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[lojban-beginners] Re: pronunciation
Based on my experience teaching English in China, I think that most Chinese people have fairly little trouble differentiating "r" and "l" at the beginning of syllables. However, they seem to have a great deal of trouble differentiating them at the end of a syllable, at least as far as American English norms go. It seems to me that even Chinese people who speak quite good English tend to switch to a British pronunciation of final "r" (while not using consistently British pronunciations for other words). I have met a small number of Chinese people with really excellent American English accents who do pronounce final "r" clearly, but, even then, they tend to overdo it instead. So, I would say, that, in general, this sound presents a real challenge to native Chinese speakers.
-Nat Krause
Chris Capel <pdf23ds@gmail.com> wrote: On
5/31/06, Jorge Llambías wrote:
> I'm not sure stress will be the worst thing to worry Japanese speakers
> though, given the consonant clusters Lojban has. Lojban was not designed
> to be particularly easy to pronounce.
When I was in grade school, it took me a week or two of speech therapy
to learn to pronounce the American "r" sound. Several years ago, it
took me (an American) about a year to really learn to easily pronounce
a Spanish "r". (A trill between the tip of the tongue and the back of
the front teeth.) A few months ago, it took me about two days to learn
the French "r", which is a uvular trill. (I'm not sure if the uvula is
actually flapping around, or what.) It could be that the latter is
easier to learn, or maybe I'm just better at producing strange sounds
nowadays.
Do native Japanese and Chinese speakers learning to produce the "l"
sound always have a lot of trouble? Is there some
technique that can
help them to consistently learn it?
Are there any consonant clusters in Lojban that commonly give English
speakers trouble?
It always surprised me that Lojban had two different liquids ("l" and
"r"), given that they're so close and that some languages (IIRC,
including Japanese) make all liquid sounds allophones. I wonder
whether some other consonant would have been better. Now, Lojban's "r"
can be pronunced as an alveolar flap or trill, or a uvular trill or
frictive, (or a few other things that I can't decipher the ASCII IPA
for,) which probably makes it somewhat easier to understand for
Japanese native speakers.
Chris Capel
--
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