German EFL learner homophones

[mothwing]

One of the learners in my tutoring centre has the most interesting pronunciation. She was reading a text the other day and it took a while for me to figure out what she was talking about.





Oh. And "sought", forgot about that one. I think she was talking about a sword, about which she had thoughts. But I can't be certain.

Comments

[rizardofoz.livejournal.com]

It's the same issue in Turkish. There is no "th" in the language, but the easiest substitution is "t" - so Thanks because Tanks. I've always told my students the stick-out-your-tongue approach, and not to feel weird about it. It works sometimes.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's what they do here, or to try and imitate someone with an English accent or someone who's lisping. Works, too. Just with students whose pronunciation errors are fossilised it's infinitely harder, obviously.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

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

[rizardofoz.livejournal.com]

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".