[OT] American versus British spelling and pronunciation

[Stewart Gordon]

On 08/03/2012 18:55, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
<snip>
> As you've noticed, trying to get a person to hear the difference often
> doesn't work (And even if they can hear it, that doesn't necessarily give
> them enough info to actually pronounce it). I think the right thing to do,
> at least in cases where it actually matters, is to instruct them on the
> actual mouth movements involved. Then they can "feel" the difference, and
> start to hear themselves making the different sound. "Hearing" it can
> naturally follow from that.

Yes, it seems that people's ears are tailored to the language they speak.  But then again, 
even native English speakers have trouble with sounds that are distinguished by others; a 
consequence is that the distinction between the "w" and "wh" sounds has largely been lost.

On the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures last year, there was a bit on speech 
perception.  Two sound samples both sounded like "duck" to typical English ears, but the 
Hindi speaker in the audience heard them to be different (it's probably down to 
short-breath and long-breath consonants, which we would transliterate as "d" and "dh").

<snip>
> A similar thing is the "tsu" sound in Japanese. The "TS" combination is very
> intimidating for most English speakers, and I doubt many English speakers
> can easily hear it. But as my class's instructor pointed out: It's exactly
> like the "ts" at the end of "boots". So just say that and folow up with a
> "u". Now I can say and hear it just fine (At least, I *think* I can - a
> native Japanese speaker would have to be the real judge).

Indeed.  But English speakers aren't used "ts" occurring at the beginning of a word, and 
so might drop either the "t" or the "s".  There are a number of initial consonant clusters 
in African languages that, likewise, occur only in the middle or at the end of a word in 
English, and so an English speaker will find these African words hard to pronounce.

Stewart.