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Fixing a Beginner’s Pronounciation

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11 messages over 2 pages: 1
Cavesa
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 Message 9 of 11
10 December 2014 at 12:22am | IP Logged 
Well, that is where FSI and some other resources are different. The Assimil's I've
seen (can't speak about any Italian one so far) didn't have a good enough
pronunciation chapter. They catch up with most students during the first lessons with
the transcript and audio, I believe, but the chapter per se tends not to be something
awesome.

And another factor is that even a mediocre pronunciation chapter (most pronunciation
chapters I've ever seen in courses were like that) are boring, annoying and with too
few exemples. It is annoying to stick with them as long as you need, in my opinion.
Perhaps she just needs more practice of the basics but with a different material. The
FSI approach to teaching pronunciation seemed awesome to me. It was pretty intensive,
demanding but less boring than the standard pronunciation chapters anywhere else.

I wasn't suggesting learning lyrics by heart (at least for now). Just more exposure
through music and the opportunity to hear more exemples with the lyrics easily
available to read together with the song (and later perhaps sing along), that could
help, in my opinion.

It is surely possible the trouble lies purely in more sessions/repetitions being
needed. As I said, I trully believe most people do not stick with the pronunciation
chapters for long enough. Either they cover for the hurry later or they keep making
mistakes for the rest of their lives. If you find a way to make those repetitions
bearable, it could be a solution with no more tricks needed.
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garyb
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 Message 10 of 11
12 December 2014 at 9:38pm | IP Logged 
There are pronunciation problems and there are pronunciation problems... This isn't a
case of subtle things like alveolar instead of dental consonants or pronouncing a
vowel too open; it's getting very basic stuff wrong. "ci", "ce", "chi" and "che" are
always pronounced a certain way, the opposite from what an English speaker might
expect, so it sounds like she just needs to learn that particular rule instead of
pronouncing them the English way. For many people, pronunciation is something that has
to be explained, and they can't just pick it up from listening. I cringe whenever I
hear about how Pimsleur, for example, is "good for pronunciation".

FSI Italian has a bad reputation for a reason, yet I found that the first few chapters
explained important aspects of the pronunciation, including che/ce etc., very well.
Other than that I'm struggling to find any half-decent resources. Most "Italian
pronunciation for English speakers" lists that I've found just don't explain things
very well.
3 persons have voted this message useful



tarvos
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 Message 11 of 11
13 December 2014 at 12:26am | IP Logged 
Pronunciation to an extent is picked up by osmosis, but this is only a sensible course of
action when you know the basics of how to pronounce things in a foreign language, and
more importantly, how it correlates to orthography.

There is also the problem that English-language manuals seem to think Anglophones need
their hand held when learning pronunciation, when it doesn't exactly help them. Ci is ci
and you can learn to pronounce it. Maybe not perfectly, but more than close enough.


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