[OT] American versus British spelling and pronunciation (was:Arbitrary abbreviations in phobos considered ridiculous)

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Nick Sabalausky" <a at a.a> wrote in message 
news:jjavf2$1v3p$1 at digitalmars.com...
> "James Miller" <james at aatch.net> wrote in message 
> news:mailman.235.1331210469.4860.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
>>On 9 March 2012 01:23, Stewart Gordon <smjg_1998 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I'm finding it hard to figure how someone would pronounce the "o" and 
>>> "u" in
>>> "colour" separately.
>>>
>
> I would imagine it'd be like "kuh-lore".
>
>>Being British means that I do notice the differences in pronunciation,
>>I've pretty much done the opposite to Reagan, gone from England to NZ.
>>I tend to get frustrated when I can't even correct pronunciation
>>because nobody can hear the difference!
>
> I have a little extra insight into this as my mom is a speech/language 
> pathologist:
>
> 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.
>

Out of curiosity, I just asked her about this and she said that "hearing" it 
*does* typically come first, so I guess I was wrong about that. But she did 
say that failing that, yea, bringing in instruction on the mouth movements 
can be a reasonable next step as it brings other senses into play.