Re: I'm finally asking (re French)

On Nov 12, 10:47 am, Harlan Messinger
<hmessinger.removet...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
mb wrote:
On Nov 12, 4:27 am, Harlan Messinger
<hmessinger.removet...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
mb wrote:
On Nov 11, 10:38 pm, Harlan Messinger
...
English-speakers who haven't studied the matter aren't
explicitly aware of the glide that distinguishes our vowel from the
similar-sounding one in those languages. In informal phonetic
representations, the "y" in "ey" isn't standing on its own to represent
the glide.
All right, then someone who should know better, teacher or book
publisher, is teaching them crap and should be stopped.
What difference does it make what convention is used as long as it's a
commonly understood convention?
Commonly understood by Anglos (speaking of the glide).
Yes. And? Is everyone schooled in international conventions? Can you
recite every ISO standard by heart?

The only convention you surely have to shoot for is the one that helps
you being understood by the speakers of the language you are learning.
We aren't talking ISO, but an intrusive glide.

Worthless here,
where the aim should be to be within the common convention of French.
You're putting the cart ahead of the horse. She didn't even know how to
pronounce "cas", and you're being snooty because she didn't use some
internationally correct way to indicate pronunciation. Basically, you're
being a jerk.

"Internationally correct"? Give me a break: Is the aim of learning
languages being understood by people of your own mother tongue? My
beef is with the howling incompetence of language teaching at the most
basic level (The final s of cas is not a problem).

I was unaware that the aim of learning languages was to meet some
obligation to become an expert on their pronunciation and in the use of
IPA before daring to begin asking questions about them while you're in
the room. In fact, if you were consistent, you'd be appalled that she
didn't ask her questions about French *in* French rather than English.

Either you aren't reading or I have a serious problem with expressing
myself:

What I am saying is that

1. The way you do it, they can learn as much language as they want but
*they * will * not * be * understood by a majority of the other-
language speakers, while a two-minute correction at the start may
avoid the problem.

If your goal is to produce people who, when trying to speak French,
are routinely answered "Je ne comprends pas l'anglais", go ahead

2. IPA be damned, all you got to do is to recommend an [e] that will
fit within the wide range of the other-language phoneme (like "e as in
bed etc) and call their attention that the [e] of bed doesn't have a
glide (and that the glide makes it hard to understand)

3. This is pretty basic: If you don't instruct a learner about it in
the very first lesson I'd call you a lousy teacher, so we are very far
away from "expert in pronunciation": All I ask is understandability
(and I don't care if USAns understand that French as long as the Fr.-
mother-tongue speakers cannot)

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Im finally asking (re French)
    ... explicitly aware of the glide that distinguishes our vowel from the ... similar-sounding one in those languages. ... commonly understood convention? ... In fact, if you were consistent, you'd be appalled that she didn't ask her questions about French *in* French rather than English. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Im finally asking (re French)
    ... explicitly aware of the glide that distinguishes our vowel from the ... commonly understood convention? ... you being understood by the speakers of the language you are learning. ... The aim of "phonetic respelling" is to give the speaker of the ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Im finally asking (re French)
    ... explicitly aware of the glide that distinguishes our vowel from the ... commonly understood convention? ... you being understood by the speakers of the language you are learning. ... where the aim should be to be within the common convention of French. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Warter, warter everywhere
    ... glide clusters in English--or in any other language?) ... vowel and /r/ for the glide. ... And how to distinguish the vowel from the glide? ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Im finally asking (re French)
    ... explicitly aware of the glide that distinguishes our vowel from the ... commonly understood convention? ... not as a vowel followed by an aspiration. ... And what you need is just an understandable single sound of e in best, ...
    (sci.lang)