Repeat/Rely Index difference between languages?

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Xenops
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Repeat/Rely Index difference between languages?

Postby Xenops » Sat Jan 15, 2022 1:11 am

Korean has a different kind of difficulty. There are some languages – we should invent a catchy phrase for this; the repeat/rely index, that’ll work for now – if you learn a word in Italian and say it to an Italian person, the Italian will immediately understand. If you learn a word in Indonesian, the Indonesian will immediately understand. There’s good repeat/rely there. If you learn a word in Korean, the Korean’s eyes will glaze over; he’ll be hopelessly confused. Then you say the word again, and you say it louder, and he still won’t understand. Then you show him the word and he’ll say “ah!” and he’ll repeat to you exactly what you’ve been saying, at least to your ears. That happens a lot in Mandarin, and it happens all the time in Korean.


Barry Farber Interview

Have you found this to be a common phenomena in your languages, or not so much? Does this exist, or is it really just "not getting the pronunciation right"?

Share your thoughts.
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Re: Repeat/Rely Index difference between languages?

Postby Sumisu » Sat Jan 15, 2022 1:47 am

I would guess it's just a function of how many homophones are in the language, and Korean, Japanese, Chinese, etc. have many more than most languages. If I say "ha" in Japanese, that could mean a tooth, a leaf, a blade of grass, and many others, so no one could possibly understand it out of context, or without seeing the kanji. On the other hand if I say "toshokan" any Japanese speaker would recognize it as "library," even if pronounced relatively poorly. If there's more to it than that, maybe there's something unique about Korean that I'm not aware of.
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Re: Repeat/Rely Index difference between languages?

Postby iguanamon » Sat Jan 15, 2022 1:55 am

Thanks for the link to the interview, Xenops. I hadn't seen or heard anything from Barry Farber since the 1990's. The interview seemed to carry on from the last chapter of his book. I guess Farber would've loved today's smart phones and Anki/srs. The year of the interview was 2005. The internet was not what it is today back then- not even close. It just goes to show that we live in a golden age for learning languages. It's never been easier. I wonder what he could have accomplished with all we have available today.

As far as "Repeat/Rely" goes... well, I have never learned any Asian languages or Finno-Ugric ones either. I haven't run into it much, except with "down-island"/Lesser Antilles Creole French. I think this is due to:
1) my relatively lower level in the language
2) speaking it less often
3) native speakers' shock and surprise at hearing a "blan" (white/foreigner) speaking it. Few have ever heard anyone from outside their community speaking their language and are definitely not accustomed to hearing their language spoken as a second language. I also think that we tend to over-estimate our pronunciation ability as learners.

With Spanish; Portuguese; Djudeo-espanyol; Haitian Creole; and Catalan... there are simply more opportunities to engage with native materials and native-speakers both early-on and after reaching a high level. St Lucian/Dominican Creole just doesn't give me the same chance.
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Re: Repeat/Rely Index difference between languages?

Postby zenmonkey » Sat Jan 15, 2022 1:56 am

A bit of both.

There is definitely an issue with the locals and expectations. This video highlights that.


But at the same time, the learner often just doesn't get tones or vowels or other elements that make differentiation possible.

My partner and I were in Paris in a bar and she wanted to order a "pink fizz" - she could not be understood. She was saying "pink" correctly but the waitress just was not getting it until I pronounced it. Whose fault?
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Re: Repeat/Rely Index difference between languages?

Postby Sumisu » Sat Jan 15, 2022 4:18 am

zenmonkey wrote:A bit of both.

There is definitely an issue with the locals and expectations. This video highlights that.


But at the same time, the learner often just doesn't get tones or vowels or other elements that make differentiation possible.

My partner and I were in Paris in a bar and she wanted to order a "pink fizz" - she could not be understood. She was saying "pink" correctly but the waitress just was not getting it until I pronounced it. Whose fault?


This is definitely a real phenomenon, although it hasn't been my personal experience when visiting Japan as a white guy. I would maybe draw a distinction between the issue of phobia/discomfort towards foreigners that this video hints at, as opposed to what the OP describes, which I took as something more intrinsic to the language itself. But maybe it's not so easy to cleanly distinguish the two.
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Re: Repeat/Rely Index difference between languages?

Postby golyplot » Sat Jan 15, 2022 7:29 pm

I haven't studied Korean, but I've heard that the phonology is very difficult for English speakers. I'm guessing it's a combination of a) lots of homophones *and* b) poor pronunciation.
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Re: Repeat/Rely Index difference between languages?

Postby vonPeterhof » Sat Jan 15, 2022 9:05 pm

I'd say homophones are far from the biggest issue in Korean pronunciation. It's more about the language's somewhat unusual phonology and the complex relationship between letters, phonemes and actual sounds (compounded on the listening comprehension side by the tendency of many speakers to slur their informal speech). Because of all this simplified explanations of Korean pronunciation aimed at casual learners give them an inaccurate idea of how to produce the sounds, while more complex explanations get so technical as to be overwhelming, not to mention the fact that the exact realizations of certain sounds are still debated by phonologists and/or are in the process of sound shifts between generations of native speakers.
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