Is Russian easier to UNDERSTAND than French?

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Re: Is Russian easier to UNDERSTAND than French?

Postby Serpent » Fri Nov 02, 2018 1:12 pm

It's definitely easier :lol:

:oops: Seriously, from my perspective it's more logical when you can look at a word and always tell how many vowels/syllables it has. And how many consonants or at least clusters :?

The most difficult thing about the Russian pronunciation will probably be the distinctions you didn't need before, like soft/hard and voiced/voiceless consonants. And the stress, of course, but most of the time it doesn't change the meaning.
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Re: Is Russian easier to UNDERSTAND than French?

Postby reineke » Fri Nov 02, 2018 1:21 pm

Acoustic cues to speech segmentation in spoken French : native and non-native strategies

In spoken French, the phonological processes of liaison and resyllabification can
render word and syllable boundaries ambiguous


[The] results add to a growing body of work demonstrating that listeners use extremely fined-grained acoustic detail to modulate lexical access (e.g. Salverda et al. 2003; Shatzman & McQueen 2006). In addition, the current results have manifest ramifications for study of the upper limits of L2 acquisition and the plasticity of the adult perceptual system in that several advanced learners of French showed evidence nativelike perceptual sensitivity to non-contrastive phonological variation.

French is a language that poses particular challenges for the learner in the comprehension of running speech. As Grammont (1938) observed,

Quelqu’un qui ne sait pas où commencent et où finissent les mots
français ne pourrait jamais le deviner en entendant parler. […]
D’ordinaire les mots se disent par groupes, par séries, sans
aucun arrêt, et si étroitement unis l’un à l’autre qu’il n’est pas
rare qu’une syllabe soit constituée par la fin d’un mot et le
commencement d’un autre. (p. 102)

(Someone who does not know where French words begin
and end would never be able to guess by listening to running speech.[…]
Ordinarily words are spoken in groups or sets, without stopping,
and so tightly connected to one another that it is not rare that a
single syllable includes the end of one word and the beginning of
another.)

The resyllabification phenomena to which Grammont refers result from two phonological processes in spoken French that reflect a strong penchant for a consonantvowel (CV) syllable structure: ‘enchaînement’, or concatenation, and liaison1. These processes often render syllable and word boundaries ambiguous (e.g. un air ‘a melody’ and un nerf ‘a nerve’, both transcribed and syllabified [oẽ.nɛʁ]2).

Spoken Word Recognition

We speak in order to be heard and need to be heard in order to be understood.
(Jakobson & Waugh 1979: 96-7)

1.0 Introduction
From a psycholinguistic point of view, the study of spoken word recognition consists in essence in the investigation of the transformation of a continuous acoustic signal into discrete linguistic elements from which meaning is extracted. It is generally assumed that listeners possess a stock of abstract representations of both individual sounds and words in a mental lexicon. This lexicon is thought to contain the entirety of what we know about a word, including its acoustic realization, meaning, orthography (in literate populations), and rules governing its syntactic roles. As the incoming acoustic signal is processed, these mental representations are matched against what the listener hears. Miller and Jusczyk (1989) among others point out two specific areas that would seem to make the mapping of the acoustic input onto these mental representations almost insurmountably complicated: the lack of invariance in speech sounds and the absence of
explicit word boundaries in the speech signal.

Indeed, the sounds that make up speech were originally assumed to be analogous to moveable type in a printing press, in that individual sounds could be mixed and matched in limitless patterns, and early accounts of SWR were in fact derived from models of written word recognition (Morton 1969; Forster 1976). However the notion that the speech signal can be divided into distinct phonemes is greatly removed from the physical reality of speech. The acoustic properties of segments are far from fixed. Phonemes are highly susceptible
not only to their physical context in the speech signal, but also to external factors stemming from intra- and inter-speaker variability.

Perceptual Training in L2 Phonology

In Chapter Three we brought up the question as to which cues to speech processing and segmentation could be amenable to perceptual training for the L2 learner. Kuhl (2000) notes that features which characterize motherese, the speech to which infants are exposed in L1 acquisition, such as “exaggerated acoustic cues, multiple instances by many talkers, and mass listening experience” have also proved beneficial to L2 acquisition (p. 11855). We explore in this section the first feature to which Kuhl refers — exaggerated acoustic cues. As we noted in §3.4, phonetic training has resulted in the improvement of the perception of some L2 segmental contrasts...

McClelland et al. (2002) and McCandliss et al. (2002), for example, employed an adaptive training regime within a framework of Hebbian learning in the training of the English /l-r/ contrast for speakers of Japanese. A Hebbian model of associative learning, in which the repetitive activation of neuronal synapses leads to an increase in the strength of synaptic connections, predicts that adult learners of a second language experience difficulties in the perception of L2 contrasts due to the strength of neural connections established by the acquisition of the L1 phonological system. When the learner is then confronted with L2 sounds that may be similar to established L1 categories, the existing connections are actually strengthened as the similar sound is assimilated to an existing category. Subsequently, new categories are difficult to create.

McClelland et al. (2002) and McCandliss et al. (2002) hypothesized that the same neuronal system that leads to the entrenchment of the L1 phonology could be exploited in the training of L2 contrasts by provoking the creation of new neural connections through adaptive training. In a demonstration of adult brain plasticity, these authors showed that Japanese speakers’ perception of the /l-r/ contrast improved with training on stimuli in which acoustic differences between the two segments had been exaggerated and then gradually brought within normal production range. In the McClelland et al. (2002) study, Japanese participants were able to better distinguish the sounds after three 20-minute sessions...

While perceptual training has seen much success in the acquisition of non-native phonemic contrasts, we are aware of no work to date concerning the training of L2 learners on cues to speech segmentation or the perception of allophonic variation in a L2. However, it seems feasible that techniques similar to those used in adaptive perceptual training could be applied to cues such as segmental duration or stress accent, which have clearly identifiable acoustic correlates.

Conclusion
In this dissertation we have examined the role of segmental duration in the interpretation and processing of environments of ambiguity in spoken French.

In isolating and exaggerating the durational differences in the pivotal consonants in ambiguous pairs, the series of experiments reported here has shown that French listeners do indeed use this cue in speech segmentation and word recognition. Furthermore, we have demonstrated that advanced learners of L2 French are also sensitive to this non-contrastive phonetic detail. We have also provided evidence that sensitivity to this cue is conditioned by language exposure by showing that beginning learners of French show diminished sensitivity to segmental duration relative to both NS and advanced NNS. Of particular interest for the study of the upper limits of L2
acquisition is the fact that several advanced L2 learners exhibited sensitivity to this cue at nativelike levels, offering evidence that the adult perceptual system retains plasticity into adulthood.

As discussed at length above, the speech signal is characterized by substantial amounts of variation and uneven distributions of acoustic factors....

If researchers are to understand how listeners segment continuous speech, it is necessary to integrate evidence culled from a variety of laboratory techniques and speech environments. Isolating individual cues allows us to form a sort of schematic of a listener’s phonological grammar and the inventory of tools used in the comprehension of a highly variable speech signal. Though the particular cue investigated here may not be extremely robust in natural speech, it is nonetheless a part of native (and non-native) speaker’s phonological inventory and therefore must be included in any comprehensive model of spoken word recognition.

https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/6643
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Re: Is Russian easier to UNDERSTAND than French?

Postby David1917 » Fri Nov 02, 2018 2:47 pm

reineke wrote:Vowel reduction in Russian

"There are five vowel phonemes in Standard Russian. Vowels tend to merge when they are unstressed...

Other types of reduction are phonetic...

Russian orthography does not reflect vowel reduction, which can confuse foreign-language learners..."

Wikip.


So, this can be true to some extent, but again comparing to French it doesn't hold a candle.

You might hear, "ну...как скать..." for "как сказать" (how to say - how shall one say...)

Sometimes в gets dropped aside from здравствуйте becoming здрассте, you might hear красаучик for красавчик. Russian memes are honestly great since they tend to phonetically write out/exaggerate colloquial elisions.

A classic example of vowels changing is молоко - you might expect "mawh-lawh-kawh" but in reality you get malakawh, something like малако. It's my understanding that Belarusian takes these changes into consideration in its orthography, though that creates a different hurdle in seeing/finding root words. (See: "What's in a Russian Word?" by Ian Press)
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Re: Is Russian easier to UNDERSTAND than French?

Postby vonPeterhof » Fri Nov 02, 2018 5:16 pm

David1917 wrote:You might hear, "ну...как скать..." for "как сказать" (how to say - how shall one say...)

Sometimes в gets dropped aside from здравствуйте becoming здрассте, you might hear красаучик for красавчик. Russian memes are honestly great since they tend to phonetically write out/exaggerate colloquial elisions.

I think you should note that "красаучик" is a bit different from the syncopations you mentioned (other examples of those I'd give are things like "человек -> чеэк -> чек" and "будешь -> буешь -> буш"), in that it's not just colloquial, but also displays a marked feature of an accent, either Ukrainian/Belarusian/southern Russian or from somewhere in the Caucasus. Nobody from where I'm from would pronounce "красавчик" that way unless they were doing it deliberately to invoke a stereotype and/or a meme.
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Re: Is Russian easier to UNDERSTAND than French?

Postby Serpent » Fri Nov 02, 2018 6:27 pm

vonPeterhof wrote: Nobody from where I'm from would pronounce "красавчик" that way
I agree but were you referring to St Petersburg, Moscow or Kazakhstan/Almaty here? :) Or all of the above?

And yeah, this definitely happens in Russian. But a learner will only encounter this in conversations or other unscripted speech like interviews or talk shows. Not in the news, documentaries or audiobooks, and I guess it's usually toned down in movies.
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Re: Is Russian easier to UNDERSTAND than French?

Postby vonPeterhof » Fri Nov 02, 2018 6:35 pm

Serpent wrote:
vonPeterhof wrote: Nobody from where I'm from would pronounce "красавчик" that way
I agree but were you referring to St Petersburg, Moscow or Kazakhstan/Almaty here? :) Or all of the above?
The omission of the specific place was deliberate on my part :D But yeah, it applies to all of those places. Well, I suppose people with strong Kazakh accents might say "красаучик", but most people from Almaty are Russian speakers and/or bilingual and don't tend to have such accents.
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Re: Is Russian easier to UNDERSTAND than French?

Postby Dylan95 » Thu Nov 08, 2018 10:00 pm

I was able to express myself in French after about 1.5 years of classroom study in a public school in the US. I made mistakes, and it was far from fluid, but I could give demonstrations on the recent history of the Democratic Republic of Congo in French for 5-10 minutes without memorizing the content after 2 years of study.

I couldn't do anything of this sort after even 2.5 years of studying Russian in college. I remember being irritated by even after having not taken French for years, I could still understand French newspapers better than Russian newspapers despite having studied Russian for longer.

Russian is much more difficult than French for native English speakers. Learning vocabulary in French was never a struggle for me. Once I studied a word a few times it would more often than not enter my long term memory. For Russian, some words just never seem to pop into my head no matter what I do. And that's without even getting started on the grammar.

Still, I never reached an advance stage in French, so there are probably others who could offer more insight.
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Re: Is Russian easier to UNDERSTAND than French?

Postby SGP » Fri Nov 09, 2018 1:00 am

Dylan95 wrote:I couldn't do anything of this sort after even 2.5 years of studying Russian in college. I remember being irritated by even after having not taken French for years, I could still understand French newspapers better than Russian newspapers despite having studied Russian for longer.


Now that is about reactivating some so-called "latent" knowledge.

Dylan95 wrote:Russian is much more difficult than French for native English speakers. Learning vocabulary in French was never a struggle for me. Once I studied a word a few times it would more often than not enter my long term memory.


Not really saying "same here", but something similar happened to me several times because of my (although non-native) Spanish background. Some words simply didn't leave me after having come to me.

And by the way, a certain member of this forum who is Just a Little Bit Nosy When It Comes To French Related Topics (this is because he still is trying to Connect the French Dots) wanted to ask you whether you ever perceived English and French as two (direct) sisters. Because for French and German, I don't think too many people would say "yes", although they are indirect or distant sisters. But those two (EN/FR)...there is something special about them making me not rushing into not calling them direct sisters. Even if I know that English isn't a Fully And Entirely Romance Only Language.

Dylan95 wrote:For Russian, some words just never seem to pop into my head no matter what I do. And that's without even getting started on the grammar.


Reminds me of myself. Not learning Russian for now, but still sometimes (attention, non-standard usage :)) visiting it for a few minutes. Among the Very Few Russian Words That Do Stick To Me Like Glue simply is... do you know which one? Babushka.
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