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]

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.)

[lordhellebore]

Yay, sounds good :D

for no one had explained that lisping thing before.

That is insane. I'm not even a teacher, but my first words to someone explaining the "th" would be something along the lines of "imagine someone who's lisping".

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Yeah, exactly. o.O

Though, interestingly enough, while she got right the TH sounds in the text she was reading, she still didn't pronounce them when speaking. Babysteps... And I need a diplomatic way to do repeat that thing with her teacher. Er.

[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.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

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.

[crocky-wock.livejournal.com]

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.

[lordhellebore]

Don't be so aggressive, mkay? Thx.

[crocky-wock.livejournal.com]

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.

[lordhellebore]

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?

[crocky-wock.livejournal.com]

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.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

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?

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Eeep... guys, could you both take it to PMs next time? *wibbles*

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

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.

[crocky-wock.livejournal.com]

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.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Eeep... guys, could you both take it to PMs next time? *wibbles*