Re: History of French

From: Mxsmanic (mxsmanic_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 09/17/04 

Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 05:00:15 +0200

Herman Rubin writes:

> My children could not make the German umlaut sounds until I
> told them how. A short explanation and a small amount of
> practice sufficed; how many hundreds of tries does a child
> have to make to produce a speech sound?

I can teach adult learners to produce any sound in English in a few
minutes, without an accent. The difficulty is not in producing the
sounds, but in doing so automatically, so that the articulation needed
to pronounce them correctly is not a conscious mental distraction. Most
students are surprised to discover that they can actually pronounce
these sounds without an accent. It's easy, though, once the manner of
producing them is explictly explained to them (instead of "listen and
repeat").

Children learn by practicing a sound thousands and thousands of times,
until others stop ridiculing the way they say it. That could work for
adults, too, but usually time constraints and social conventions make it
impractical. Why do these things the hard way when easier ways are
available? 

-- 
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Megami71
    ... which is always pronounced with the slurred sh' sound. ... almost certainly would not pronounce the syllable ... And that would make the Nanoha A's manga a derivative work of the ... I hit the reply button too soon, or forget to snip. ...
    (rec.arts.anime.misc)
  • Re: The sound /s/
    ... >> I tend to think that the sound of s is slightly different in each language. ... for the resulting sound to resemble an English /S/ ever so slightly". ... pronounce /s/ as in English. ... to devoice final consonants completely, ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: My HORRIBLE Gig
    ... What a HORRIBLE performance! ... First shit is the speaker. ... there I was producing sounds that I myself hated to hear! ... than the fact that I actually sound rubbish. ...
    (rec.music.classical.guitar)
  • Re: Italian versus Spanish
    ... You pronounce the U in "guarda civil" but I ... No idea of how the /S/ sound is written in spanish, ... subject of equivalent graphical conventions in many languages, ... S is like in french or english: ...
    (rec.travel.europe)
  • Re: My HORRIBLE Gig
    ... First shit is the speaker. ... there I was producing sounds that I myself hated to hear! ... When was the last time you play in public and just hate the sound you ... production was so unconvincing, 'cause I just didn't know what to ...
    (rec.music.classical.guitar)