--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, # 1 <salut_vous_autre@H...> wrote:
> >At any rate, all vowels are 'easy' to produce---it just depends on what
> >phonemes your native speech had that you learnt as a child. Babies
(at a
> >particular stage of their linguistic development) can distinguish more
> >sounds than you or me.
>
> Are you sure? any french speaker can know if someone who speaks
french have
> english as natal language with the pronounciation of the vowel [y]
This is exactly what Tristan was saying. It depends on what
phonemes your native speech had that you learnt as a child.
Raise an American newborn in France, and you'll never hear a
difference. Babies start out as perfect listeners, and have
to learn to ignore non-phonemic differences between individual
people's pronunciations in order to understand language.
There are some inherently difficult sounds, like the rhotics
(all flavors of R) and the Arabic emphatics. Those often take
children much longer to learn correctly than other sounds.
-- Christian Thalmann