Re: sending mail to the list

En réponse à jesse stephen bangs <jaspax@...>:
>
> Bravo, Christophe, on your determination for learning other languages.
> Isn't it odd how different languages have different tendencies to be
> misheard?  French and English tend to be some of the hardest two to
> cross
> between--I know French people who have learned English for longer than
> you
> have and have the worst accents, to where they are nearly
> incomprehensible.  I've heard the same complaint about English speakers
> of
> French.
>
He he... I think on the French side it comes also from the fact that French
people hardly ever hear and speak English outside of English classes. Dubbed
movies are the norm, English songs people usually don't even try to know what it
talks about (some for simple lack of interest or laziness, other for prejudice:
It's English, so it must be stupid lyrics... :( ). Now try to learn a language
in that environment...

>
> If it helps any, in most dialects of English that I hear /U/ is nearly
> unrounded.  Therefore, if you can make [M] (high back unrounded) or [1],
> either of those would make an acceptable approximation for /U/--still
> slightly accented, but far better than using [u].
>
The problem is that I have no idea where you have to pronounce /U/ and where you
have to pronounce /u/. Since I don't hear the difference, I'm never sure which
word is pronounced in which way (you saw that with the mistake I made :) ). And
English orthography doesn't help very much (contrary to the /i/ - /I/
distinction which is quite well rendered in English orthography, though in
strange ways).

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr