Postby SpanishInput » Sat Aug 13, 2022 1:13 am
Some progress:
Today I’ve noticed I’m becoming more sensible to the difference between /s/ and /z/. I can actually hear it now if I focus. But sometimes the difference is so subtle that I have to rely on the length of the previous vowel in order to identify them. (Pre-fortis clipping)
I’m also slowly starting to tune my ears to the English /h/. Whenever I think I’ve heard a /p/, I stop and replay the recording before deciding.
Another difference I’m becoming more sensible to is /n/ vs /ŋ/. In Spanish both [n] and [ŋ] are just allophones of the /n/ phoneme, so this one is taking me some time to differentiate. In fact, in some coastal and Caribbean dialects we sometimes realize word-final /n/ as [ŋ], so “pan” becomes [paŋ].
New confusion:
I’m now working on /oʊ/ (GOAT), and believe it or not I’m confusing /oʊ/ with /ʌ/ (STRUT). The /oʊ/ diphthong is hard for me to hear. I hear it as a monophthong [o], which I mentally associate with a stressed schwa (ʌ) in English. I have two possible explanations for this:
The /ow/ diphthong, the closest thing in Spanish to the English /oʊ/ phoneme, is never present inside any native non-compound Spanish words I’m aware of. It pretty much only happens between words in connected speech and in rather rare compounds such as “estadounidense”.
Because I’m exposed to a lot of Americans speaking Spanish, I’m used to processing their /oʊ/ as an allophone of the Spanish /o/, thus filtering out the glide part.
Recurring confusions:
I’m mixing /ɝ/ and /ɚ/ with /ʊr/. I’m also mixing /æ/ with /ʌ/ and /ɛ/ with /æ/. I really have to double-check what I’m hearing when I encounter these sounds. And… this is a bit of cheating, but I sometimes try to remember the spelling of words, and, if most of the words in the card are spelt with <e> then I deduct the sound is probably /ɛ/, if most are spelt with <a> then I guess the sound is probably /æ/, and if most are spelt with <u> then the sound is probably /ʌ/. Of course this guessing doesn’t always work and sometimes I’m surprised to see the actual spelling after pressing the “show answer” button in my flashcards.
I’ve recently learned that…
The <l> in folk is not pronounced. Also, the <b> in climb and other words ending in <mb> is not pronounced. And English speakers sometimes spell an <s> but pronounce a /z/, and viceversa. I had no idea that a final /s/ vs final /z/ can completely change the meaning of a word.
My listening skills are not as good as I had assumed. I tried watching a bit of Lost in Space on Netflix using Language Reactor in “hide subtitles” mode, and this was a humbling experience as I failed to understand a few lines by the Robinsons and Ben Adler. I realize I need to schedule time for intensive listening exercises with movies and TV shows. It’s very easy to fool oneself into thinking one can “understand everything”, when that’s not really the case.
The presenter of Pimsleur courses (I’m also going through Pimsleur Mandarin) pronounces “when” as /ʍɛn/ (Or is it [hwɛn]?), but this is a conservative distinction that’s not taught to learners (whine-wine merger) and is not found in any dictionary I’ve consulted.
A needed change in attitude
Some people discart TV and movies as trash and don’t consider them a serious resource for language learning. For example, the otherwise amazing book for language learners titled “The Word Brain” has this section:
“Apart from high quality documentaries, which are rare, TV is a poor source of content, and most of us would prefer reading books or scientific journals. TV is also mostly irrelevant. [...] watching TV is basically tantamount to killing precious life time.”
Unfortunately, it’s hard to get over this attitude and actually book time to watch Netflix as study time, but you need it if you want to train your ears. Even as I’m writing this I still don’t have a schedule for English ear training with Netflix, which is quite hypocritical, because I do watch English content on Netflix.
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