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

[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.

[lordhellebore]

Well, now she does get instructions, no?

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Er, yeah, but again, she's used to pronounce things differently. I thought you meant her previous instruction in your above comment. :)

[lordhellebore]

Ok, how about this?

"I understand that she is used to pronouncing it incorrectly and that it's hard for her to change that habit, but now that she has instructions on how to pronounce it correctly, I don't believe that she is unable to do so. Now, all it takes is (quite a lot of) regular practice."

That makes it more clear, no?

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Crystal and yep, I think so, too.
I also find it hard to buy that she can't hear the difference. I mean, it might require some practice, but not able to hear it at all? Really? I bet she can tell if someone lisps, so why is this hard...?

[lordhellebore]

I don't buy that either. Maybe she needs a hearing aid? I can think of no other explanation.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

The fun thing is really that her instructor is the slightly elderly colleague for whom thought/sought are homophones. XD

[lordhellebore]

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

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Yep. Took her aside today and asked her to,

1.) Imagine she was someone who lisps,
2.) read a passage while imitating someone who lisps,
3.) told her that the "th" is the "lisping sound",
4.) asked her to read the passage again with "s" re-inserted,
5.) Profit. Beautiful "th"es and a student with a lightbulb moment, for no one had explained that lisping thing before. (.... I don't even.)

[crocky-wock.livejournal.com]

Is this a joke? You don't "buy" that she can't hear a difference? So what do you think she's doing? Faking?

I have a suggestion. Have a look into a foreign language other than English, which you've never encountered before. Say... Swedish. If you can tell the difference in regular, normal speed everyday speech between their "u", "y", and sometimes "i", even after a few months of "proper" tution, I'll buy you a "having a knack for languages" cookie.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

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.

[crocky-wock.livejournal.com]

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.

[lordhellebore]

Don't be so aggressive, mkay? Thx.

[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".