|
 |
Mute vocabulary | ||
Tags: Speaking | Vocabulary learning | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Sizen Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4120 days ago 165 posts - 347 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Catalan, Spanish, Japanese, Ukrainian, German | Message 9 of 32 08 January 2014 at 2:22am | IP Logged | ||
|
The solution to this isn't as hard as you might think: audio books.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Improbably Diglot Newbie Norway Joined 4717 days ago 34 posts - 87 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English | Message 10 of 32 08 January 2014 at 7:38am | IP Logged | ||
|
For me, pop-up dictionary extensions for Firefox turned out to be a godsend. There are plenty to choose from, some with custom dictionaries. Nothing beats just doubleclicking a word and getting a full definition, as well as all the possible pronunciations (especially when it differs between nouns, adjectives and/or verbs). Given all the reading I do online, I almost never need to remain ignorant of how a word should be pronounced anymore.
On my Kindle, unfortunately, the pronunciation is often not included in the short definition, and you have to click through to the full definition, so I often don't bother. But I try not to use words in speech that I don't know how to pronounce. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4690 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 11 of 32 08 January 2014 at 8:14am | IP Logged | ||
I live an hour from Warwick, and I have never heard the middle "w" pronounced, if that's what you mean. Or did you mean you were surprised that people even spoke of the place? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hungringo Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 3769 days ago 168 posts - 329 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish Studies: French | Message 12 of 32 08 January 2014 at 10:22am | IP Logged | ||
I am confident only if I am familiar with the pronunciation of the word in question, that is I hear it relatively often. I might have problems not only with stress, but also with using the correct sounds. E. g. When I moved to England I said things like "risaip" instead of "resipee" (recipe) or "ginekologist" instead of "gainekologist" (gynaecologist) Edited by Hungringo on 08 January 2014 at 10:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5341 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 13 of 32 08 January 2014 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I still have a couple of words I am terrified of saying, in case I mispronounce them under pressure, or even withot. A couple that come to mind are "usurp" (does it begin with a "y" sound ?) and "whore" which is much easier now that I know thw word in German and Dutch, where they never felt the need to add a superfluos "w")
I can still remember the mockery a friend suffered as a teenager when he pronounced "psalm" with a "p" and "bass" with a short "a". (not in the same sentence) (No, it was a friend, honest. I'm just easily traumatised by other people's suffering) [edit] Now i think if it, I was also a bit taken aback to find the standard french pronunciation of "The Who" is "The Woo" Edited by schoenewaelder on 08 January 2014 at 5:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hungringo Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 3769 days ago 168 posts - 329 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish Studies: French | Message 14 of 32 08 January 2014 at 6:38pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Yesterday, I watched a documentary in which Byzantine was pronounced as "baizentain". Now, I've just watched another documentary in the same series and it was very disconcerting to hear "bizentin"
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| maucca Diglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4432 days ago 33 posts - 64 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: French | Message 15 of 32 08 January 2014 at 8:37pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I'm surprised that the practice of reading aloud doesn't seem to be much favored, at least if the posts in this thread are anything to go by.
When I was still focusing on English, I wouldn't have thought of reading an English-language book except aloud. Whenever I encountered words that I wasn't sure of how to pronounce, I would look them up in the dictionary. That's what I've now been doing now with French for a year. Even so, I will still undoubtedly pronounce many English words wrong. And just the other day, I found out to my surprise that I've been pronouncing the French word "gars" wrong, with an "r". I was trying to find a certain English word with a surprising pronunciation which I fairly recently heard but have forgotten. Well, I couldn't find it, but I did find this interesting site: http://englishspellingproblems.co.uk/ 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hungringo Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 3769 days ago 168 posts - 329 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish Studies: French | Message 16 of 32 08 January 2014 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | ||
|
@maucca,
I find French pronunciation much more regular and straightforward than English pronunciation. In a few hours you can understand French pronunciation rules and with a bit of practice you can master them. In French there are only a handful of words that don't follow these rules. You might not know how to spell a French word when you hear it, but you should be able to pronounce it correctly if you see it in its written form. In English it is messed up both ways: you don't know how to spell it when you hear it, and don't know how to say it when see it. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
