (It's just spoken in japan and in Palau -at least as oficial- seems not too useful ... and is "otaku's" kanguage) User Mirab3lla... yes, Italian seems easy, I think all sounds of Italian are also in Spanish so doesn't seem too difficult... I suposse Italian is a good language but I'll try it later because it's not so widely spoken -Italy, lybia, San Marino, Vatican, Switzerland, ... maybe I'm missing some countries- as you secunde Germanic languages, I think those are the indicated to start... Spanish I already speak it as native and portugues... I understand almost everything but pronunciation as you say seems a bit difficult (too "soft" for me) as I said a few lines up.. I used to think almost all Germanic languages had hard pronunciation (maybe excepting deutsch who seems not too difficult -a bit the long words who may damage my tongue xD-) ... thanks for the data. all answers were very useful... vote all. edit: I didn't see the last answer... and, wow, other person suggest japanese... i guess I may consider it more... hawaiian no (too local) no matter it have the shortest alphabet (about 13 letters If I remind well) won't be in my elections :P Tagalog... I don't know how useful it may be... they speak English too, a philipina girl i met never use it ... how they pronounce ng (always I see tagalog I see ng...)specially when is single "word - ng - word" about finish.. second sugerence of it... I will check the link you left in order to build any concept about... the leva's polka seems difficult (perhaps I've heard thats not the standar finish so i don't know... better I'll check the link) Thanks too. Have nice day. Edited by 98789 on 03 February 2011 at 10:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4876 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 7 of 24 03 February 2011 at 11:21pm | IP Logged |
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Bulgarian uses a version of Cyrillic that is almost completely phonetic so every letter corresponds to exactly one
sound. The letter combinations aren't too difficult either but some people have trouble with the mobile stress and the slavic "r" sound. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5576 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 8 of 24 04 February 2011 at 12:14am | IP Logged |
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Danish phonology is plain crazy. It scares me. It's the only language I've heard so far that actually manages to intimidate me just by the way it sounds; and the effect is enhanced when I listen to Swedish or Norwegian speakers chatting with a Danish speaker.
The thing with usefulness is that if you actually want to learn a language for its possible future value you should choose Mandarin, Russian, Arabic or French. Yes, exactly. Other languages might be very useful, but only if you have a specific goal in mind. Scandinavian languages and Dutch won't be useful, you need to have a passion for them and, it seems, quite some stamina when it comes to convincing native speakers to not talk to you in English. German isn't that bad yet (that is to say, Germans don't generally speak English as well as the beforementioned), but the trend is in the same direction. Portuguese, Catalan and Italian might be relatively easy for you to learn in terms of overall investment, but that didn't seem to be what you were asking for. And as German speakers often find Dutch and Swiss German difficult to learn, Spanish speakers often find Portuguese and Catalan difficult to learn. It's probably because there's such a wide gap between comprehension (fairly easy) and production (almost as difficult as any other, non-transparent language) that most people just give up after having learnt some basic phrases. As you already find pronunciation to be an issue and gave up on languages because of that I thought you might not be too happy when trying to learn such a language. In terms of usefulness, the main question is what you want to use the language for, and where. The next question is whether there are a large number of proficient English or, in your case even Spanish speakers in the countries in which the possible languages are spoken. Japan, for example, is notorious for being monolingual, the Philippines on the other hand aren't. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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