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Today I learnt (thank you marconatrix for the link): I'm unable to distinguish an alveopalatal lateral from /j/. Seriously, can't hear any lateral element there.

Salmoneus wrote:Today I learnt (thank you marconatrix for the link): I'm unable to distinguish an alveopalatal lateral from /j/. Seriously, can't hear any lateral element there.

Try as I might, I can't distinguish Spanish /ʎ/ from /j/. I know many Spaniards don't pronounce them differently, but my girlfirend says she makes a difference, but I never hear it. In contrast, the Catalan /ʎ/ (front alveolo-palatal) I can distinguish from /j/ (i.e. I hear the lateral element).

I have now tried to refer to a chair as 'seza' and rice as 'vary', because apparently it wasn't bad enough to constantly insert Ojibwe words into Japanese; I must also add Malagasy. The descent into gibberish continues.

It helps to learn one language at a time.

I never got the language mixing thing personally.

Since learning Spanish, my default model for foreign languages is Spanish. That means every time I try to construct French or Catalan sentences, some Spanish grammar slips in, usually the use of prepositions.

sirdanilot wrote:It helps to learn one language at a time.

I never got the language mixing thing personally.

Well, everybody's brain functions differently. It's only happened to me a handful of times, and I have to switch between 3 or 4 different languages pretty frequently, but other people mix languages a whole lot quicker. These people generally speak more 'freely' than I do, though. I don't like using structures or phrases until I feel comfortable with them.

I just end up pronouncing everything as Spanish-like as possible... it's terrible. I think because Spanish was the first non-English language I was exposed to as a child, my brain somehow got the idea that this must just be how non-English languages are pronounced, so it still tries to apply it to every other language I see.

But, then, I've never reached anywhere approaching proficiency in any other languages, so maybe if I did so my brain would finally get the point!

Risla wrote:I have now tried to refer to a chair as 'seza' and rice as 'vary', because apparently it wasn't bad enough to constantly insert Ojibwe words into Japanese; I must also add Malagasy. The descent into gibberish continues.

I asked a Spanish friend of mine "¿Tienes red?" recently. I intended to ask her if she was scared and instead asked her if she had a net. Turns out I was thinking of the Swedish word rädd and should have been looking for the Spanish word which I, again, can't think of. My brain is telling me it's mierda (lol) and I know it's something that sounds similar.

Just before posting ... I think it's miedo ...

Imralu wrote:

Risla wrote:I have now tried to refer to a chair as 'seza' and rice as 'vary', because apparently it wasn't bad enough to constantly insert Ojibwe words into Japanese; I must also add Malagasy. The descent into gibberish continues.

I asked a Spanish friend of mine "¿Tienes red?" recently. I intended to ask her if she was scared and instead asked her if she had a net. Turns out I was thinking of the Swedish word rädd and should have been looking for the Spanish word which I, again, can't think of. My brain is telling me it's mierda (lol) and I know it's something that sounds similar.

Just before posting ... I think it's miedo ...

Yep, it's miedo.

Another linguistic gripe. In theory, I know Spanish and French phonemics well enough to pronounce them as they should be. However, I'm not able to avoid the influence of my native accent. I can tell you I'm not speaking with my native English accent (well, technically speaking), and the phonetic transcription would probably come out resembling Spanish phonemics more than English, and yet I still sound English. My girlfriend describes it as un acentazo (mega accent). I know I don't control the prosody, and sometimes the consonants and vowels slip into more familiar territory, but I think I make a reasonable approximation of the accent, more than some other anglophones I hear.

For instance, my girlfriend pronounce puedo as [ˈpwe̞.ðo̞], and a reasonable transcription of my pronounciation wouldn't be far off (no aspirated /p/ for instance, though a dental [d] would make an appearance). But I still sound English even if I don't rely on typically English phonemes.

Mind you, when my girlfriend tries to mock my accent, she's probably closer to mine than hers in French or Spanish, yet still sounds foreign.

sirdanilot wrote:It helps to learn one language at a time.

I never got the language mixing thing personally.

I'm not currently studying Ojibwe and haven't been for two years, and I actually was never learning Malagasy (it was my Field Methods language).

Risla wrote:

sirdanilot wrote:It helps to learn one language at a time.

I never got the language mixing thing personally.

I'm not currently studying Ojibwe and haven't been for two years, and I actually was never learning Malagasy (it was my Field Methods language).

Oh what fun field methods !

We did a west-african language, Anyi, for our field methods class.

I've always wondered about "field methods". I'd assumed there would be handbooks, guides, or at least class notes, but when I've searched the internet I've never found anything. Is there anything you can point me to, or is it simply a black art taught only to initiates?

marconatrix wrote:I've always wondered about "field methods". I'd assumed there would be handbooks, guides, or at least class notes, but when I've searched the internet I've never found anything. Is there anything you can point me to, or is it simply a black art taught only to initiates?

Have you tried adding the magic keywords "linguistic" & "pdf"?

M Mira wrote: Have you tried adding the magic keywords "linguistic" & "pdf"?

Well obviously, otherwise I'd get 1001 sites about botany, geology, archaeology ...

Yeah I can't speak French anymore without dropping Arabic words in, or rather pausing a lot because the process is usually try and form sentence > remember word > get halfway through sentence > realise next word is actually arabic > stop to remember french word > rinse and repeat

If it makes you feel any better, I STILL can't distinguish between /H/ and /h/ in Arabic when people pronounce them with emphasis - it's generally fine when people are speaking normally, but if I don't hear it properly and ask for confirmation people massively overpronounce it and /h/ just ends up sounding exactly like /H/ to me. Also my ability to hear velarisation varies enormously from accent to accent - I can hear it in Levantine, but with most Egyptians I can't detect any difference between s and ṣ.

I have never heard of difficulties in perceiving the Haa sound, only with pronouncing it. When I did Arabic most students couldn't make the pharyngeal sounds, only those of Moroccan descent (who already could speek moroccan arabic and were learning fusHa) and me could do it. After 1.5 years or so the others started being able to properly pronounce it.

sirdanilot wrote:I have never heard of difficulties in perceiving the Haa sound, only with pronouncing it. When I did Arabic most students couldn't make the pharyngeal sounds, only those of Moroccan descent (who already could speek moroccan arabic and were learning fusHa) and me could do it. After 1.5 years or so the others started being able to properly pronounce it.

For me it's always been easy to pronounce (it's close enough to a voiceless 3ayn) but more difficult to distinguish from /h/ when people are trying to emphasise the difference. Normally /h/ is easy enough to distinguish from /H/ but when pronounced loudly with a lot of emphasis in an attempt to clarify the two sound too similar for me to confidently know which one is which.

marconatrix wrote:

M Mira wrote: Have you tried adding the magic keywords "linguistic" & "pdf"?

Well obviously, otherwise I'd get 1001 sites about botany, geology, archaeology ...

That's odd, because I found two of them on page 1:
http://www.romanistik.uni-freiburg.de/p ... n_2007.pdf
(a 20-page manual)

https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bits ... istics.pdf
(an entire book, Field Linguistics: A Guide to Linguistic Field Work by William J. Samarin)

M Mira wrote:

marconatrix wrote:

M Mira wrote: Have you tried adding the magic keywords "linguistic" & "pdf"?

Well obviously, otherwise I'd get 1001 sites about botany, geology, archaeology ...

That's odd, because I found two of them on page 1:
http://www.romanistik.uni-freiburg.de/p ... n_2007.pdf
(a 20-page manual)

https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bits ... istics.pdf
(an entire book, Field Linguistics: A Guide to Linguistic Field Work by William J. Samarin)

Many thanks, that should keep me out of trouble for quite a while

I really don't know why I couldn't find anything myself. It was a while ago (but not years and years ago) so maybe they just weren't online then. Anyway I'm very much obliged to you for those links.

I wanted to say Happy Birthday to my Polish friend in his own language. Boy, did I ruin that. Mega consonant cluster! Pfshksts... or something, just to begin with. And I was still told I was missing /s/ somewhere. I'm glad I don't have to learn it... yet.

ol bofosh wrote:I wanted to say Happy Birthday to my Polish friend in his own language. Boy, did I ruin that. Mega consonant cluster! Pfshksts... or something, just to begin with. And I was still told I was missing /s/ somewhere. I'm glad I don't have to learn it... yet.

This is what google translate says:

wszystkiego najlepszego z okazji urodzin

vsistkyego, that's not that hard now is it.

what I find much harder for polish is the different types of sibilants. this is also the reason why I couldn't learn Chinese. for me there is just one type of /sh/ like sound and that's it. well the retroflex is also doable with some effort but not hte other one (chinese has three different ones).

If you can't do consonant clusters don't try to learn Dutch.

For example a bus stop in my town is named 'Oegstgeest-Abtspoelweg' [uχstˈχeɪst ˈɑptspulwɛχ]

I mean, yeah, we do have things like 'kerstster' and 'herfststorm', but I think Polish is a little more challenging when it comes to clusters.

din wrote:I mean, yeah, we do have things like 'kerstster' and 'herfststorm', but I think Polish is a little more challenging when it comes to clusters.

Yep, primarily because it seems like Polish clusters include things that normally don't cluster in, say, English and odd clusters that begin the word rather than being surrounded by some flavor of vowel. (Also, Polish orthography just looks pretty intimidating in some ways.)

When speaking French, one of my big problems is actually rhythm and stress, especially for long words where English rhythm patterns would normally induce vowel reduction that French doesn't have. That said, I've been told that my accent when speaking French is odd (I've been told it's German, which makes a little bit of sense, but...). On the other hand, with German, due to picking up on German by living in Bavaria, I apparently speak with a Bavarian accent and have the other small problem of getting confused by non-Bavarian accents, especially with regards to <r> (which is /r/ in Bavaria but /ʀ/ elsewhere, a sound which codes to me as being French rather than German).

sirdanilot wrote:If you can't do consonant clusters don't try to learn Dutch.

For example a bus stop in my town is named 'Oegstgeest-Abtspoelweg' [uχstˈχeɪst ˈɑptspulwɛχ]

That doesn't seem so hard, if you can separate it wth a syllable. [pts.p] would be the easiest for me.

The Polish phrase I was told began with around four consonants in a combination that my English mouth just couldn't quite do with breaking it up into syllables.