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

[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.