'Speech' is really 'sbeech'

[Le Baron]

This is a very interesting video. Regarding how words sound in pronunciation and how they're written/transcribed. Applicable not only to English.

[Crojo]

I feel like my brain has been taken apart, cleaned, oiled, and put back together.

Something similar seems to happen in Spanish but Spanish-speakers that I've met in person, native or foreign, tell me I'm wrong. Every standard pronunciation guide that I've read, too, insists that every letter is always pronounced in the same way. Spanish pronunciation is certainly more uniform than English. But the letters do not always sound the same. At least to my ears.

Two examples that come up mind are:
1. …n/m p/b… (e.g. 'en plan' sounds like 'em plan')
2. While 'b' and 'v' sound the same and are roughly interchangeable, there is a sound that's closer to the English 'b' and a sound that's closer to the English 'v', but it depends on where the 'b'/'v' is positioned rather than the fact that a word is spelled with a 'b' or a 'v'.

I'm fully willing to learn that I'm wrong, but it'll take some strong evidence. In fact, I think Spanish is easier to pronounce after realising that the pronunciation is less rigid than is claimed.

[tractor]

I'm fully willing to learn that I'm wrong, but it'll take some strong evidence.

You're not wrong: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fonolog%C ... el_español

[tastyonions]

1. …n/m p/b… (e.g. 'en plan' sounds like 'em plan')

Wikipedia for Spanish phonology:

The three nasal phonemes—/m/, /n/, and /ɲ/—maintain their contrast when in syllable-initial position (e.g. cama 'bed', cana 'grey hair', caña 'sugar cane'). In syllable-final position, this three-way contrast is lost as nasals assimilate to the place of articulation of the following consonant[9]—even across a word boundary;[39] or, if a nasal is followed by a pause rather than a consonant, it is realized for most speakers as alveolar [n] (though in Caribbean varieties, this may instead be [ŋ] or an omitted nasal with nasalization of the preceding vowel).[40][41] Thus /n/ is realized as [m] before labial consonants, and as [ŋ] before velar ones. Additionally, word-final /m/ and /ɲ/ in stand-alone loanwords or proper nouns are substituted with [n], e.g. álbum [ˈalβun] ('album').[42]

[Cainntear]

Something similar seems to happen in Spanish but Spanish-speakers that I've met in person, native or foreign, tell me I'm wrong. Every standard pronunciation guide that I've read, too, insists that every letter is always pronounced in the same way.

I have literally only read this once (during an Open University course that taught linguistics through closely examining English, I believe, so I have confidence in it) and have never seen it repeated: there is a tendency for languages to either have weak vowels or have weak consonants, but usually an either/or choice, because weakening both is normally a step too far. In English, consonants must be fully realised because our vowels aren't; in Spanish, vowels must be fully realised because consonants aren't.

This actually makes me wonder about Catalan -- the tendency to weaken consonants... is that a borrowing from Spanish, or was it always there? I have deliberately not replicated Spanish consonants and have let E and A fall together, and my assumption was I was speaking better because of it. Am I wrong? Is it legitimate dialectal variation?

[tastyonions]

European Portuguese does both (turns B, D, G into approximants and vowels into mush).

[Cainntear]

European Portuguese does both (turns B, D, G into approximants and vowels into mush).

Turns them into approximants when, though? If they're always approximant, that's not synchronic (="same time") weaking of a phoneme; if it's a reduced allophone (like /d/ become /ð/ in Spanish) that's synchronic weakening. The shift from T to D in may have originated in an Iberians struggling to pronounce intervocalic /t/, but it was diachronic (="across time") change that is complete and has stopped, hence borrowings that occurred after the change was complete retaining their T, like "patata" and "sindicato".

If Portuguese has vowel phonemes that were created by diachronic lenition but are now fixed syllables, saying them as they are isn't actually weakening them further.

That said, lots in linguistics talks about processes of change in terms of stability and instability. Language has historically always been in a state of flux, but technology has reduced its rate of change. Linguists often propose that languages are in transitional forms, but that schools, books and audio/video are acting to freeze an unstable language in place.

For example, there's a theory that word order prefers a consistent thing of befores and afters, and that most Romance languages are unstable because they have prepositions and articles before nouns, but attributive adjectives after. That's hypothesised as unstable. Consider that Hindi has SOV order -- verb after -- and has "post-active prepositions", which are logically called postpositions by Indian linguists because they come after the noun. This is all really unprovable stuff, but I think they tend to look at historically isolated* languages like Greenlandic to propose what is stable. (* isolated in terms of low daily contact with other languages, but most crucially it isn't a language that's commonly learned by adults in the same way Latin was and English is, which changes a language.)

[tractor]

This actually makes me wonder about Catalan -- the tendency to weaken consonants... is that a borrowing from Spanish, or was it always there? I have deliberately not replicated Spanish consonants and have let E and A fall together, and my assumption was I was speaking better because of it. Am I wrong? Is it legitimate dialectal variation?

As far as I know b, d, g is weakened in all Catalan dialects.

[Sae]

Ah yeah I have seen that video before and one of his other ones. It is really interesting because you don't think about it, but it's what flows right in your mouth based on the position of vowels and consonants and heck it's only something I've had to think about when learning Tuvan & Mongolian. Previous languages learning attempts haven't needed me to think about it.

Firstly because of the vowel harmony, what you use depends on whether the stem has a "front" vowel or "back vowel" so your vowel sound remains where it feels natural in the mouth. But it's not just vowel harmony but in suffixes and sometimes it can affect whether "v" or "b" is used like in "be/ve" a question word in both Mongolian & Tuvan, though interestingly, Mongolian differentiates it in the grammar rule, so they will write 've' when they say 've' but Tuvan doesn't, it's always written as 'be', eg. "eki tur siler be?" sounds more like "eki t'sler veh?" It's also true for Tuvan's cases (directive case 2nd form), which could end in one of the following: tıva, tuva, tive, tüve, dıva, duva, dive or düve. But it all depends on vowel harmony and the preceding letter on the stem. So "Inektive" means, "towards the cow" and "küskedüve" is "towards the mouse".

It seems it's recognises that the vowels and consonants change depending on what part of the mouth is used. However, it is an academic resource I'm using to learn grammar so I don't know 100% if it's how they're written and may be accomodations for getting pronunication right. But I know vowel harmony for both is written. And Mongolian often isn't pronounced how it is written and has separate rules for pronunciation, like which vowels get voiced in a word based on position, how it deals with dipthongs or long vowels and if there's more than one, how the first and second are pronounced. And Mongolian also has hidden letters that appear when you put on certain suffixes, which seem to help with pronunciation but these are also acknoweldged and written, so maybe that kind of leads to a tangent.

But all in all it is interesting to see how naturally how mouths change sounds based on what what they're connected to and it is an entirely subconscious thing and consciously you think you're still pronouncing the same thing.

[tastyonions]

European Portuguese does both (turns B, D, G into approximants and vowels into mush). ;)

Turns them into approximants when, though? If they're always approximant, that's not synchronic (="same time") weaking of a phoneme; if it's a reduced allophone (like /d/ become /ð/ in Spanish) that's synchronic weakening.

It’s a reduced allophone, approximant in similar positions to Spanish B, D, and G.