Re: New Try from a New Guy

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Barrow" <davidab@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Sunday, December 15, 2002 8:20 AM
Subject: Re: New Try from a New Guy


> Arthaey Angosii wrote:
>
> > Emaelivpahr Joe Fatula:
> > >/a/ as in father
> > >/A/ as in cot
> > >/O/ as in caught
> > >/@/ as in cut
> >
> > Arrrg!  I hate vowels.  They're impossible to compare by using
"standard"
> > English words.  As far as I can tell from listening to my own
> > pronunciations, "father," "cot," and "caught" all rhyme perfectly.  Only
> > "cut" sounds different.
> >
> > I hate it when foreign-language books use English words to show how
vowels
> > should sound...
> >
> > --
> > Arthaey
>
> Yes, I used to wonder what the heck they were on about when language and
> grammar books said that Spanish "sé" was pronounced like English "say". I
> couldn´t imagine were the authors  had learnt their Spanish. Until I
finally
> understood; every single one of those books was written by someone who,
unlike
> me, doesn't diphthonise the vowel in words like say, late, etc.
>
> David Barrow
But, unfortunately, if a book is to be a first exposure to another language,
many of its readers will have nothing else to go on.  I've been using a
similar approach with teaching English to Spanish-speakers.  While they find
my Spanish comical (it is), they at least know what I'm talking about.  At
first, we worked on learning the English sounds that were close to Spanish
ones, not until later did we start practicing English sounds as they are.
In a more academic setting we might have started with the correct sounds
right off the bat, but these are all people who need English-speakers around
to understand them now, with correctness as a secondary goal.

So, we've occasionally written out sentences in "English" like "Oprin dommo
sing glace."  It's rough, but it gets the job done.

Joe Fatula


P.S. For those who don't know any Spanish, that odd sentence, if read using
English pronunciation rules, sounds like "We are learning English".  It
certainly doesn't sound like Spanish ought to, but what matters is that it
gets the meaning across.  That's step 1.  Getting it right so people think
you actually speak the language is step 2.