Re: Russian soft/hard 'l' minimal pairs (was: glottals)

I think it is easier for anglophones to differentiate
hard-L and soft-l in Russian because that distinction
exists in English. If I'm not mistaken, Russian hard-L
is close to the L in the word "ill". In French, there
is nothing of the sort, AFAIK, so we really wonder why
do we have to make a distinction if there isn't any
possibility of confusion.

Some people find it hard to differentiate the sounds
"S^" vs "s^" (or whatever may be the phonetic
representation for them) in German "SCHauen" vs "iCH".
As, I think, there is nothing like that in English, I
wonder if English-speakers really mark the distinction
when they speak German ?

Anyway, we French will always have the superiority :-)
when it comes to nasals: an, en, in, un, on, oin.
There are very few foreigners who can pronounce them
correctly, and even differentiate them properly (they
often pronounce "taon" and "thon" the same way,
although the first one is an insect and the secund one
a fish). The Portuguese are our direct concurrents,
with strange sounds like aõ, like in Saõ Paulo. But in
Southern France, nasals are pronounced a completely
different way, so if you learn French, you better
think before: shall I travel to Marseille or to Paris
? and learn the appropriate pronunciation (the same
with r, by the way).

--- Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...> wrote:
> Philippe Caquant wrote:
> > The idea is that, if I happen to travel through
> Russia
> > for instance, and want to buy a newspaper from a
> > native mastering only his native language, which
> is
> > Russian, I don't have to study Russian for 12
> years,
> > which seems to me to be the minimum to master it
> more
> > or less. This is even more true if after Russia, I
> go
> > over to Ukraine, and from Ukraine to Georgia and
> so
> > on. According to you, I should spend about 500
> years
> > to spend all the languages a need for a single
> 3-weeks
> > trip, or just talk French all the time, be it in
> > Moscow, Kiev or Tbilissi, because it would be more
> > polite !?
>
> Well, certainly if you're only making a short trip,
> there's no need to
> be perfect.  But, from what you were saying earlier,
> it seems that you
> were studying Russian seriously.  And if you are
> seriously studying a
> language, you shouldn't just say "Ah, this
> distinction isn't important,
> so I won't even try to master it."
>
> But, yes, if you're just learning a few words for a
> trip, then just
> getting them understood is certainly all you'd need.
>


=====
Philippe Caquant

"Le langage est source de malentendus."
(Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

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