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What ’easy’ language do you find hard? | ||
Tags: Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3895 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 17 of 134 19 May 2014 at 3:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm by no means an expert on French, but to me "monde" sounds nothing like "moan" (nasal not, "moan" has a diphtong) and I've never heard it pronounced with a silent D in France. But, then again, if there are two syllables, the D cannot be silent so maybe that's not quite what you meant? 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4461 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 18 of 134 19 May 2014 at 3:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's a bit hard to make an analogy since ɔ̃ does not exist in English and neither does
pure "ô" in most dialects. Quebec "monde" typically sounds a little closer to English "moan" since the "on" is more open. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6393 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 19 of 134 19 May 2014 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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As for other Romance languages, they have similar issues too but at least the writing is generally much closer to what's pronounced.
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| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 3828 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 20 of 134 19 May 2014 at 4:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thai (not pronunciation)-the grammar is full of dropping stuff that I have to rework how I converse. Pragmatics
plays a huge role in discussion and I have to infer or listen for the right intonation. The sentence "not tree tall walk 3 minute" can mean hundreds of things but I must be ready to know what is meant. The lack of derivational methods means much is said through periphrasis or an Indic loanword too. And the lack of different word types, it is pretty much "nouns" and "stuff with nouns". Edited by Stolan on 19 May 2014 at 4:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jpmtl Diglot Groupie Canada Joined 3798 days ago 44 posts - 115 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 21 of 134 19 May 2014 at 8:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Monde is pronounced exactly as it is written. Or rather mond', with the d pronounced (ie, not pronounced as 'mon' or 'moan').
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| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4086 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 22 of 134 19 May 2014 at 8:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I guess that I mean that a Hispanophone, Lusophone, or Italophone would probably
pronounce «monde» as /mohn-day/ similar to an English "monday", pronounce the "ts" in «escargots«, pronounce «fils» like English "feels", «Paris» exactly how it si spelt, i.e. /pa-rees/, «table» as "ta-blay" and not even expect that they could have silent letters in those words. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4852 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 23 of 134 19 May 2014 at 9:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
Why would they pronounce [ei] and not just [e]? [ts] does not exist in Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5024 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 24 of 134 19 May 2014 at 10:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't think "monde" is a particularly good example, because it's perfectly predictable. On the contrary, I'd use monde as an example if I wanted to show how predictable French spelling is. If I were going to stress the unpredictability, I'd mention:
1. The circumflexes seem to have, according to most accounts, lost their function. That means you simply have to memorize where they are. 2. Consonants are geminated in spelling but not in speech. Again, blunt memorization is required. 3. There's not a one to one correspondence between spellings and nasal vowels. From speech you often can't tell if a vowel is followed by an "m" or an "n," since both nasalize the vowel and disappear. The worst is the "en" vowel, which can be spelled ien, en, em, ym, yn, in, and im. 4. Also in the prestige dialect, a's can be bright or dark, but it's tough to tell where. 5. Elision comes with a complicated series of rules. And there's more. Edited by ScottScheule on 19 May 2014 at 10:33pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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