Sounds That You Can/Can't Pronounce Easily

[Travis B.]

I can't pronounce [c ɟ ç ɟ] and I also can't pronounce uvulars and pharyngeals for the life of me, nor can I pronounce any sound that requires a subscript letter by its side that isn't an aspirated sound

You mentioned [ɟ] twice.

I presume they meant [ʝ] the second time.

[Herr Dunkel]

I can't pronounce voiced tenuis unnasalised clicks - they either come out as nasalised or breathy

[Bristel]

Any prenasalized clicks or sounds that aren't well described outside of dense technical speech.

[Maulrus]

Even as a native speaker, I get my /ɹ/ and my /w/ mixed up sometimes when speaking very quickly because my /ɹ/ is heavily labialized. It varies as to which it goes to, but usually I end up with [w] everywhere.

[2+3 clusivity]

/ʙ̥r̥͡ʀ̥͡/

[Haplogy]

/ʙ̥͡r̥͡ʀ̥/

http://vocaroo.com/i/s0ihVUJVXLAA
/ʙ̥͡r̥͡ʀ̥ ʙ̥͡r̥͡ʀ̥a aʙ̥͡r̥͡ʀ̥a aʙ̥͡r̥͡ʀ̥/
Am I doing it right?

[finlay]

[]

you should only ever use // if it's in the context of a particular language and it's theoretically distinct.

[Haplogy]

/ʙ̥͡r̥͡ʀ̥/
I'm not saying [ʙ̥͡r̥͡ʀ̥], it's closer to [ʙ̥͡r̥͡χˠ].

[finlay]

what language has the phoneme /ʙ̥͡r̥͡ʀ̥/? you can use // if and only if you can answer that question.

[2+3 clusivity]

what language has the phoneme /ʙ̥͡r̥͡ʀ̥/? you can use // if and only if you can answer that question.

(a) humor.

(b) while shit demon speech does not have that phoneme, I could make one up that involves such a sound as a phoneme.

(c) /ʙ̥͡r̥͡ʀ̥/: [ʙ̥͡r̥͡ʀ̥] ~ [ʙ̥͡r̥͡χˠ] in clusivitease.

[Karinta]

Pharyngeals are okay, but epiglottals? No way. No way can I say those. I can do regular, aspirated, glottalised, voiced, and nasalised clicks, but all those combination/uvular clicks in Juu and its relatives are impossible.

Vowels are mostly good, but like the OP, I have trouble distinguishing /o/ and /ɔ / as my native language is English.

[Nortaneous]

I have trouble distinguishing /o/ and /ɔ / as my native language is English.

wat

[o] is the vowel in 'goat' if you're sarah palin
[ɔ] is the vowel in 'caught' if you pronounce it differently than 'cot' and you're not from new jersey or boston

[Pinetree]

Pharyngeals are okay, but epiglottals? No way. No way can I say those. I can do regular, aspirated, glottalised, voiced, and nasalised clicks, but all those combination/uvular clicks in Juu and its relatives are impossible.

Vowels are mostly good, but like the OP, I have trouble distinguishing /o/ and /ɔ/ as my native language is English.

So, you can't tell the difference between "coat" and "caught?

I think you mean you can't tell the difference between /ɔ/ (caught) and /ɒ/ (cot).

I can't generally can't make that distinction, but I might have a length distinction (caught taking the longer vowel) in careful speech.

[Hallow XIII]

So, you can't tell the difference between "coat" and "caught?

"Door" and "caught" would be the more appropriate difference.

[Nortaneous]

No it wouldn't. He's American.

[Boşkoventi]

So, you can't tell the difference between "coat" and "caught?

"Door" and "caught" would be the more appropriate difference.

[dɔɚ]
[kʰɑt]

---

Is it really inconceivable that an American might have both the cot-caught and father-bother mergers? I do, and therefore have /A/ for all three sets. Besides which, American dialects that still have CAUGHT don't have [ɔ] for it anyway (more like [ɒ] or something, even aside from Boston or the South*).

* Southern dialects tend to have something like [ɑɔ̯] for CAUGHT.

A better example of [ɔ] would be words with "or", like "or, ore, pore", etc., or "ol", like "gold", "goal", "whole". Most dialects have something pretty close to [ɔ] before /r/, and most American dialects (as far as I can tell), have [ɔɫ] for /oʊl/ (and those that don't probably have [o] instead).

[Astraios]

I think you mean you can't tell the difference between /ɔ/ (caught) and /ɒ/ (cot).

I can't generally can't make that distinction

Listen to some Persian, you'll hear the difference.

[Travis B.]

I read that as meaning that the poster could not easily tell apart the phones [ɔ] and [o], but was mistakenly using slashes rather than brackets. This is because it does not appear that most Americans, for whom /ɔː/ not before /r/ has been lowered to [ɒ], actually contrast these. In my own case [ɔ] corresponds to the vowel in /ɔːr/ and [o] corresponds to /oʊ̯/, with /ɔː/ not before /r/ being [ɒ], so that the two do not contrast (and so I have a hard time telling them apart), and which I actually perceive as being allophones of a single phoneme /o/.

[jal]

Though when speaking with a GenAm accent I somehow intuitively know when to use [ɔ] or [ɑ] (or more likely, I've just memorized them from listening to GenAm speakers), I can't actually hear the difference between [ɔ] and [ɒ] listening to someone with a BrE accent (most likely because they both map to Dutch /ɔ/, whereas /ɔ/ and /ɑ/ are different Dutch phonemes), and most likely make mix them up once in a while when speaking with a BrE accent. More or less the same goes for [ɛ] and [æ] (which both map to Dutch /ɛ/), but there the distinction between GenAm and BrE doesn't help very much).


JAL

[ol bofosh]

What's BrE? Scrap that.

I think RP accent is closer to [o:] than [ɔ:] (even if they write the phoneme as /ɔ:/). Personally I have closer to [ɔ:] and /ɒ/ can be transcribed as [ɒ̝̽], so my /ɔ:/ and /ɒ/ are closer than in RP.

The other difference between /ɔ:/ /ɒ/ in RP (and my accent) is length.

Edit: for some reason editing posts seems all too frequent lately. I must have don't four done five changes to this.

[DePaw]

I can't hear the difference between /f/ and /θ/, but I can between /v/ and /ð/. As a consequence I will pronounce some words wrong, with 'f' or 'th' the wrong way round but I am consistent in which is used in particular words, that is I learnt some of them wrong but pronounce them how I learnt them.

Throne and birthday are examples were I learnt them wrong and pronounce 'th' as /f/. Frozen is an example of the other way around, 'f' as /θ/. Asking my mum for the computer game Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne years ago was very interesting

[ol bofosh]

There's nuffin wrong wiv that. It's feels quite natural to me. 'appy birfday, sunshine. 'ope you enjoyed Frozen Frones.

But yeah, /T/ for /f/ would seem a bit weird.

Throzen Frones. XD
What's your native language?

[Gulliver]

Throzen Frones. XD

Been there, done that