Re: Furrin phones in my own lect!

From: "Philip Newton" <philip.newton@...>
Sent: Sunday, March 26, 2006 8:03 AM

> I have [C] there, too, and assumed many do -- which is one
> reason why I'm surprised when Americans pronounce German
> [C] as [k] or [S] -- after all, they have the phone in
> their own language! They "just" need to get used to
> pronouncing it in other environments than the ones
> conditioning that phone in their language. (Just as I
> claim that initial [N] is also fairly simple to say, even
> though [N] doesn't occur initially in any of my L1s.)
What he said.

From: "Herman Miller" <hmiller@...>
Sent: Sunday, March 26, 2006 8:07 PM

> You'd think so, but one of the harder sounds for me to
> learn was [k]. [...]
You mean unaspirated [p t k], don't you? [R] isn't that hard
for me. Neither is [X]. ;) I don't know how to pronounce [q]
properly, though. I always haven an uvular offglide there
somehow. But yeah, there are many sound I don't know how to
pronounce, especially most of the central vowels except [3],
[@] and [6]. I attestedly don't get [1] right as well. A
Russian friend of mine: "Ah, it's typical. Germans *never*
get that one right." Better don't ask me about [_j] either.
However, it also seems typical for German speakers to have
difficulties with [H], i.e., many people in my French class
say [pyi] for [pH] <puis>. Also, vi Tshermens are known for
mixing up [T] and [s] and [w] and [v].

Carsten

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