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Pronunciation mistakes that irritate you | ||
Tags: Error | Pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6247 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 17 of 106 11 January 2012 at 7:04am | IP Logged | |||||
I'm a native American English speaker and occasionally I flap an "R" when saying it after a "th." As was pointed out in the thread, this is fine. I notice other people do it, too. The path your tongue follows from the "th" to the "r" sometimes results in a flap. I don't even think people notice, as long as it's not rolled. If you say "thrrrrrough" with a rolled R, people will notice that it sounds different. But "through" with a flap R = just fine :)
I remember there was a discussion about this before in another thread a few years ago. In (American) English, initial "tr" is basically the same as "chr." Truck = Chruck. Tree = Chree Initial "dr" = "jr" Drunk = jrunk I realized this one day when a girl in my class asked how to spell "drunk." Someone told her. She replied "oh, I thought it started with a 'J'." Edited by IronFist on 11 January 2012 at 7:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5144 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 18 of 106 11 January 2012 at 9:09am | IP Logged | |||||
HEY! This is cheating. You were supposed to bring your own mistakes to the ball, not somebody else's. But I now learned I make another mistake. I pronounce nose with an s, because with a z it sounds like knows. Oh well, another thing to learn. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5017 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 19 of 106 11 January 2012 at 11:41am | IP Logged | |||||
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Nothing specific comes to mind, it just annoys me that I have a pretty good understanding of how French pronunciation works, how the individual sounds were made, and how it should all sound, yet I often still get it wrong and even occasionally make classic Anglophone mistakes that annoy me when other people make them, like saying /ɪ/ instead of /i/ in a word that's the same in both languages. And my voice just doesn't have that, well, French quality to it which I can't quite explain. Normally I'm the first person to say that anybody can learn any skill with enough consistent, quality work, but I've mostly accepted that I just don't have an ear for pronunciation (or more accurately I don't have a good mouth for reproducing pronunciation, since I can "hear" it in my head no problem), and while after a ton of work on it my French accent is just about good enough to be understood and should hopefully keep improving with work and practice, I'll never sound French. Edited by garyb on 11 January 2012 at 11:44am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lightning Groupie United Kingdom livelanguagelove.bloRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5148 days ago 58 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 20 of 106 11 January 2012 at 4:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Definitely "r" and that special "n" noise when it sort of becomes an "m" in Japanese. (sorry for the lack of technical language, it's something I picked up rather than actively studied) I'll say a word, and I'll hear myself pronouncing it wrong. It's very fustrating. Edited by Lightning on 11 January 2012 at 4:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5145 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 21 of 106 11 January 2012 at 4:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In French, I hate the words regarder and demander because while they
sound alright when I pronounce them separately, I can never get them right in a sentence, especially when I'm speaking quickly. Something that still gives me trouble in English sometimes is when there are too many d's or th's close to each other. I also detest the word idea because the last vowel is so annoying. The worst is that I'm pretty sure I pronounced it correctly without any trouble before I started worrying about it but now I can't say it without thinking about it and that means I usually get it wrong. Other words I hate are rural and brewery. Too many r's too close to each other! The first one is especially troublesome and it usually comes out as wuwal. Edit: I thought of another one; I don't usually have any problems with the American L but sometimes when I suddenly have to switch to English, I can't get the L right and it comes out sounding like a Dutch one. Of course, this only happens when I'm talking to native speakers or someone who wants to hear my accent. That's a problem in general; I can hear myself suddenly getting a Dutch accent when I'm nervous. Edited by ReneeMona on 11 January 2012 at 4:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5036 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 22 of 106 11 January 2012 at 6:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Even when I was an English teacher trainee, I've never been formally taught a lot of English phonetics, to the point that you could say 95% of my current knowledge of the subject stems from the general and Spanish-specific phonetics I was taught at high school and my own research. All of these years I was playing by ear and, as you should expect from non-native speakers, I got some notes wrong.
The most poignant example is /ʒ/ (the sound of 's' in 'usual' or 'vision') of which existence no less I was blissfully unaware of, even after becoming a certified teacher. I say poignant because it doesn't just say how limited my English can be even today but how generally bad professional TEFL training is (if they don't start by making sure you know the subject all hollow...). So, I always replaced the /ʒ/ in every word with /z/ or /ʃ/ (in my defense I hope you agree they are reasonably close alternatives) and I figured 'real' English speakers pronounced them one way or another depending on their regional pronunciation variants and I just must be 'hearing things' from time to time. Then, some years ago, I heard some actor say something with a sound unmistakeably between /z/ and /ʃ/. I played the scene over and over and over and over and finally I concluded that there must be another 'official' English sound (phoneme) that I had ignored all along. I checked and bingo! Just as /s/ becomes /z/ through voicing, /ʃ/ becomes /ʒ/, which is an English phoneme. My use of /z/ instead of /s/ for intervocalic s had also been quite erratic until that moment (generally good I guess but surely not there yet). For a while I was really outraged that nobody (teachers, friends, exchange partners, trainers...) had ever pointed that out to me and praised how good my English was instead; on the bright side I became aware of and fixed something really non-trivial and years of neglect all on my own, which somehow meant I didn't suck so badly. If there ever was an epiphany moment... Since that moment, I always bone up on any TL phonology and phonetics beforehand. It just takes so little effort while making everything so much easier from the start. Remember, kids: always spend a day or two becoming familiar with all the things you'll have to face, or any of them may take you years for no reason at all. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4940 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 23 of 106 11 January 2012 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
Maybe in some parts of the US, but not all. I certainly don't ever remember learning or pronouncing those words like that. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| FELlX Diglot Groupie France Joined 4580 days ago 94 posts - 149 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 24 of 106 11 January 2012 at 10:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
I believe people tend to pronounce it like "mons" or at least drop the θ sound (/mʌns/ or /mʌnts/), at least not formally.
You have no idea how painful it is for someone who learnt the notion of syllabe stressing while learning English (as L2+) ;) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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