From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Thu Jun 21 08:41:13 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Thu, 21 Jun 2007 08:41:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1I1OmT-0002HU-NC for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Thu, 21 Jun 2007 08:41:13 -0700 Received: from 25.mail-out.ovh.net ([213.186.37.103]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1I1OmL-0002H5-D6 for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Thu, 21 Jun 2007 08:41:09 -0700 Received: (qmail 16794 invoked by uid 503); 21 Jun 2007 15:41:20 -0000 Received: (QMFILT: 1.0); 21 Jun 2007 15:41:20 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail83.ha.ovh.net) (213.186.33.59) by 25.mail-out.ovh.net with SMTP; 21 Jun 2007 15:41:20 -0000 Received: from b0.ovh.net (HELO queue-out) (213.186.33.50) by b0.ovh.net with SMTP; 21 Jun 2007 15:40:55 -0000 Received: from 59.1-225-89.dsl.completel.net (59.1-225-89.dsl.completel.net [89.225.1.59]) by ssl0.ovh.net (IMP) with HTTP for ; Thu, 21 Jun 2007 17:40:55 +0200 Message-ID: <1182440455.467a9c07472ff@ssl0.ovh.net> Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 17:40:55 +0200 From: m.kornig@sondal.net To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: Differently-shaped vocal equipment (was: Re: Re: lojban-beginners Digest V6 #97) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit User-Agent: Internet Messaging Program (IMP) 3.2.6 X-Originating-IP: 89.225.1.59 X-Spam-Score: 0.3 X-Spam-Score-Int: 3 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 5097 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: m.kornig@sondal.net Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners Selon Arnt Richard Johansen : > You are right that the pronunciation ranges are there to help p�eople with > different linguistic backgrounds, but race does not enter into the picture. > Racial differences in vocal tract shape and size are dwarfed in comparison to > individual differences. ( > http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/view.cgi?acc_num=ohiou1050668842 ) > > Except for abnormal conditions such as a cleft palate, everyone is equally > capable, physically, of producing any speech sound. Yes, I agree. It's mostly a question of habit and training. I work as a language teacher in France, where I teach both English and German. You may know that the letter H is not pronounced in French. You pronounce it however in most cases at the beginning of a word both in English and in German. After a bit of training most of my students are able to pronounce words like "heat", "high" and "hand" correctly (and thus make clear that they don't mean "eat", "I" or "and"). I have noticed however that, even after hours of thorough training, most of my students still have difficulties in HEARING the difference between "heat" and "eat", "hi" and "eye", or "hand" and "and". It seems that they are not used to hearing the H at the beginning of a word (or a sentence) and just "don't pay attention" to it. So it seems to me that listening habits are more difficult to change than pronounciation habits. And I do believe that both French and English have the same ears... Martin