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

[lordhellebore]

o_O But all of these sound really really different!

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Not to her, they don't. =D

[lordhellebore]

Then she needs to watch English movies ;)

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

I'm told she does, but can't tell the difference there, either. o.O She must either be lying or have the ultimate tin ear.

[rizardofoz.livejournal.com]

I can seem most of them sounding similar. But THOUGHT??

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Well, the dental fricatives don't exist in the German phoneme inventory, so many beginners substitute all "th"s with what they consider to be most similar - which is unfortunately leaves them with alveolar fricatives and native speakers as well as advanced learners with sore ears.

In the olden days, actually speaking English wasn't a very important learning objective and English lessons mostly consisted of translating passages from English to German in the vein of our classics courses, so this particular student sort of has an excuse because her last English lessons was in the early eighties, and she's bound to have been taught by these teachers. Still, considering that she apparently swears that she watches the news in English every day and still can't tell a difference between the pronunciation of these words... yeah. I don't know what's up with that.

[lordhellebore]

Well, the dental fricatives don't exist in the German phoneme inventory, so many beginners substitute all "th"s with what they consider to be most similar

This is NOT an excuse. It took all of three minutes to teach Hannah the "th" at the age of six. "Stick out your tongue while saying 's/ß'" was all it took.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Well, there's no need for excuses either way, and this is the explanation for why she has this pronunciation. Pronouncing sounds that aren't part of the phoneme inventory that they are familiar with isn't as easy for all learners, especially learners who learned English via grammar translation method (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_education#The_grammar_translation_method) by teachers who aren't able to pronounce THs either and don't care for pronunciation in general. And after twenty-plus years of using a certain pronunciation without ever being corrected, it's veeery hard to change things for both teachers and learners.

[lordhellebore]

I dunno, maybe it's just because languages come easy to me, but I don't see how it's possible to not be able to make a sound when you have instructions on how to do it.

Being used to one way and finding it hard to change, sure, that I can get behind.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Instruction she didn't have, due to aforementioned teaching method on whose grave I dance daily. Gaily. I was looking forward to never having to deal with students who are used to that, but nooo...

[lordhellebore]

And dearest, I had eight years of Latin and three years of Biblical Hebrew - I am familiar with the grammar translation method...

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

I knew that you'd been taught that way, but I wasn't sure you knew the term, given you seemed to think that correct pronunciation was a big concern during her time as an English student.

[lordhellebore]

given you seemed to think that correct pronunciation was a big concern during her time as an English student. <7i>

Please quote where I said that ;)

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

I don't see how it's possible to not be able to make a sound when you have instructions on how to do it.

[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".

[aixa.livejournal.com]

Well, using my very nasal, very northern Midwest accent, sod, sot and thought sound alike, and sword and sort sound alike, but the two groups sound nothing like each other. But my northern Michigan accent is definitely not what you want your students to sound like!

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Ha, sounds as though she'd sound a bit like that, leaving out the "r"s. This student is Northern German, and we tend to pronounce our "r"s preceding consonants as barely audible schwas, so she sort of does that in English, too. All vowels that resemble "o"s become the German "o" (examples here (http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~joyce1/abinitio/pronounce/audio/froh.wav)).

[crocky-wock.livejournal.com]

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

[aixa.livejournal.com]

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.

[crocky-wock.livejournal.com]

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.

[aixa.livejournal.com]

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.

[crocky-wock.livejournal.com]

*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.