Talk:Anglophone pronunciation of foreign languages

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[edit] Sourcing

This page is coming along nicely. My main concern is that this page will become as unsourced as non-native pronunciations of English. I've got a book on Russian phonetics and I think I can give a good example of how I think we ought to source things. AEuSoes1 08:00, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Which dialect(s)?

The fact of the matter is that English dialects are different enough that different dialects of English will approach other languages differently and have different problems with phonemes. Should we limit our discussion to one particular dialect or a specific set of dialects or should we limit our discussion to features that occur only among most speakers of English. So most speakers may pronounce a language's rhotic as [ɹ] or [ɻ] while only speakers in a few dialects (like California English) will have difficulty with [ɔ] and Australian English is one of the few dialects that would have no difficulty with [ʉ]. AEuSoes1 08:00, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

You have got to remeber that foreign languages have dialects as well such as Parisian French, Québécois French, Alsantian French and Vaudois French. 159753 09:30, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but most students learn the "standard" form with very little regard to dialectal features until much later (if at all). Although I do recall an east-coast friend of mine learned Continental Spanish while I learned New World Spanish; so she speaks it with /θ/ and I do not. I link that to the fact that my teacher was of Mexican descent. AEuSoes1 09:45, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Likewise, most foreign students learn one of the two "standard" varieties of English, i.e. either Midwestern American English or Southeastern British English. Less common dialects like Southern American English or Australian English are largely ignored in ESL classes. 161.24.19.82 19:19, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I believe all comparisons regarding pronunciation should be based on the language standards that are most often taught to foreign learners. In the case of Spanish, that would be Castilian Spanish (as opposed to Rioplatense or Mexican Spanish). In the case of French, the natural choice would be Parisian French, as opposed e.g. to Quebec French. English poses an additional difficulty though in the sense that two different pronunciation standards are actually used in EFL classes, namely General American English and Received Pronunciation (RP) British English. Likewise, in the case of Portuguese, foreign learners may be taught to speak either with a Brazilian or an European Portuguese accent (which, like General American and RP, may differ considerably from each other). Whenever the distinction between different standards/dialects is relevant to the argument, an explicit reference should be added to clarify which variety of the language has been considered.

[edit] Finnish tuli/tulli

I think you have a problem here. Tuli is pronuced TOO-li, tulli is TOOL-li and tuuli is TOOOO-li, I should know as I am learning the language. 159753 09:30, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're getting at. The only difference that I made in the pronunciations from what you put was that I decided not to split up the geminated /l/ with a stress mark. But since we're talking about Finnish, the phrases hyvää päivää, nimeni on Jaakko and terve, nime on Jaakko should be translated in the article. AEuSoes1 09:45, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
In Finnish, you generally don't pronounce double consonants, except when it is a suffix like -ssa/-ssä (in) or -lla/-llä (on). Thus each consonant is pronounced separately, kuka (how) is pronounced ku-ka, but kukka (flower) is pronounced kuk-ka. Hyvää päivää, nimeni on Jaakko means “hello, my name is Jaakko" (the Finnish version of James). 159753 10:06, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
According to the Finnish phonology page, nearly every consonant has some sort of doubled form. I still don't get what your grievance is. AEuSoes1 22:44, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spanish possible additions

I don't know how many of these are appropriate, since I don't know how many English speakers have the same Spanish problems that I do.

  • This is already on the page, but I suffer from gender mix-ups sometimes. (For reasons unknown to me I like to think I tend to err towards the feminine.)
  • My Spanish class has generally remembered to pronounce final /e/, but who knows?
  • I've heard the tap "r" mispronounced as a [d]. I think this is because the former is an allophone of the latter in English.
  • I personally suffer from a hypercorrection of the first two problems where I don't pronounce [x], but it tend to be word-initially.
  • The rare word-final [x] (the only example I can think of right now is reloj meaning "clock" or "watch") tends to either not be pronounced or indicated by what I think is an aspiration of the preceding vowel. (I think I suffer from both of them about equally.)
  • When learning, I've heard of orthography mix-ups where [x] is pronounced as an English /j/. For me this tended to happen with Spanish soft /g/, but now it tends to be rare for either one.
  • We Anglophones have a bad habit (so bad that I think it's already on the page) of varying the Spanish vowels.
  • The Spanish /ñ/ isn't pronounced exactly correct. It tends to be either [nj] or palatal <n>.
  • As Aeusoes1 mentioned earlier on the page, we may be taught to use [s] instead of [θ].
  • We might make /b/ and /v/ distinct when it's actually the same sound in Spanish, which depending on the English dialect is [β] (I think), which doesn't exist in English; [b]; or [v].

Feel free to comment or add to the list. 18:46, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually, /b/ and /v/ are equal as far as pronunciation goes, but that does not mean that there's only one way to pronounce them; depending on where they stand in a word, they can be pronounced as [β] or as [b] (not sure whether the latter symbol is the correct one, my IPA knowledge is limited). —Nightstallion (?) Seen this already? 07:40, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
Two additions I made were removed rather than edited, which in this context seems inappropriate. The first deals with the problem English speakers have of reducing vowels in unstressed syllables to [ə] or, less commonly, to [ɪ]. I think this should be included as should the examples to clarify this phenemenon. The other is addition ws to include the IPA symbols for the fricative allophones of /b/ /d/ /g/ in syllable-final (rather than word-final) and intervocalic position.s These are, respectively, [β], [ð], and either [γ] or [ɰ]. I do not think these IPA symbols should be removed since many people won't automatically know, for example, what a frivative allophone of /b/ would be. The total removal was justified by the comment "this is not an instructional guide." While that might justify the removal of some of the advice on how to practice removing a non-native accent, it is not germane to the above-mentioned material all of which, I believe, should remain in the article.Interlingua 23:08, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
I removed them because I associated all the information with the instructional tone of your additions. Although it may be a little redundant, you are right that the information is appropriate. For future reference, though, <γ> is not the same thing as <ɣ>. AEuSoes1 00:45, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
That's right. Thanks, I was sloppy. I knew the <γ> didn't look right and wanted to be sure not to confuse it with <ɤ> but ended up not choosing the correct symbol, <ɣ>. A question or two, AEuSoes1. Aren't these allophones fricatives, rather than approximants? The only approximant is [ɰ], which in many dialect is, along with [ɣ], an allphone for /g/. I think you've removed the approximant [ɰ] several times from this article, but isn't that one of the ways /g/ us pronounced intervocally? Second, we've both reverted several times on whether the fricativazation happens in word-final or syllable-final positions. It actually seems we've both been wrong. It would be better to say that /b/, /d/, and /g/ are always realized as fricatives [β], [ð] and [ɣ], respecively, EXCEPT after a nasal (/m/ /n/) or in utterance-initial (not just word-initial) position. And for /d/ there is the additional rule that it is not realized as [ð] after laterals /l/. This is the explanation given in Barrutia, Richard and Armin Schwegler. Fonética y fonologia españoles. John Wiley, 2nd Edition, , 1994, pp. 116-121.Interlingua 18:01, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


According to what I've read, the allophones are approximants. What makes things confusing is that the symbols for fricatives are used for approximants, often sans diacritics. I have heard native speakers use fricatives, and this may have to do with careful speech. Although a velar approximant is technically represented with <ɰ>, my understanding of the convention is to use <ɣ> with a lowering diacritic; this is more for consistancy's sake since the two represent the exact same phone.
As for the distribution, your source backs up the Spanish phonology page's explanation. AEuSoes1 01:00, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

On this side of the world, Western and Southwestern US, in the Spanish that we encounter and try to use [x] is generally pronounced as an English /j/ as is g before e or i. That is to say, since my knowledge of IPA is so limited as to be non-existant, The x in Mexico; the g in gentes, Angel and Rangel; and the j in juntos and Javier are all pronounced as an Englsh h.

Also, just to make matters more confused than they already are, there is no [θ]. Final d is either a stop or nothing (a cessation of sound) depending on the context and the speaker. Even people from countries that claim to speak Castilian rather than Spanish have no [θ].

JimCubb 00:32, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Accusative vs. Dative

In the section on Finnish, what does that distinction between accusative and dative mean? As far as I know Finnish does not have dative case. Did the writer mean the distinction between accusative and partitive or something else? Ossi 10:13, 18 April 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Phonetic Phobic

I stumbled across this page when viewing Special:Recentchanges and all the // stuff threw me for a loop; until I hovered over it and saw the title attribute from the span. It seems that adding a template similar to {{SpecialCharsNote}} or at least a link to IPA_chart_for_english at the top of the page would be helpful to non-linguists who happen by this article and wonder what sound [ɹ] is. MeekMark 02:56, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

It's true that the symbols can be daunting, especially at the start. This is true both for the symbols for sounds (ə, θ, ŋ, æ, ʘ, ɤ, ɛ, ʍ) and also the various framing marks which are used to show just what the inside text is supposed to mean: < >, / /, [ ], | |. AEuSoes1 has been especially careful in the use of these symbols, and that's a good thing. Briefly, the different framing marks are used for three purpose. Wikipedia has a good summary of these conventions in the aritcle on phonetic transription.
  1. < >. These are angle brackets or chevrons and are used to enclose the actual orthography (writing or spelling) and not the transcription of it.
  2. / /. These are slashes and are used to enclose phonemes.
  3. [ ]. These are brackets and are used to enclose phonetic transcriptions.
  4. | |. These are pipes and are used for morphological (word) analysis.Interlingua 17:44, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spanish question

It says in the article that "In unstressed syllables, English speakers are very likely to merge /i/ and /e/ to [ɪ]: pintar /pin'tar/ becomes [pɪn'taɹ].Would this result in two otherwise distinct Spanish words sounding the same? Although I have taken three or four years of Spanish (depending on what you go by--I took Spanish in seventh and eighth grade, which is the first and second half of first-year Spanish respectively), nothing comes to immediate mind about when this would be a major problem. --67.10.111.125 22:08, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, it would create mergers. I never noticed it myself, but it makes a bit of sense. If it's too objectionable, we can either take it out or alter the language to make its tendency not so strong. AEuSoes1 03:58, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
If you can come up with a merger, put it and translate the words. [Edit at 23:42, 3 July 2006 (UTC): Well, translate it if appropriate. I don't know if a translation would be appropriate or not.] If you can't, reword it so it's not as strong. It does happen, so in my opinion it should stay in some form, but examples would be nice. 67.10.111.125 23:38, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Portuguese

I removed the statement that " final 'e' is always silent in Portuguese " because that is obviously not true. Final 'e' is pronounced as /i/ in Brazilian Portuguese and /ɨ/ in European Portuguese. I also added a reference to the difficulty Anglophones have with Portuguese nasal vowels. 201.52.32.9 00:16, 6 August 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Flowers

I changed the gender/number/case agreement example "the green flowers" (Sp. las flores verdes, Port. as flores verdes, German die grüne Blumen/ den grünen Blumen, French les fleurs vertes) to "the red flowers" ((Sp. las flores rojas, Port. as flores vermelhas, German die roten Blumen/ den roten Blumen, French les fleurs rouges). The reason for the change is that flowers are not usually green, but rather red, yellow, white etc. Please do not change back. 200.177.30.226 10:32, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I opposed an earlier change because I rather like using the same examples for multiple languages. Changing all of them is fine. AEuSoes1 11:41, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed the following from Spanish section

I removed these from the Spanish section because they are grammar issues and the article's title distinctly says pronunciation:

(Snipped for brevity as I have now put the information back.  See [1])

These deserve mention somewhere, but they are grammatical, not pronuncation. –Andyluciano 22:49, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Nevermind, I see now that other languages contain such information. My mistake. Maybe, though, this article should be renamed or split then? –Andyluciano 22:51, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
I wouldn't mind a rename. An article split would be unwarranted since both the phonology and the other aspects of grammar fit into the same general phenomenon of second language transfer.
Also, If we rename this page then that might lead us to also rename non-native pronunciations of English in a similar fashion. So what would some good alternate titles be? AEuSoes1 20:06, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
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