[lojban-beginners] Re: Differently-shaped vocal equipment (was: Re: Re: lojban-beginners Digest V6 #97)

[m.kornig@sondal.net]

Selon Arnt Richard Johansen <arj@nvg.org>:

> 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