mothwing | German EFL learner homophones

I'm curious, Aix, did you mean "thought" or "sought"? Is there really a Midwestern variety where "th" and "s" turn interchangeable?

I'd say exaggerating to the extreme rather than faking, but yeah, I find it hard to believe that she really can't tell the difference - I get it when it's hard for her to produce the respective sounds, but that doesn't really explain her indifference to vowel lengths - and we do have those in German. Teehaitches are a different matter, obviously.

Also, it might be the context, but she seems to be able to deal with these words just fine when used in a sentence, so something does seem to get processed there, but I'm guessing she's not aware enough of that to reproduce those sounds she processes, because she might hear and understand them, but something's getting lost in the process.

Don't be so aggressive, mkay? Thx.

Well, the statement "I just don't get how anyone can't do this or that as well as I can" is an act of aggression in itself. It is an act of elevating yourself over others at their expense. In this case, these "others" are learners of English as a second language, who were probably not as privileged as you in terms of how good their lessons were, how frequent their linguistic input, how accessible English media ot them, etc.

So that's what I was reacting to, really.

Ah, interesting. Her use of context knowledge must be better than mine then.
What I was thinking of when using the Swedish example was my perceiving "y" and "u" as two different kinds of our "ü", really, without actually being able to perceive them as distinctive phonemes. That is, I heard that they were different, but they were allophones to me, so it took me a while to find out which quality I was looking for in order to distinguish the two sounds.
It's quite an interesting process, really.
With "s" and "th", I think, German learners are basically taught to associate the more foreign-sounding of the two phonemes with the grapheme "th". And if you practice that over and over again, at some point, you can hear it.
This referring to the act of learning, of course, where instinctive language acquisition fails for some reason.

Sorry, I meant sought. Though with my particular accent, certain consonants do get dropped, namely consonants at the end of words. Things are very fast and clipped, with hard r's and very nasal. If you've ever heard a Minnesota or "Yooper" accent, that's pretty close, but a straight Michigander accent is a bit pulled back. Watch clips of the movie "Escanaba in da Moonlight" and you'll hear what I mean by Yooper accent. The movie (and play it's based on) is set in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, also known as the "U.P." from which we get "Yooper." It's a fun accent to listen to.

Those with a lisp turn s's into th's, but that's not really an accent, it's a speech impediment.

You know what I'm reacting to? The constant ridiculous assumption from all sides that I have to be all PC in all comments, all the time. It pisses me off, okay? And I'd appreciate if you'd just NOT engage in conversations with me on LJ. THANK you.

NOW I was aggressive, see the difference?

Context as well as the fact that she can understand people, so she must be able to process the difference on some level - she seems to know that people don't "have swords about the war on Iraq", for instance. And I get your Swedish example, but ð, θ, s and z are hardly allophones in German, are they? o.O Unless you're speech is impaired, and I'm pretty certain that people can tell the difference between those.

That kind of direct instruction you mention isn't foolproof, though, either, because it trains you to expect to hear certain things even if they're not there instead of training you to copy sounds the natives are making.
Fun fact: for the first two years I thought that "laugh" was pronounced with a kind of super-special θ rather than an f. I pronounced it by placing the tip of my tongue on my lower lip and my upper teeth between the two and got a mangled-sounding θʰ. Even though I must have heard my teacher and other learners pronounce a completely different sound countless times, that's how I had understood her instruction as to how to form that weird and alien sound, so I stuck with it. I could tell that there was a difference between how I and she pronounced that sound, and I knew I wasn't getting it right, but it took a while for me to figure out that it was just an "f", plain and simple.
So, while different approaches work for different students, I'm not sure this one'd do her so much good for her production. I think trying to make a meaningful difference is what really drove that point home for her here.

Hoi. To be fair, I'm also part of that particular ring to this conversation. I think she was defending most German EFL learners who get this right. I know why you read it that way and I did, too, but I was the one who said the thing about "not buying" things.

Ah, that makes sense. *lol*
Hey, when people turn "cot" and "caught" into homophones, isn't that a stereotypical feature of Canadian speech, though the entire West seems to do it, too? I seem to remember learning about it in one of my many language classes.
Yeah, a lisp is a speech impediment, but it's the only shape where you get a "th" sound in German, so it makes for a good comparison in the EFL classroom. Everyone knows what a lisp sounds like, but many younger students don't encounter much English up to the point when they learn it at school. Very unlike in countries where the language exists as a Lingua Franca, of course.

Yeah, all the better. Whatever works for her, of course.

I know that "th" and "s" _can_ be used interchangeably without changing the meaning of the word in German, can they not? Because we don't have the sound, I'd expect there exist no minimal pairs like "sieben" and "thieben" or "Bus" and "Buth". I am not sure about my terminology here, though.

Ich habe nichts mit irgendwelchen Fights zu tun, die du mit Leuten über political correctness gehabt haben magst. Lass deine Wut bitte nicht an mir aus.

Und nein, ich sehe keinen Unterschied. Genau deshalb habe ich auf dein Posting geantwortet. Ich erwarte nicht, dass alle Kommentare, die ich auf LJ lese politically correct sind. Ich erwarte, dass ich mich beim Browsen des LJs meiner Frau(!) nicht ständig mit Gedankengängen wie "well, I don't know why OTHERS aren't cool enough for this" auseinandersetzen muss. Was in deinen Postings einfach recht häufig vorkommt. Das ist nicht böse gemeint, es nervt nur einfach.
So, und jetzt lass uns mal wieder runterkommen. Auf eine Unfreundlichkeit hingewiesen werden ist nicht schön, das weiß ich, aber es muss ja nun möglich sein, mit einer solchen Kritik umzugehen ohne gleich in die Luft zu fliegen.

Absolutely. And I stand by what I said. This kind of "expressing a lack of understanding", especially if repeated or emphasised on a permanent basis, is an act of making you feel good about yourself (not you in particular, people in general) through pointing out others' shortcomings.

I guess it's a question of how and especially how often. I can also tell from your OP and other posts that you are mostly fascinated by this, so context plays a role, too.

Sorry, wanted to reply to you before, but I've only now come back from the dentist. Eh, who's saying that you have to be PC everywhere all the time? o.O What does PCness have got to do with anything, anyhow?

I know that ticks you off in me, too - though I usually only reserve my expressed incredulity for people who can really, really be expected to know better - like uni students who don't know that we're indeed in a solar system. And even with those, I wouldn't express that sentiment in front of them rather than patiently explain.

So, er, in conclusion, I'd like cookies for keeping it together before cracking up about it out of earshot, plz. :D

Students' mistakes (especially students' mistakes at a tutoring centre) are interesting rather than funny, though. It's also a way to see what kind of thing falls through the cracks at school, because there are definitely patterns.

Also: I'm curious, do they pronounce it as "t" from the start, or only after reading and seeing it spelled with a "t"?

Yep, that odd nasal "a" is a northern US/Canada thing, one I've luckily managed to break myself of. However, get me anywhere near my mother-in-law, who's originally from Minnesota but lived in Michigan the rest of her life, and all my bad habits come right back. I'm practically unintelligible. My husband thinks it's hysterical.

*lol* It's fascinating how language is always also linked with prestige, and how people try to avoid certain features while others remain almost unnoticed. Our lecturer told us an anecdote of having noticed Canadian raising in the idiolect of one of her friends from Canada, who was absolutely livid for her pointing it out in front of others. So weird.
Canadian raising sounds a bit Scottish to me, so I actually like it a lot.

I actually also like Northern US accents better than Southern ones. But that's me having trouble understanding the Southern drawl, I think. Watching Brokeback Mountain in the cinema (without subtitles, that is) was depressing! And not only for reasons of content.

I find that fascinating, too.

*bakes wife cookies*

Entschuldige bitte, dass ich es wage, mich auf dem LJ deiner Frau(!) anders zu äußern als es dir genehm ist, oh Erleuchtete. Oder nein, warte, eigentlich entschuldige ich mich dafür doch lieber nicht.

es nervt nur einfach

Ich habe die phänomenalste Lösung, auf die ich allerdings auch nur nach viel Nachdenken gekommen bin, und ehrlich mal, ich kann ja nicht erwarten, dass alle so cool sind wie ich und drauf kommen, also stelle ich sie dir dankenswerterweise zur Verfügung:

Wenn man weiß, dass jemandes Kommentare einen zu oft nervern, liest man sie besser erst gar nicht.

Genial, oder?

I've never asked what first goes through their heads on the beginner level; but when they get the proper pronunciation, they pronounce the voiced "th" as "d" and the voiceless "th" as "t"... like my Tanks example.

In Turkish, all letters are pronounced (except for the g that has a mark over it - making the letter silent). So the town Fethiye is "fate - hee - yay". Quite often students will go back to pronouncing something as they would in Turkish, which gives the dilemma of "cigarettes" as "jiggarets" because the "c" is pronounced as "j".

Hä? Wo ist bitte dein Problem? Wieso zickst du mich so an?

Weil ich schlicht keinen Bock auf deine herablassenden "holier than thou"-Kommentare habe. Ich hack eben gern auf den Fehlern anderer herum. Buhu, ich bin ein schlechter Mensch.

Edited 2010-05-25 15:19 (UTC)

Gah! Okay, if teachers teach that kind of thing...is there hope? ;)

Kritik ist nicht automatisch herablassend, nur weil sie für dich nicht angenehm ist. Ich verstehe, dass sich so eine Situation doof anfühlt - geht mir nicht anders - aber es muss doch möglich sein, dir das Feedback zu geben dass etwas jetzt gerade unpassend war oder zu weit ging, ohne dass du einem eine böse Absicht unterstellst.

Ich werte die Situation übrigens anders. Ich denke nicht, dass blöde Kommentare über andere einen automatisch zu einem schlechten Menschen machen. Ich habe Schwierigkeiten, nachzuvollziehen WARUM du, als Anglistikstudentin, dich mit EFL Lernern vergleichst, nehme aber an, dass du dafür Gründe hast. Meine Posts waren ein Ausdruck dessen, dass mich die von dir gewählte Form nervt. Mehr nicht.

German EFL learner homophones

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