Re: glottals

Well, I've been trying for many years to make a
difference in pronunciation between Russian hard L and
soft L, and I think I will soon give up. Not only
can't I pronounce them differently, but I cannot HEAR
the difference between them, although it has been
explained to me a lot of times !

But the very interesting thing is that it doens't
matter in the least, every Russian understands when I
pronounce an L the French way, and the only conclusion
they can draw is that I am not Russian !

So to me it's just the same as foreigners that cannot
hear the difference between French 'in' and 'un' for
instance, or even between 'on' and 'an'. I can
understand them just the same, because there are few
really confusing situations. So the people who are
fascinated by the subtle differences in phonology
remain a mystery for me. I just think that everybody
pronounces, even his own language, just a little bit
differently from his neighbour or brother, but what
the hell does it matter ? :-)

--- Carsten Becker <post@...> wrote:
> Learning a new foreign
> phoneme is not impossible for adults, it just must
> be practiced. When you've
> figured out how the IPA table works, you can
> actually quite well produce any
> listed sound I think.
>
>
> Carsten Becker

=====
Philippe Caquant

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

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