"Nick Sabalausky" <a@a.a> wrote in message news:jjavf2$1v3p$1...@digitalmars.com... > "James Miller" <ja...@aatch.net> wrote in message > news:mailman.235.1331210469.4860.digitalmar...@puremagic.com... >>On 9 March 2012 01:23, Stewart Gordon <smjg_1...@yahoo.com> wrote: >>> >>> I'm finding it hard to figure how someone would pronounce the "o" and >>> "u" in >>> "colour" separately. >>> > > I would imagine it'd be like "kuh-lore". > >>Being British means that I do notice the differences in pronunciation, >>I've pretty much done the opposite to Reagan, gone from England to NZ. >>I tend to get frustrated when I can't even correct pronunciation >>because nobody can hear the difference! > > I have a little extra insight into this as my mom is a speech/language > pathologist: > > As you've noticed, trying to get a person to hear the difference often > doesn't work (And even if they can hear it, that doesn't necessarily give > them enough info to actually pronounce it). I think the right thing to do, > at least in cases where it actually matters, is to instruct them on the > actual mouth movements involved. Then they can "feel" the difference, and > start to hear themselves making the different sound. "Hearing" it can > naturally follow from that. >
Out of curiosity, I just asked her about this and she said that "hearing" it *does* typically come first, so I guess I was wrong about that. But she did say that failing that, yea, bringing in instruction on the mouth movements can be a reasonable next step as it brings other senses into play.
