Re: sound changes (was Conlangea Dreaming)

CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU writes:
>I suppose everyone who is learning a foreign language has some equivalent
>experience. It depends on the age of the teacher in my opinion. My own
>experience about that was with Spanish: I began to learn Spanish with a
>25-to
>-30-year-old woman who always pronounced ll /j/. When I changed school my
>new
>teacher of Spanish was nearly 50, and with her I had to pronounce ll
>/l_j/! I
>still wonder how young Spanish people (of my age: 25 or so) pronounce
>ll...

Hah! Most of my teachers were Latin Americans, so they always pronounced
ll as /j/. Then, a couple of years ago here at my University, I had a
teacher who was about 30 or so, but was a German, and also spoke French,
along with teaching Spanish. She always said ll as /l_j/. Which confused
me a bit at first. (it was interesting, she had a German accent when
speaking English, but it disappeared when speaking Spanish).  Then, last
year my professor was a real live Spaniard :), who always said what we all
would pronounce as /h/ as /x/ (and QUITE strongly too......i always
thought he was going to cough something up).

Anyway, I still go along saying my g's before i and e, and my j's as /h/,
and my ll's as /j/ like a Latin American :). I'm sure if I ever get to
study abroad in Spain, they'll know right away who taught me, lol.

Anyway, in my university, i'm in a class with native speakers along with
is L2 speakers. I think i'm a bit out of my league there (and I think most
of us L2 speakers feel that way), because i just now found out it's for
advanced to native speakers and i dont think i'm quite there yet. But, i
know that we are learning how a native speaker would say things.

And that's a reason I want to study abroad. I WANT to use it like L1
speakers do. Book Spanish can only get you so far with native speakers :)