Pronunciation - I strive for ...

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I strive for ...

Pimsleur pronunciation
11
28%
Natural pronunciation
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73%
 
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Pronunciation - I strive for ...

Postby luke » Sat Mar 04, 2023 11:29 am

Language learning publishers like Pimsleur use a carefully enunciated pronunciation model.

Many native speakers are not so careful in their enunciation.

As you improve your pronunciation, do you strive to speak more like a newscaster or a man on the street (ordinary person)?

I'm thinking that people do their best, but here I'm wondering what pronunciation model people try to emulate.
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Re: Pronunciation - I strive for ...

Postby Iversen » Sat Mar 04, 2023 12:29 pm

I have never heard the audio from a Pimsleur course - actually I have never used Pimsleur (never seen one in a Danish library and far too expensive to buy myself), but I would prefer to speak like a lecturer rather than a smalltalker. Under 'lecturers' I count those who speak in the news on TV (although that segment of speakers are on a downward slope because of their unwanted chattiness), and under 'smalltalker' I count the actors in films and sitcoms and people talking to each others on public transport. The last thing I would like to adopt would however be the excruciatingly slow monotonous talk from the few courses I actually have listened to. And that kind of mindnumbing sound production would neither qualify as lecturing nor as smalltalk. I do hope that Pimsleur courses don't sound like that.

But this criterion is not really a question of pronunciation of specific sounds, more about expressing yourself in complete sentences with as much clarity as you can muster and at a speed that is somewhere at the upper middle range. I do cherish dialectal differences in pronunciation, and I am also impressed by people who can mimick others succesfully by finding the characteristic features in the speech of their targets. So adhering to one standard is not a must for me, and I would gladly sound as myself just speaking another language.
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Re: Pronunciation - I strive for ...

Postby księżycowy » Sat Mar 04, 2023 1:45 pm

I mean, there's an added layer of what context the pronunciation is meant for (buying a grape from the fruit hawker, giving a presentation in a business meeting, etc.), but thinking generally (where the bulk of the aim is), I try to go au naturel.

EDIT: Iversen and I seem to be on a similar wavelength. :)

EDIT2: Now that I think about it, I could also imagine it might also depend on where you are in your study of a language. There is probably a time and place for both pronunciation styles throughout the voyage. I would guess a more "newscaster" style in the beginning and then move towards "street" pronunciation as you advance. Provided you wanted to move into that pronunciation style.

Of course, on the flip side, I'm reminded of courses I have in Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese) that basically start off in more or less "street" pronunciation. [And on the flipside, once again, I have others with careful, articulated pronunciation. So resources might affect this too.]
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Re: Pronunciation - I strive for ...

Postby tastyonions » Sat Mar 04, 2023 2:06 pm

Even if I’m at a pretty high level in an L2 I’m going to be making mistakes and saying stuff a bit weird sometimes so I’m at least going to make my pronunciation as clear as possible to remove that as a possibility for misunderstanding. Doesn’t have to mean speaking like the first lessons of a Pimsleur course exactly, but I at least try to emulate the kind of natural speech I find easiest to understand.
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Re: Pronunciation - I strive for ...

Postby Sae » Sat Mar 04, 2023 4:23 pm

I strive for natural, especially being able to hear it. It's why I see value in my learning with a native speaker for Vietnamese with aims to do the same with Mongolian.

I figure a more "Pimsleur" or textbook pronunciation, whilst clear, is also impersonal and with a natural approach I figure makes sense when your aim is to speak the language and connect with people. I like to be able to get my personality across in a natural way because if my aim is to connect with people, then the less of a robot I sound, the better and of course in understanding the nuances in speech between people is useful in understanding them properly, which is a skill I am focusing on at the moment, because I've become to accustomed to relying on my tutor's pronunciation and speech patterns, but it is a skill he's also helping me with.
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Re: Pronunciation - I strive for ...

Postby Le Baron » Sat Mar 04, 2023 5:07 pm

Probably depends on the stage. I don't think anyone can really have 'natural pronunciation' when not even knowing half the words they need to pronounce or getting that much real interaction anyway. I'm leaning towards a 'learn the rules before you break the rules' approach. So that indeed means talking a bit like a newscaster/tour guide for a while, but slowly shaping this with more and more imitation and adoption of natural pronunciation.

There has to be some caution with going very far in this 'I talk like the natives' thing, or a foreign speaker can end up sounding like a parody version of 'vernacular' and therefore like a bit of a fool. Especially early on when you haven't paid your dues and really genuinely spoken so many times that it really is natural (and even then it might not be the same 'natural' as everyone else's).

However, I hit the Pimsleur button. Because I'm stupid.
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Re: Pronunciation - I strive for ...

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Sat Mar 04, 2023 6:24 pm

No idea, but someone once thought that my English reminded them of David Attenborough (yeah right...), and someone else thought that my Chinese (a single sentence!) sounded like a newscaster (or was it a politician?). :?
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Re: Pronunciation - I strive for ...

Postby german2k01 » Sat Mar 04, 2023 7:14 pm

I strive for understandable pronunciation where words do not sound totally different words altogether. For example, in a typical German class, a Thai lady pronounced the German word Darauf with DaLauf. It sounds like a completely different word. For this reason, I listen a lot in German. If you can hear it well then you can register the sound correctly subconsciously. Hence, you can replicate it correctly.

Since I fall in love with the german language so I strive for above-average pronunciation and have developed a sort of zero-tolerance policy for wrong pronunciation. Hence I check audio pronunciation in an online dictionary all the time.
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Re: Pronunciation - I strive for ...

Postby Le Baron » Sat Mar 04, 2023 7:33 pm

german2k01 wrote:If you can hear it well then you can register the sound correctly subconsciously. Hence, you can replicate it correctly.

This is a typical South-East Asian thing though. Not that she can't hear the word. It's surely interference from her own internalised sound-system. Another similar one is the confusion of V and W among people in India (I don't know if it is localised or what). So that despite recognising the word 'love' perfectly well the same person will say: 'I lowe you'. And also e.g. 'It's vinter' (winter).

Listening doesn't really seem to solve this.
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Re: Pronunciation - I strive for ...

Postby german2k01 » Sun Mar 05, 2023 3:09 pm

Le Baron wrote:
german2k01 wrote:If you can hear it well then you can register the sound correctly subconsciously. Hence, you can replicate it correctly.

This is a typical South-East Asian thing though. Not that she can't hear the word. It's surely interference from her own internalised sound-system. Another similar one is the confusion of V and W among people in India (I don't know if it is localised or what). So that despite recognising the word 'love' perfectly well the same person will say: 'I lowe you'. And also e.g. 'It's vinter' (winter).

Listening doesn't really seem to solve this.


This is what we call fossilization. When people speak more than listen more; these sorts of issues happen. The subconscious mind does not know how to pronounce it as it has not listened to its correct pronunciation hundred times. I am sure Indians who listened to the English language a lot before speaking would not have issues with it. It is the ratio between speaking and listening that is the main culprit at work.

Just to give you an example, there was a Chinese Guy in the German class I was attending who just arrived in Germany 6 months ago. He also had issues with the correct pronunciation of some german words because he had not listened to the language enough. Later I met a Chinese girl who just moved to my student hostel. She was also Chinese, but her pronunciation was closer to real pronunciation, and had no issues like that Chinese guy was having. Minimum first language influence.

I asked her how come her pronunciation and intonation were closer to a native German than that Chinese guy who was attending the class.

She said that she watched A LOT of German TV show with SUBTITLES on Netflix and Amazon prime. Natural Listening when listening for hours and paying attention to the sounds of the words in the end will fix it. Matching sounds with their corresponding words has its merits for developing good pronunciation at least being aware of it.

I think this is what Dr. Brown is alluding to it as early speaking hampers acquiring correct sounds of the language. Hence, a long silent period of intensive listening is advisable. This way you are giving an opportunity for your subconscious mind to notice the real and correct pronunciation of words.

That's what I think. Your thoughts, please. Why the results were different in the case of 2 native Chinese?
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