zenmonkey wrote:The IPA is useful to describe differentiating sounds. It doesn't actually cover all productive sounds and is built around usability rather than accuracy. One of the issues is clearly that pronounced sounds as shown via spectral analysis demonstrate that dividing a continuous utterance into well-delimited segments is an approximation. And there are all sorts of complicated transition patterns, and co-articulations and some sounds only make sense in a certain phonetic context. IPA, like any writing system, remains an approximation.
Thank you! The whole post is a wonderful explanation. And you describe really well what I had always just felt, when facing IPA. For me, it has always been a bit of an extra step, no matter how useful it surely is for people with different goals for mine (which is just learning and using the languages)
BeaP is correct, even with the IPA, you need to learn pronunciation based on the student's prior procedural knowledge of languages - from the issues with productive concerns to limitations in auditory perception - for example, a late learner of English from Mexico like my mother (who knew the IPA) will still have an issue with 'sheets' unless she actively trains - that work around pronunciation is dependent on her prior language experience, and it's an exercise that would be useless for French speakers.
Yes, that's why I really wish more learning resources had many more pronunciation exercises, so that everyone can pick the ones relevant to them. It's not just about the native language. I have different challenges than other Czech natives, as I have different experience with other foreign languages (including their correct pronunciation, and also some long fossilised mistakes), and I also have a rather different Czech pronunciation than someone from a very different region.
For me, learning pronunciation is also a midterm process, it's part of learning to hear in order to also learn to produce speech. I'm definitely still struggling with final and medial ق which has often an IPA of /ɡ/ but somehow is different from گ /g/ and I don't hear it. The IPA isn't enough. It will come. Takes time.
For me, it is a process revisited at every stage, and continously addressed. Some things need to be learnt right away, to create good habits. Many needs to be improved midterm. And there is a lot to learn at the advanced stage, while nobody is willing/capable to help, and they'll just say "but you speak so well, what do you want to improve?".
Not sure IPA would help me at any of these stages. Perhaps at the first one, but I prefer to get used directly to the language as a beginner.
You know what is weird? Sometimes I feel like my Italian pronunciation is more correct and natural than my French one. Why? I believe the years of teachers and classes have damaged my French, and the decades of use have fossilised it. I am damn good (for most people the best non native they've heard), but I sometimes feel discouraged, as I have no clue how to get totally neutral-near-native-like, and feel as if the teachers and classes had robbed me of that opportunity.zenmonkey wrote:I do think an adult can learn corrective differentiation. With my German, I still have a French accent (which made my daughters laugh). Years of work with just shadowing really helped a lot. I think people don't hear and therefore don't correct. And a strategy of overtraining mechanical correct repetition does something. Now is there new plasticity that is built up? Probably - other research in using the auditory channels to process new information suggests it's trainable, to a degree. And there are effective accent reduction processes. But I also think there is a process of diminishing returns and at some point getting to 'ok' (whatever that means) is where we end up stopping. I'll always have some 'French' tones in my German - I'm happy with that - as long as my girls are no longer laughing and people aren't scrunching up their faces when I speak.
Yes, definitely. And again, I think language learning should get inspired by music. Musical ear can be trained too, but to a different extent and with different amounts of effort. That's where the talent gets in the equation. But it can be trained to some extent, most people can get better than they are.
My German comes with a French accent, from what I've been told. My Italian with a Spanish one and vice versa. My English with a stupid probably Czech one
. But training has been helping with that. I've seen great progress in my Italian! Tons of "overtraining" matter a lot.
Yep, I am surely in the diminishing returns zone in most languages of mine.
My goal are people not interested in my origins at all, and not affected much by the (sociologically described) tendency to consider people with accent to be less capable, trustworthy and intelligent.