On 9 March 2012 12:45, Nick Sabalausky <a@a.a> wrote: > "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.
For a university project, I had to do a group assignment building a psycholinguistic demo platform for a textbook. While it was more focused on how the brain interprets language (very interesting in itself), we spent a lot of time talking to a linguistics professor, and he can produce the strangest sounds! I assume its because he's studied how these sounds get made so well that he can make them himself, despite not speaking the languages the sounds originate from. -- James Miller
