Pronunciation mistakes that irritate you (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Pronunciation mistakes that irritate you
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LaughingChimp
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Czech Republic
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Message 73 of 106

15 January 2012 at 4:03am | IP Logged

mrwarper wrote:

Either it is or it isn't. It can't be and not be at the same time.

I never claimed anything like that.

mrwarper wrote:

Palatalization is the change from 'd' to 'soft d', extraordinarily similar to inserting an /i/ after /d/.

I'm not sure what you mean by "soft d". You write /dʒ/, but [dʒ] is not similar at all to "inserting an /i/ after /d/". What you describe is [dʲ], not [dʒ].

mrwarper wrote:

For the record, I'd say the fact that English 'j' is written as d + something else in IPA sort of implies that the articulation points are the same,

No, it doesn't. There are no separate symbols for palatoalveolar d t n, because they are extraordinaly rare as separate phonemes. There is no reason to have two more symbols just for affricates. IPA is not an exhaustive inventory of human sounds, it just provides enough symbols to write down any language. You can't have a letter for every sound possible, as the number of possible sounds is virtually infinite.

egill wrote:

I think he's drawing a distinction between pure palatalization, e.g. [dʲ] and
palatalization with accompanying affrication, e.g. [dʒ].

I meant that I hear the sound in "dream" as different from [dʒ], I think it's retroflex, not palatalized. (I wonder why Gosiak can't hear it, I would think that a native speaker of Polish will hear it as different.) But maybe I'm just hearing things.

edit:wrong name.

Edited by LaughingChimp on 15 January 2012 at 4:09am
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Camundonguinho
Triglot
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Brazil
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Message 74 of 106

15 January 2012 at 5:28am | IP Logged

Some Americans pronounce laundry with [d], some with [dʒ].
I've heard grocery with S or SH ;)

Edited by Camundonguinho on 15 January 2012 at 5:30am
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Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
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Speaks: Russian*

Message 75 of 106

15 January 2012 at 11:55am | IP Logged

egill wrote:

As for the debate, in American English I always hear [dʒ] in DREAM-words and [tʃ] in
TREE-words. I'm very confident that there is a distinction for some people, but it's
not one I can perceive, nor one I make.

In fact, a non-affricated or less affricated version of these sounds is something I
associate (rightly or wrongly) with certain accents of the British Isles, particularly
Irish.

It probably depends on the way R is pronounced. For example a song sung with Irish
accent:

Tandragee
The singer pronounces dr and tr with clear d and t.

Edited by Марк on 15 January 2012 at 3:47pm
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mrwarper
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Message 76 of 106

15 January 2012 at 3:18pm | IP Logged

LaughingChimp wrote:

mrwarper wrote:

Either it is or it isn't. It can't be and not be at the same time.

I never claimed anything like that.

Whatever, maybe I was reading things. Remember kids: don't read nor post in forums *very* late at night :)

Quote:

... You write /dʒ/, but [dʒ] is not similar at all to "inserting an /i/ after /d/". What you describe is [dʲ], not [dʒ].

Exactly, like in Russian. Different? of course, but I'd bet your right hand that many people find both things quite similar.

Quote:

... IPA is not an exhaustive inventory of human sounds, it just provides enough symbols to write down any language. You can't have a letter for every sound possible, as the number of possible sounds is virtually infinite.

Actually the problems with IPA seem rather more mundane to me: once they were done with English not that many people gave a sh*t about it, so they didn't keep working on it in a consistent manner.

Quote:

I meant that I hear the sound in "dream" as different from [dʒ], I think it's retroflex, not palatalized.

With the former I would agree, of the latter I have no idea. There's always some difference between theoretical and actual pronunciation and we've mixed up both a few times. Of course 'dream' is not supposed to start with /dʒ/, but it does so for many people, because of the mishearing -> lack of correction -> mispronunciation feedback cycle I mentioned.

Anyway, sorry everyone for driving this even more OT. Since I already mentioned some of my former pronunciation issues, everyone and their mums is mentioning somebody else's, let me drive you back there with this Google: most often mispronounced English words. My former head of studies Steve Norman even wrote an ESL article with activities centred around this some time ago.

Edited by mrwarper on 15 January 2012 at 3:19pm
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Марк
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Russian Federation
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Speaks: Russian*

Message 77 of 106

15 January 2012 at 3:46pm | IP Logged

"Quote:
... You write /dʒ/, but [dʒ] is not similar at all to "inserting an /i/ after /d/". What
you describe is [dʲ], not [dʒ].

Exactly, like in Russian. Different? of course, but I'd bet your right hand that many
people find both things quite similar."

[dʲ] and [dʒ] are completely different sounds.
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LaughingChimp
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4509 days ago
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Speaks: Czech*

Message 78 of 106

15 January 2012 at 3:56pm | IP Logged

mrwarper wrote:

Quote:

... You write /dʒ/, but [dʒ] is not similar at all to "inserting an /i/ after /d/". What you describe is [dʲ], not [dʒ].

Exactly, like in Russian. Different? of course, but I'd bet your right hand that many people find both things quite similar.

What do you mean by "Exactly, like in Russian."? What are you answering to?

Noone could reasonably find them similar, regardless of their native language. You just don't know what the symbols mean.

mrwarper wrote:

Actually the problems with IPA seem rather more mundane to me: once they were done with English not that many people gave a sh*t about it, so they didn't keep working on it in a consistent manner.

What are you talking about? That's not true at all.

mrwarper wrote:

Quote:

I meant that I hear the sound in "dream" as different from [dʒ], I think it's retroflex, not palatalized.

That's not what I meant. I was talking about real, not some "theoretical" pronunciation. (what is it supposed to mean anyway?)

(sorry for OT)
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Bao
Diglot
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Germany
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Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin

Message 79 of 106

15 January 2012 at 4:39pm | IP Logged

July wrote:

I can't roll my r in Spanish words like 'sonrisa'. They tell me that the r should be rolled after an n inside a word, but I just can't seem to do it without hesitating or letting the n disappear.

Tried saying sonrisa, pan, ladrón and pardón.
I seem to put the tongue a bit further back for the n in sonrisa, and I somehow flick it to the back for the r, not to the front like in ladrón and pardón.

On Friday I realized I probably make some /s/ vs /z/ errors.

But what really bugs me is that when I'm insecure, my voice tends to go up. In German (and in English?) it seems to work to ask a question like that, but in Spanish and French there should be a drop in tone on the second to last and then a rise in the last syllable.
Of course, this is helpful for me as a language learner because as soon as my conversation partner has figured out that when I say a sentence with that intonantion, it means that I feel insecure about my expression and need feedback, which I usually get. But it sounds so awful. )=
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mrwarper
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Message 80 of 106

15 January 2012 at 4:52pm | IP Logged

OK, one last try to explain myself, and sorry everyone else for the OT. Sigh...

LaughingChimp wrote:

mrwarper wrote:

Quote:

... You write /dʒ/, but [dʒ] is not similar at all to "inserting an /i/ after /d/". What you describe is [dʲ], not [dʒ].

Exactly, like in Russian. Different? of course, but I'd bet your right hand that many people find both things quite similar.

What do you mean by "Exactly, like in Russian."? What are you answering to?

I meant "exactly, what I described as 'soft d' when exemplifying palatalization is /dʲ/, like in Russian".

Quote:

Noone could reasonably find them similar, regardless of their native language. You just don't know what the symbols mean.

About this I beg to differ. First, I know exactly what those symbols mean and I know the represented sounds are different -- I've stated so several times; second, I know real people who would say they're similar, so it's just not 'no one'. If that's not reasonable to you, that's an entirely different matter. As I'd said before, how similar or different two sounds are is highly subjective.

Quote:

mrwarper wrote:

Actually the problems with IPA seem rather more mundane to me: once they were done with English not that many people gave a sh*t about it, so they didn't keep working on it in a consistent manner.

What are you talking about? That's not true at all.

I just don't know, as my saying 'seem' should imply. Others have said in this forum that 'different' sounds are represented using the same symbols in IPA (in languages I'm not familiar with, but I have no reasons to disbelieve them), we hear complains about IPA symbols for anything other than English every now and then, and arguments about how things should be transcribed into IPA symbols are an everyday matter. So, the IPA is not only incomplete, it seems spottily inconsistent, and apparently problems arise mostly when the focus of discussions is not English. What I said was just a wild guess at why, a bit tongue-in-cheek.

Quote:

... I was talking about real, not some "theoretical" pronunciation. (what is it supposed to mean anyway?)

It means that any idea about how any word 'sounds' in itself (when no one is saying it) is a theoretical construct based on how it sounded every time someone said it.

When a word is actually pronounced, it may conform to that construct or not. Interestingly enough, the parameters guiding human speech are so variable and such constructs of ours are built loosely enough that people not only can reasonably disagree on a word being well pronounced or not any given moment, but do so on a regular basis.

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