Takra jenai wrote:When I started to learn English minimal pairs and phonetic transcription were introduced at the beginning. And it wasn't a textbook for linguists, far from it.
How on earth can you learn proper pronunciation without minimal pairs and the inventory of the phonemes?
You'll just mispronounce them in your native way and then have trouble with listening comprehension, spelling, and your listeners will have to be very patient, to put it mildly.
Languages that aren't
orthographically deep (English and French don't fall into that category) are pretty easy, from everything I've experienced and seen in others, to learn how to pronounce without the usage of things like minimal pairs. Really it just takes learning how letters and diphthongs (or in the case of japanese, kana) are pronounced. It, for seemingly a lot of people, isn't that complex.
For kicks I'm looking at my collection of language learning books, specifically for beginners in German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Chinese, and Biblical Hebrew (I collect language primers). The range in books includes books for self teaching (Colloquial and Teach Yourself), a few written for the English speaking higher education market, and the bulk are directed at language learners who are learning their L2 in the country in which it is spoken. After thumbing through 18 books aimed at beginners the only books that did any work with minimal pairs were the chinese books. The other books spent time not on minimal pairs but rather on the pronunciation of specific sounds or things like like the French liaison. The most French books actually spent nearly as much if not the same amount of space on pronunciation ("phonétique") as the Chinese ones did (I looked at Integrated Chinese and the New Practical Chinese Reader).
Again, most of the books I was looking at are aimed primarily at people who are learning the language in the country it is spoken in - clearly the goal is for people to be understood. I think, however, that your notion that one needs to have minimal pairs in order to learn how to pronounce words, aid in listening comprehension, and aid in spelling really isn't true for everyone. One can learn many languages without needing to focus on minimal pairs. Does pronunciation need to be focused on? Yes of course. That doesn't, however, mean that minimal pairs are essential in the learning of all languages or perhaps even languages in most language families. The textbooks I have bare that out. Having spent 9 months in Vienna without spending any time on minimal pairs I don't remember there being many issues in terms of me being understood by people (in relation to pronunciation). When I visited France everyone spoke to me in French and when I would attempt to speak French with them (these were in situations like being in coffee shops, restaurants, bakeries, and I think I may have managed to buy a concert ticket in French - somehow) they would happily continue in French despite the fact that I hadn't studied any French up to that point (basically I asked my friend who was studying in Lyon to teach me how to count to five, ask for tap water, say please and thank you, and ask for where the bathroom was).
