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Pronunciation mistakes that irritate you | ||
Tags: Error | Pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4509 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes  Speaks: Czech* | Message 49 of 106 13 January 2012 at 5:09am | IP Logged | ||
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I think you are both wrong. The first sound in "tree" is neither "t" or "ch". In English, it's usually an allophone of "t", but for IronFist it seems to be an allophone of "ch".
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| SueK Groupie United States Joined 4561 days ago 77 posts - 133 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 50 of 106 13 January 2012 at 2:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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On the tree / chree debate.... I mentioned it my husband, who thought, said tree a few times and was surprised to agree that he does in fact say chree.
I, on the other hand, have a distinct t sound at the beggining of my pronunciation, though I can appreciate how someone would hear the ch sound in there. I'm learning Mandarin via Pimsleur and the word for eat is chi1. However, I was confused when learning at first as when the speaker used the word in context, it sounded like he was saying tree! I've just started FSI Tones and Pronunciation and they say the Mandarin ch sound is made by putting your mouth in the r position to make the ch sound, resulting in something in betweeen. For me, this clarifies why in slow pronunciation mode, Pimsleur instructed me 'chi1' and in usage, it sounded 'tree'. Perhaps we have a similar mixed sound in English? 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 51 of 106 13 January 2012 at 8:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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My students complain quite often that English pronunciation is rather unclear. Interestingly enough, they don't believe me when I tell them that it's pretty much the same for natives and illustrate it with stories like this whole than/then jrunk/drunk chree/tree somefink/something thing, and I usually need to point out pronunciation-based spelling mistakes in their own language. These are actually less abundant which is kind of proof they're right, just like this debate here.
Of course if one guy just 'hears things', like I thought I did, it's probably him not hearing well; but if so many people hear the same 'things', it's probably true that at least some native speakers pronounce things 'the wrong way'. This in turn probably stems from their mishearing them in the first place and never being 'corrected'. But I think we already went over that in some other thread. OTOH, I think foreign speakers will feel rather reassured actually seeing (rather than being told about) natives make the same kind of mistakes / mishear the same things as them. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4866 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 52 of 106 13 January 2012 at 8:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Such "unclear" pronunciation is typical for every language.
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| 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 53 of 106 13 January 2012 at 9:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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If it's present in every language then it isn't typical of any of them.
Anyway, I think pronunciation clarity should be linked to the number of phonemes in a language and how different they are. For example, no Spanish vowel can be mistaken for another one except maybe in certain accents; OTOH some English vowels are generally more prone to be mixed up even by natives, for example /æ/ and /e/. Edited by mrwarper on 14 January 2012 at 12:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4866 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 54 of 106 13 January 2012 at 9:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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I heard /æ/ pronounced as /a/.
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| 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 55 of 106 14 January 2012 at 12:42am | IP Logged | ||
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Of course. In English, the called cardinal vowels /a/ and /e/ are as unlikely to be confused as they are in Spanish or Russian, but the intermediate /æ/ is used at the same time and that's a different story. You see people mistaking /æ/ as either /a/ or /e/ all the time; i.e. 'than' for 'then', or <damn, I can't think of a common example of what you say right now>.
Vowels can be represented in a relatively simple coordinate system (jaw more or less open, lips more or less rounded, front or back position of the tongue, ...), with each vowel covering a region of the possible coordinate space, which is obviously limited. The more vowels you fit inside this space the closer their regions must be, and the higher the probability that a neighbouring vowel is heard instead of any given one. This is because even if different speakers aimed to produce the exact same vowels, we don't pronounce nor hear perfectly all the time. Something similar could be said about consonants, but the analysis would be much more complex because of the many more parameters that can be used to define them. Edited by mrwarper on 14 January 2012 at 12:47am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4559 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish | Message 56 of 106 14 January 2012 at 1:58am | IP Logged | ||
Spanish pronunciation is also very unclear. In Spain, many people pronounce the diphthong UE as OU or O: pues [pos] luego ['luoɣo] Furthermore, many Spaniards pronounce Spanish CH similar to Italian ZZ (as in pizza) and different than CH in English cheese, choke, chill: chico ['tsiko] These new pronunciations seem to be preferred by younger speakers in normal- and fast-paced spontaneous speech, and it's so different from what we've been taught! When I was in Madrid, I seemed to be the only person who pronounced HASTA LUEGO as it should be ['asta 'lueɣo]. All Madrileños pronounced it as [astaluoɣo], that is: as if it were spelled HASTA LUOGO. :( (My Mexican friend also heard this as HASTA LUOGO.) Someone has already made a page on this: http://ladodealla.blogspot.com/2007/10/hasta-luogo.html Edited by Camundonguinho on 14 January 2012 at 2:06am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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