Re: Spanish Accent
Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2022 8:21 pm
We're really speaking about the difference between phonemes and phones (or rather the bundles of allophones that correspond to a certain phoneme). Phonemes are actually constructs based on the interplay between the actual sound (phones) and meaning - if you have two words (or phrases) that only differ on one point, but mean different things then the sounds at that point are said to represent different phonemes. And thanks to this simplification we end up with somethings that function as some kind of sound alphabet for a language. And as long as we keep the phonemens separate we can in principle pronounce them in a wide variety of ways. Of course native speakers don't do this, but learners are supposed to pick up the sound variants (allophones) that the native speakers use - and the problem is that they don't always agree.
As for the "bob" thing the two b's are definitely not pronounced the same way: a final voiced plosive (or occlusive) like b or d or g wil tend to be devocalized, i.e. it will move in the direction of the corresponding voiceless plosives like p t and k. In other words we could just as well write "Bob" as "Bop" - the difference has been almost neutralized (and totally neuitralized with some speakers) . But the difference in sound+meaning is still there in "Bob" (or "Bop") versus "Pop" so we keep b and p as distinct phonemes in the phonemic repertoire for the English language.
As for Spanish is seems that the rule not only in Latin America, but also in Andalucia (where most of the conquistadores came from) is that the phonemic opposition between c/z and s has been neutralized everywhere, whereas it has been retained in all is might and glory in the rest of Spain. This is a more extreme situation than the one I mentioned for "bob", but it is also different in another way: there may be cases where a consonantal phonemic opposition in final position is neutralized in Spanish, but Spanish doesn't seem to be quite as intent on 'tightening up' as English - the Spanish consonants seem to be the result of a 'loosening up' where the mouth isn't closed totally, and this even seems to be carried to an even more sound - you can for example compare the d's in the town name "Valladolid": the last d is slackened so much that it can become almost silent.
And what do you do to overcome this real-world chaos in your language learning? Well, first and foremost you need to listen (and I shouldn't preach this since that is my own Achilles heel, but it is neverless a bloody good advice). And at least in the beginning it might be worth restricting your listening to the kind of Spanish you want to end up with (one more advice I haven't followed myself !). But there is one trick more you could use: as I have explained above the phonemes are really a construct that covers up a morass of allophones, which may seem to be stable in one person's speech, but differ from person to person - and sometimes also according to mood and context - and they are definitely not stable across different linguistic contexts. So you need to train your ability to hear what the natives ACTUALLY say, instead of just focusing on the phonematic reduction of it.
In practice this means that you should record short bits of speech and put them into some software where you with one keypress can repeat each passage again and again until you are sure that you have heard what precise sounds the speaker has used ('Audacity' is one possibility) - and try to notate the result in your own homebrewn sound alphabet if you don't want to spend time on learning the semi-official IPA system (I have never bothered to learn it). It's unlikely that you return from this exercise with a complete overview over the phonetics of Spanish, but you will learn to pass through the phonematic screen and hear the real sounds that lurk behind it. And with a bit of luck that should make it easier for you to profit from listening to native speech.
As for the "bob" thing the two b's are definitely not pronounced the same way: a final voiced plosive (or occlusive) like b or d or g wil tend to be devocalized, i.e. it will move in the direction of the corresponding voiceless plosives like p t and k. In other words we could just as well write "Bob" as "Bop" - the difference has been almost neutralized (and totally neuitralized with some speakers) . But the difference in sound+meaning is still there in "Bob" (or "Bop") versus "Pop" so we keep b and p as distinct phonemes in the phonemic repertoire for the English language.
As for Spanish is seems that the rule not only in Latin America, but also in Andalucia (where most of the conquistadores came from) is that the phonemic opposition between c/z and s has been neutralized everywhere, whereas it has been retained in all is might and glory in the rest of Spain. This is a more extreme situation than the one I mentioned for "bob", but it is also different in another way: there may be cases where a consonantal phonemic opposition in final position is neutralized in Spanish, but Spanish doesn't seem to be quite as intent on 'tightening up' as English - the Spanish consonants seem to be the result of a 'loosening up' where the mouth isn't closed totally, and this even seems to be carried to an even more sound - you can for example compare the d's in the town name "Valladolid": the last d is slackened so much that it can become almost silent.
And what do you do to overcome this real-world chaos in your language learning? Well, first and foremost you need to listen (and I shouldn't preach this since that is my own Achilles heel, but it is neverless a bloody good advice). And at least in the beginning it might be worth restricting your listening to the kind of Spanish you want to end up with (one more advice I haven't followed myself !). But there is one trick more you could use: as I have explained above the phonemes are really a construct that covers up a morass of allophones, which may seem to be stable in one person's speech, but differ from person to person - and sometimes also according to mood and context - and they are definitely not stable across different linguistic contexts. So you need to train your ability to hear what the natives ACTUALLY say, instead of just focusing on the phonematic reduction of it.
In practice this means that you should record short bits of speech and put them into some software where you with one keypress can repeat each passage again and again until you are sure that you have heard what precise sounds the speaker has used ('Audacity' is one possibility) - and try to notate the result in your own homebrewn sound alphabet if you don't want to spend time on learning the semi-official IPA system (I have never bothered to learn it). It's unlikely that you return from this exercise with a complete overview over the phonetics of Spanish, but you will learn to pass through the phonematic screen and hear the real sounds that lurk behind it. And with a bit of luck that should make it easier for you to profit from listening to native speech.