# why is it hard for non-natives to pronounce or distinguish words correctly



## eli7

I am not sure if I can ask this question here or not, but I want you to recommend me some books.
I want to do my thesis about the topic why it's hard for non-natives to pronounce or distinguish words correctly.

Which books will help me in this case? And is this topic related to contrast analysis? if not, please tell me the related scope.
Thanks in advance.


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## Scholiast

Dear eli7

I suspect a Moderator will indeed clamp down on this, as I understand that requests for bibliography are indeed outwith the scope of the Forum. In any case there may well be other existing threads unknown to me.

But (please, Moderator, allow me this much, as it touches on wider issues): this raises, potentially, a large question of English (and indeed other) phonetics, on which others may helpfully be able to comment.

For example, English-English speakers have great difficulty with the characteristic "ch" sound in Scots "loch", Italians speaking English can hardly pronounce a final consonant without a subliminal final vowel ("stop[pe]"), and some Swiss-German students of mine in Latin could not effectively distinguish between long and short vowels in either Latin or English, as in your example of "live" and "leave".

This and much other anecdotal evidence (whenever I visit Germany and speak German there, many folk assume that I am from Holland) all suggests that there is a hard-wiring of phonological principles into the brain in infancy. Chomsky for anyone?


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## LilianaB

Would you think certain preconditioning could be also genetic? I have noticed that I could pronounce certain sounds in languages that I do not speak that well grammatically, almost on a native level without even trying hard, whereas certain other sounds seem much harder to me. What would the reason be? In other words, if somebody's ancestors spoke those languages, would it be easier for that person to learn them?


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## berndf

Scholiast said:


> I suspect a Moderator will indeed clamp down on this, as I understand that requests for bibliography are indeed outwith the scope of the Forum. In any case there may well be other existing threads unknown to me.


Let's see where the discussion takes us. For a start, I've changed the title of the thread.


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## Maroseika

LilianaB said:


> In other words, if somebody's ancestors spoke those languages, would it be easier for that person to learn them?


Surely not. Speech is what a human being masters from other people, this is a social skill and as such cannot be inherited genetically. You make sure yourself just comparing genetically near peoples having problems with some sounds of the languages of their near genetic relatives.


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## Istriano

It has to do with dumbing down of a language made by professors who teach it; let's say you learn Italian and/or Norwegian, and teachers and textbooks offer you a simplified language:

_1. Italian is easy, only five vowels (like Spanish).
2. Norwegian pronunciation is easy, most vowels are pronounced like in English or German._

In reality, if you want to speak like a native:
1. Italian has seven vowels, 2 e's (open e + close e) and 2 o's (open o + close o); 90% of Italian dialects/accents have 7 vowels, even though their distribution may be different from the RAI standard.
2. Norwegian pronunciation is not easy, there is a pitch accent, with two tonemes; 90% of Norwegian dialects have 2 tonemes, even though their distribution may be different from the unofficial Oslo standard.

If you neglect the 7 vowel system when you learn Italian, or 2 toneme system when you learn Norwegian, you will NEVER sound like a native speaker, you will always have a thick accent.
And who is to blame?

Well, all those books (and teachers) who promote this dumbed-down version of the language.
And you will fail to understand the real speakers, because it's not the real language you learn, but a simplified one!


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## Scholiast

Istriano (#9)

You are joking, aren't you?

All languages known to me, even slightly, are to a degree "tonal". Why otherwise would you think that German composers from Bach to Richard Strauss habitually use the musical "cliché" of setting, in songs or opera, questions to a melodically rising phrase at the end of the sentence - as does spoken German? It's just that the tonalities in most tongues are more subtly variegated and complex, in the context of entire sentences or other syntactical structures, than in "simple" tonic languages such as Chinese, where the intonation of a particular word determines its meaning

And despite its relatively pure and consistent vowel-system, Italian is NOT easy - for non-Italians - to _pronounce_ as a native Italian would, without being instantly recognised as a foreigner.

If shawnee's claims (##6, 8) are right, he is to be congratulated on his enviably exceptional ear for the subtleties of languages other than (Melbourne) English. This presumably enables him accurately to vocalise in English the sounds equally of a Southern Baptist preacher and of a Glaswegian policeman, or for that matter, La Streep acting Margaret Thatcher.

Forgive my scepticism.


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## berndf

Scholiast said:


> All languages known to me, even slightly, are to a degree "tonal". Why otherwise would you think that German composers from Bach to Richard Strauss habitually use the musical "cliché" of setting, in songs or opera, questions to a melodically rising phrase at the end of the sentence - as does spoken German?


No, German is not tonal. Words cannot be lexically distinguished based on tone like, e.g., Swedish _anden _meaning _the duck_ with a rising pitch and _the spirit_ with a falling pitch. The former would be understood by a German as "anden?" or "anden," with a rising pitch and as "anden!" or "anden." with a falling pitch but it would be the same word; the difference in pitch could not disambiguate lexically distinct words.


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## sound shift

I've never seen English described by an academic linguist as a tone language.


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## Scholiast

Greetings all



> I've never seen English described by an academic linguist as a tone language.



No you would not, because English has rarely been considered this way. Honestly, no malign intent here, but _pace _also berndf's contribution (#11), I think it is still true of entire syntactical units, both in English and in German, that there is an intonational value that helps to govern meaning. This applies, as I said, not to individual words, but to whole structures of connected syntax.

Would that I could, in this Forum, put this thought into musical notation.


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## berndf

Scholiast said:


> ...that there is an intonational value that helps to govern meaning.


_Tonality _has nothing to do with _intonation_. _Tonality _is concerned with differentiation of words and word forms only (_Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words._)


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## LilianaB

I do not agree with you , Istriano. I think the difficulty a language present phonetically to a learner is not as simple as that, which languages are easier and which ones are more difficult. You mentioned Italian as an easy language. I think the difficulty to learn a language depends also on the individual characteristics, talents, predispositions and likes of the learner. I could never speak, Italian, I think, close to  native pronunciation because it is hard for me to talk in a very emotional way: I do not know how to better characterize it. Some languages considered hard might be much easier for me. #9.


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## Scholiast

Greetings once more


> _Tonality _has nothing to do with _intonation_. _Tonality _is concerned with differentiation of words and word forms only (_Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words._)



My thanks to berndf (#14) for putting me right here, and for this link (though, curiously, the article makes no mention in this context of classical Greek, which was in the strict sense tonal - one reason for the amazing range of particles or particular phrases in that language, γάρ, δή, οὖν, μέντοι, τοιγαροῦν, καὶ δὴ καί, &c., which at least partly appear to have served some of the purposes of intonational differentiation of shades of meaning in languages that lack them, because the option of tonal or intonational nuance was not available).

While, however, I am pleased to be corrected, I remain unconvinced - with all due respect - that a hard-and-fast distinction between tonality and intonation can be maintained. Clearly there are degrees, even within those languages regarded as "tonal" _stricto sensu_, some being more so (Mandarin) than others (Norwegian), and there are (as the Wikipaedia article berndf cited explains) dialectical variations within those languages.

What I was trying to suggest, though perhaps I put it rather naively, is that even in those languages which are not usually regarded as "tonal", the sense of an utterance is considerably affected by the variable "musical" pitch of its constituent parts (as well, of course, as by other variably important considerations such as word-order, monotonic stress and so forth). Only lexicographers and grammar teachers, after all, need to think of words as separate entities outwith a semantic and sentential context, and when languages are written without word-breaks, as for example in Greek or Latin inscriptions or papyri, or in modern Chinese, they often are, the distinction between "tone" and "intonation" becomes to my mind nearly meaningless.

I would still maintain that the practice of musical composers, at least the best of them, when writing music for recitative or _Sprechgesang_, is instructive here. Florestan's "Gott! welch' Dunkel hier!" follows (for one splendid example) the tonal/intonational pattern of the German were it spoken.


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## berndf

Scholiast said:


> ...curiously, the article makes no mention in this context of classical Greek, which was in the strict sense tonal


Absolutely!


Scholiast said:


> While, however, I am pleased to be corrected, I remain unconvinced - with all due respect - that a hard-and-fast distinction between tonality and intonation can be maintained. Clearly there are degrees, even within those languages regarded as "tonal" _stricto sensu_, some being more so (Mandarin) than others (Norwegian), and there are (as the Wikipaedia article berndf cited explains) dialectical variations within those languages.


I guess this is just another nail in the coffin of the distinction between _dialects _and _languages _which is in nature a cultural and not a linguistic one. Linguists don't make this distinctions. Of course, one "dialect" of a "language" many be tonal, another one not.



Scholiast said:


> What I was trying to suggest, though perhaps I put it rather naively, is that even in those languages which are not usually regarded as "tonal", the sense of an utterance is considerably affected by the variable "musical" pitch of its constituent parts (as well, of course, as by other variably important considerations such as word-order, monotonic stress and so forth). Only lexicographers and grammar teachers, after all, need to think of words as separate entities outwith a semantic and sentential context, and when languages are written without word-breaks, as for example in Greek or Latin inscriptions or papyri, or in modern Chinese, they often are, the distinction between "tone" and "intonation" becomes to my mind nearly meaningless.


Intonation is by no means unimportant. Yet it is convenient to distinguish between phonemic qualities defining lexical of grammatical distinctions of *words* and features modifying* sentence* meaning.


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## Scholiast

Greetings

Thanks, berndf (#17) for your clarification of the issue. One further observation, not as irreverent or trivial as it may at first appear:



> one "dialect" of a "language" many be tonal, another one not



Many English-English speakers regard a Welsh accent as "sing-song-y". There is certainly a wider range of pitch in English as spoken by Welshmen (and -women) than there is in BBC-"RP".

I am moved to wonder - genuine question this, though it is takes us well astray from the original theme of the thread - whether Welsh and the other Celtic/Brythonic tongues are inflectionally tonal. I know a little (Scots) Gaelic, but not enough to be sure if it is the case there.


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## Dan2

Istriano said:


> It has to do with dumbing down of a language made by professors who teach it; let's say you learn Italian and/or Norwegian, and teachers and textbooks offer you a simplified language:
> 
> _1. Italian is easy, only five vowels (like Spanish)._
> ...



Italian and Norwegian are two languages I have some interest in and it seems to me that Italian is always presented as a 7-vowel language, and that the tonal nature of Norwegian gets prominent mention, on the part of any source that seems worthy of being taken seriously.

But much more importantly, do you really think these encouraging  phrases (X is easy!) in informal contexts are the key reason why serious foreign-language learners don't achieve native-like pronunciation?  It seems to me that the difficulty of suppressing motor habits learned in childhood and learning new ones later in life is the most important cause. Even professional phoneticians typically have foreign accents in languages in which they are not native.


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## Istriano

But phonetician is not necessarily an actor, nor a linguist is necessarily a polyglot.  To copy a native-like accent, not only a theoretical knowledge is needed (phoneticians have it), but also the ability to mimic and copy sounds to perfection (many actors can make it). Speakers of Nordic languages can speak English very well, but they never seem to master the [z] sound: they pronounce _loose _and _lose: _the same [lu:s], and make no distinction between _(a) use_ and_ (to) use_. I don't know why is that...is it because of the articulatory problems, or because they were never encouraged to use the correct sound; *noise *is not [nois] (noyce) but [noiz] (noyze) . Christina Aguillera rhymed correctly boys [z] with noise [z] (speakers of most Germanic languages rhyme boys [s] with voice [s]). September (a Swedish singer) pronounces _mu*s*ic _with an [s] sound, instead of a [z].


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## Dan2

Istriano said:


> To copy a native-like accent, not only a theoretical knowledge is needed (phoneticians have it), but also the ability to mimic and copy sounds to perfection


Right, and most people lose that ability after a certain age.  So they retain an accent in the languages they learn, _no matter how accurately their professors and their textbooks describe the language._  That was my point.



Istriano said:


> Speakers of Nordic  languages can speak English very well, but they never seem to master the  [z] sound ...  I don't know why is that...is it because of the articulatory problems,  or because they were never encouraged to use the correct sound;


There's no /z/ in the Nordic languages and it's apparently quite difficult to learn after a certain age.



Istriano said:


> Christina Aguillera rhymed correctly boys [z] with noise [z]


I would hope so... she's American, right?
(And *everyone *rhymes "boys" with "noise"; some correctly with a [z] in both, others incorrectly with an [s] in both. )


Istriano said:


> (speakers  of most Germanic languages rhyme boys [s] with voice [s]). September (a  Swedish singer) pronounces _mu*s*ic _with an [s] sound, instead of a [z].


German has no [z] in word-final position, hence "boy[s]", etc, but [z] does occur in other positions.  But Swedish has no [z] at all, hence "mu[s]ic".


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## LilianaB

I do not agree with you Dan2 with regards to the first claim. I think it is a generalization. Many people, perhaps lose the ability to produce perfect sounds after a certain age, but not all of them, in my opinion. I would say it is more a difference of personal talents and abilities, similar to the one that not all people can sing opera, or sing at all so that no-one leaves the room. 

Regarding rhymes, I do not think rhymes have that much to do with the written form of a word: they are phonetic phenomena. This is why _gulf_ can rhyme with _Ralph_.


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## Dan2

Hi Liliana...

I said "most people lose" and you said "not all of them lose"; same thing, different emphasis. 

Look, the bottom line is that even among people who have access to good teachers and good textbooks and make an effort to speak a new language well, if they learn  the language past a certain age, most tend to retain a foreign accent.  That's all I'm claiming.


LilianaB said:


> Regarding rhymes, I do not think rhymes have that much to do with the written form of a word: they are phonetic phenomena. This is why _gulf_ can rhyme with _Ralph_.


Not for me. 
No one was claiming that rhymes follow the written form; Istriano knows the correct English pronunciation of all the words in question and the two of us were just relating singers' mispronunciations to their language background.


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## LilianaB

OK, thank you.


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## Istriano

For me personally, the English th is not that difficult to pronounce in many words, but between consonants it's a nightmare:
This i*s the rh*ythm of the night.... * [z]th r*. I have to slow my speech down. In fast speech I can only pronounce it as [zdr]


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## berndf

Istriano said:


> But phonetician is not necessarily an actor, nor a linguist is necessarily a polyglot.  To copy a native-like accent, not only a theoretical knowledge is needed (phoneticians have it), but also the ability to mimic and copy sounds to perfection (many actors can make it). Speakers of Nordic languages can speak English very well, but they never seem to master the [z] sound: they pronounce _loose _and _lose: _the same [lu:s], and make no distinction between _(a) use_ and_ (to) use_. I don't know why is that...is it because of the articulatory problems, or because they were never encouraged to use the correct sound; *noise *is not [nois] (noyce) but [noiz] (noyze) . Christina Aguillera rhymed correctly boys [z] with noise [z] (speakers of most Germanic languages rhyme boys [s] with voice [s]). September (a Swedish singer) pronounces _mu*s*ic _with an [s] sound, instead of a [z].


Well the the /z/ - /s/ distinction in Germanic languages is not as simple as you make it appear. The /z/ phoneme is a new comer to those languages; English has had it for about 1000 years, it German maybe 600 and in Nordic languages it still doesn't exist. The characteristics by which these phonemes are distinguished vary from language to language and from context to context. Lets take _loose_ and_ lose_: All Germanic languages exhibit at least to some extend final obstruent devoicing, i.e. the /z/ phoneme is (at least in BE but also in other varieties) realized devoiced (i.e. [s]). But contrary to German this devoicing does not neutralize the phonemic distinction persisting in secondary characteristics which speakers of other Germanic languages may fail to notice, in this case relative length. Simplifying at bit, you could say that /lu:z/ is realized as [lu:s] and /lu:s/ as [lus:]; see this thread.  Or lets take a non-final position, this time in German: In standard German /z/ originated as an initial and intervocalic allophone of /s/. Intervocalic positions, this happened only for etymological /s/ while etymological /t/ remained unvoiced (probably because Middle High German had to different s-sounds for etymological /s/ and etymological /t/), hence today we have _der wei*s*e Mann = the wi*s*e man_ and der _wei*ß*e Mann = the whi*t*e man_. (the letter "ß" is used to indicate /s/ where "s" would normally be /z/). In southern dialects, the /z/ phoneme does not exist, yet speaker can differentiate _wei*s*e _and_wei*ß*e_ though the use [s] in both words. How they do that is this subject to debate. If you can read German, look at this thread.


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## Istriano

But in English, consistent devoicing is marked/regional (a famous feature of  the Chicago accent: _da Bullssss_).
In German there is a split: so [zo] in the North, so [so] in the South (and in Austria) [and both so/zo in the Center].


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## berndf

Istriano said:


> But in English, consistent devoicing is marked/regional (a famous feature of  the Chicago accent: _da Bullssss_).


No, devoicing happens in all or at least in most variants. Phonemic neutralization is marked.

Describing /z/ as voiced and /s/ as unvoiced is a coarse simplification which is usually ok, if you only look at phonemic features in communication between native speakers. But if we talk about perception and reproduction by foreign speakers, the way how phonemes are *precisely *differentiated becomes important.


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## Arath

LilianaB said:


> I do not agree with you Dan2 with regards to the first claim. I think it is a generalization. Many people, perhaps lose the ability to produce perfect sounds after a certain age, but not all of them, in my opinion. *I would say it is more a difference of personal talents and abilities*, similar to the one that not all people can sing opera, or sing at all so that no-one leaves the room.



I agree with you. There are quite a few examples, like Famke Janssen. Native English speakers can say if she has a foreign accent.


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## Istriano

Charlize Theron speaks English very good, almost like an American.
She is from S.Africa and her mother tongue is Afrikaans. and her 2nd language is Dutch.


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## Scholiast

Greetings



> Charlize Theron speaks English very good, almost like an American.


 (#27)

This  is of course true - and although I mentioned it with my tongue in my cheek, Meryl Streep's performance not merely of an English accent (which she did to perfection already in _The French Lieutenant's Woman_), but her professional mimicry of the personal tones and delivery of Margaret Thatcher in her latest film, is quite remarkable (even some English actresses might find this quite a challenge). But as  Istriano implicitly remarked in his earlier post (#17), it's part of an actor's job to control voice and  enunciation, just as it is to control their other bodily reflexes.

But we are straying from the central issue in this thread. I wonder whether even the remarkable Miss Streep could sound so convincing in a language _other than English_ - or rather, what the cerebral processes are, in infants' language-learning, which determine (and limit) the range of phonetic mimicry in maturer life to the extent that even those who fluently command the grammar, syntax, idiom and vocabulary of foreign languages usually sound, well, "foreign".

Maybe this is beyond the scope or competence of Foreasters here to answer, as it may have more to do with developmental psychology or neurology than with phonetics and language as such, but I would still be interested in views (even anecdotal) or links to scientific studies of the matter.


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## Istriano

I think hearing and copying the sounds is much better than concentrating on IPA symbols, because IPA symbols are innacurate for comparing sounds of different languages, and are
sometimes very dated: nowadays, the ʌ symbol for the *strut *vowel is suitable only for Dublin and Great Lakes English, but not really for RP or General American.


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## Scholiast

Greetings once again



> I think hearing and copying the sounds is much better than concentrating  on IPA symbols, because IPA symbols are innacurate for comparing sounds  of different languages, and are
> sometimes very dated: nowadays, the ʌ symbol for the *strut *vowel is suitable only for Dublin and Great Lakes English, but not really for RP or General American.



With this I am full agreement. IPA symbols are helpful, but only to a certain degree, and more for some languages, mostly I-E, than for others. Moreover, for scientific phonetics they are a blunt instrument.

Yes, "listening and hearing" sounds is much better - consciously or unconsciously. I had an Aussie girlfriend once, and I found myself insensibly echoing her vowels until a male friend said "You're beginning to sound like an Aussie yourself"! And I am acutely aware that when I visit the west of Scotland, I take on, without realising it, my native mother's Glaswegian patois.

This is still not - with all respect - confronting the question which I put, namely, are we so "hard-wired" from infancy into certain patterns, rhythmic, syllabic, intonational, that we can never escape from them; and if so, why?


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## berndf

Istriano said:


> I think hearing and copying the sounds is much better than concentrating on IPA symbols, because IPA symbols are innacurate for comparing sounds of different languages, and are
> sometimes very dated: nowadays, the ʌ symbol for the *strut *vowel is suitable only for Dublin and Great Lakes English, but not really for RP or General American.


Depends on the purpose of the transcription. Transcribing _but _/bʌt/ doesn't even attempt to transcribe how the word sounds but of which phonemes it is composed. If I had to transcribe, e.g., the RP realization, I'd probably write [pɐtʰ] which isn't very useful when you are interested in how a native speaker understands the word. Phonemic transcription has the big advantage of allowing to distinguishing relevant from irrelevant phonetic information.


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## Scholiast

Greetings

And on might add (Dan2 #20):

some will still rhyme "golf" with "scoff" or "Ralph" with "chafe".

Their problem.


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## LilianaB

Why would they do it? Do you think it is possible to pronounce those words in such a way so they would rhyme? Is it possible in any variety of English?  I can somehow hear it, but I am not sure.


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## berndf

Scholiast said:


> Greetings
> 
> And on might add (Dan2 #20):
> 
> some will still rhyme "golf" with "scoff" or "Ralph" with "chafe".
> 
> Their problem.


I don't think this belongs were. /ɹeɪf/, /ɹɑlf/ and /ɹælf/ are simply variant pronunciations of the name and have nothing to do with wrong matching of phonemes.


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## merquiades

I think the IPA transcription of English is helpful and I check it often.  Yes, it might be better, but that's all we have for now. Honestly, about 1/4 times the way I pronounce words is different from it, and I have lots of doubts.  Vowels are problematic in English, and there is so much variation in the way they sound from one region to another.  It's not just AE or BE. Much of the time I don't even have an instinct of how to pronounce correctly English words I rarely use or only see written. For example in these words (some will still rhyme "golf" with "scoff" or "Ralph" with "chafe"), I'm not really sure how any of them should definitely be pronounced.  I'd say "golf" with the same vowel in "gold, bold", no doubt.  For Ralph I'd probably say /raelf/ although some people with this name prefer /reif/.  "Scoff", I'd rhyme it with "off and Scott", not being sure though, and "chafe" I really have no idea, if I had to guess I'd say /tcheif/ just because of the spelling but I'd have to check the IPA myself.  Vowels are not obvious at all, even for native speakers. Not long ago I opened a thread to see how people pronounce "wolf" so I could compare with the IPA which seemed and still seems strange to me.


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## Ben Jamin

Scholiast said:


> Dear eli7
> 
> I suspect a Moderator will indeed clamp down on this, as I understand that requests for bibliography are indeed outwith the scope of the Forum. In any case there may well be other existing threads unknown to me.



I suggest that the question “why is it hard for non-natives to pronounce or distinguish words correctly” should be changed to: “why is it hard for non-natives to pronounce or distinguish words in _certain languages_ correctly”.
The difficulty of understanding foreign words varies considerably with the language of the speaker and the listener. It is quite obvious, and may be trivial, that understanding somebody that:

Speaks a language containing sounds familiar to the listener
Speaks a language with well defined sounds
(With well defined sounds I mean sounds that differ clearly from other sounds.)
Other speech properties, like syllable timed and stress timed, are also very important. I assume also that the speaker has a good diction and speaks with a moderate speed. 
Having this in in mind we range the European languages. I would classify following languages as intrinsically difficult to understand (not only for beginners but also for advanced learners): Danish, Portuguese, English, Swedish, Norwegian, Russian, and the easy languages: Finnish, Hungarian, Spanish, Italian, Greek. Speakers of non related langauges exposed to the first group for the first time will not be able to repeat a single word correctly, or even discern how many words have been spoken, while listening to the latter group will be able to reproduce single words, or even whole sentences, quite easily and understandably.


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## LilianaB

I do not agree with you Ben Jamin. I think the difficulty of a particular language is something totally subjective and it depends mostly on the speaker. For me Swedish is one of the easiest languages, maybe because I like it a lot. I like other languages too, but this one seems to me so pleasant in sound, very concise. It does not have too many unnecessary constructions , or words. Finnish or Hungarian I would hardly approach because I am scared. I have learned a few words in Hungarian but the grammar in Ugro-Finnic languages seems overwhelming. I have a very good pronunciation in German, and I hardly ever learned the language, my grammar is confused though. I do not think Mandarin is that hard to pronounce, whereas I do not know if I could pronounce anything in certain Arabic languages. I cannot speak or repeat Italian phrases correctly, whereas I have good pronunciation in Spanish. So, what is it? P.S. I know that constructions and words make for richness of a language but sometimes, they can be overwhelming. All languages have their unique charm, some are just easier for certain people to learn.


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## Scholiast

Greetings (from the UK) once again.



> I would classify following languages as intrinsically difficult to  understand (not only for beginners but also for advanced learners):  Danish, Portuguese, English, Swedish, Norwegian, Russian, and the easy  languages: Finnish, Hungarian, Spanish, Italian, Greek. Speakers of non  related langauges exposed to the first group for the first time will not  be able to repeat a single word correctly, or even discern how many  words have been spoken, while listening to the latter group will be able  to reproduce single words, or even whole sentences, quite easily and  understandably.


 - Ben Jamin's #36

I am wondering whether Ben Jamin is referring to the difficulty of the languages in general terms (mastery of vocab., grammar, idiom &c.), or specifically of pronunciation (the theme of this current Thread). Moreover, speaking words or phrases "quite easily and understandably" may fall far short of enunciating them as a native would - my spoken German is, I would claim, 95% fluent, and I have been told that my _Aussprache_ is "good". But I know I could never pass myself off as a native of a German-speaking country.


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## LilianaB

I agree with you. I can say phrases close to native pronunciation in German or Spanish, but not in Italian, for example. Of course I could say them in Italian so they would be understood, but they would not sound close to native. Of course, with practice one can achieve better results, but certain things just come naturally, effortlessly.


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## berndf

*Moderator note: It seems we are getting into anecdote telling mood in this thread which is not the purpose of this forum. I've therefore closed this thread. If someone wants to contribute to the topic please feel free to contact me or any other moderator by PM or "report" this post using the red triangle.*


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