Do you do the accent?

[Bernice]

It's great being better than Spaniards, I personally love it

Fuck off you pompous tit, the conversation was about native speakers of different languages struggling with foreign consonant combinations.

[Retinend]

Spanish people cannot natively pronounce voiced "th", "sh", "r" (the so-called "approximant" consonant), "ch", "z" (so often written as "s"), or hard "j" (as in "jungle").


They should really choose an easier language.

[touchingcloth]

English lends itself to much more complicated series of syllables and Japanese is built up out of individual syllables, and each syllable is a consonant plus a vowel , and nearly all Japanese words end in a vowel sound so it flows off the tongue more naturally to not end on a consonant. When we say Picnic we pretty much start to form a 'U after finishing the 'CK' sound, but it's so subtle and unpronounced and unformed as the vocal cords relax , same for many words ending with C/K.

Cola as in Coke, is Kele (ku-lu )in Mandarin, pronounced how a none native English speakers would probably say 'colour.' Mandarin does not make saying Cola difficult, most young Chinese people say it like that, but because tones are the basis on Mandarin, Kele is just the natural development of the word.  Same for Kafei is Coffee.

That makes sense. I guess it's a little a like a when a the a Italians do a this, because that's the natural cadence of their language. It's a little similar here in Portugal where a lot of words are gendered and end with an -a or -o, which generally gets munged into a schwa for all words and when they speak English there's a hint of it being added onto words which end with a consonant.

[Bernice]

Spanish people cannot natively pronounce voiced "th", "sh", "r" (the so-called "approximant" consonant), "ch", "z" (so often written as "s"), or hard "j" (as in "jungle").


They should really choose an easier language.

See I know that none of those appear in Spanish, but I've never noticed Spaniards have a problem with the voiced "sh" or "s". The rest, yes.

[Retinend]

Good point. I suppose that "sh" is quite an easy sound to perceive for some reason.

Regarding "s", imagine an Spaniard saying "you lose!" They would probably pronounce it like "you loose!"

[touchingcloth]

Alright, Mr. Smarty-Pants/Sumariti Panutus! The first example in Macdonalds is indeed what we might call a "syllable coda/syllable onset boundary" and not a classic "consonant cluster".

Regarding "what adding a u adds" - I do think it is because the "syllable boundary" (being fancy), or "consonant cluster" (for short), violates an unwritten rule of pronunciation of Japanese, just as "srrrrii" Lanka deliberately steps outside of the "mould" of English phonology for a second for the sake of accuracy, and at the cost of violating English phonology i.e. risking the average listener misunderstanding you in fast speech.

It would be more natural to say "shrih" Lanka, with the short vowel instead of the long vowel to boot, simply for the fact that there is the precedent of words like "shrimp", "shrunk", "shrill" and "shrapnel", all of which bearing short vowels.

A better example would be "disarray", which would not be normally pronounced "dis/ray". The vowel "a" is necessary because the consonants do not like to lie on a syllabic boundary... at least in the English genius. A contrasting example would be, por ejemplo, "israel" as pronounced by Spanish speaking people. They do not mind "s" and "r" lying on a syllabic boundary.

Thanks! I wish I knew more about phonetics. All I really understand to any extent are schwas and glottal stops, but I'd love to be able to bang about about voiced velar fricatives like a fucking ledge.

[Retinend]

At university studying linguistics, the only textbook that really clicked with me was The Phonological Structure of Words: An Introduction by Colin J. Ewen and Harry van der Hulst.



Its first 20 pages are pretty gruelling but they are available online: http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam031/00025958.pdf

Section 3, "Syllables" is where it really gets going.

[JaDanketies]

I did linguistics at uni. I tried to steer clear of phonology but I still had to do a little bit. This is the first time I've heard the word schwa for 11 years.

[TheBrownBottle]

Why don't we say Munchen or Parr-ee buty wanky football commentators say Zaragotha.

They usually do give 'Paree San Jurman' a proper go these days.  French clubs generally see dubious attempts at correct pronunciation, Clive.

The 'Bayern Munich' one is odd in couple of ways - first, the club's name is 'Bayern Munchen'.  Normally, non-English clubs retain their town / city names in their mother tongue, irrespective of whether that city has a different name in English - provided the English can find them easy enough to pronounce (hello, Slavonic languages).  AS Roma isn't AS Rome (AC Milan is AC Milan in Italian as well as English - thanks to being founded by English cricketers, who apparently couldn't be arsed to use the Italian 'Milano' even when living in Milan.  I bet they called themselves ex-pats.  See also; Genoa instead of Genova).  But Venezia FC is the same in English; it isn't Venice FC.  It's a mish-mash, Brian.

Real Madrid isn't 'Royal Madrid' (Athletic Bilbao is Athletic Bilbao in both Spanish & English - again, that's English founders for you).  But for German-speaking club names, the English do this regularly; Cologne instead of Koln, SV Hamburg instead of Hamburger SV, or Rapid Vienna instead of Rapid Wien.  No consistency, Jeff.

It's also odd in that we don't go the full hog and say 'Bavaria Munich', which makes more sense Anglicised.  Mind you, Manchester United are often just called 'Manchester' across much of Europe, which is also wrong on two fronts, and I've heard 'Arsenal London' too. 

[Retinend]

Thanks for the informative post.

[TheBrownBottle]

I always find Japanese translation/pronunciation of English words a little bit racist when transcribed back into English - I think I first came across it explicitly in Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue when he said that the Japanese borrow the English word for a picnic and pronounce it "pickunicku" - mainly because it seems a bit like people saying "of course, the Welsh say popty ping". Less so because of things like the r-for-l swap in words like "makudonarudo", more because those u's and o's that get inserted and tacked on feel like they've been added by English-speaking listeners rather than the Japanese speakers themselves.

I did learn in that book that the Japanese word for 'elevator' is 'erebeta', which is exactly how a racist doing a shit Japanese impression would pronounce the word.  It makes sense of course because native Japanese speakers find 'l' and 'r' difficult (they tend to pronounce both as an apico-alveolar tap, and find lateral 'l' and rhotic 'r' a bit of a sod to pronounce).  Similar of course for 'v'.

Plenty of loan words in English have been bastardised to make pronunciation easier, of course. It always seems odd to me that so many criticise native English speakers for 'mispronouncing' loan words, instead of acknowledging that the word is now English, and can be used by the language as it sees fit.  If the word 'raison d'etre' is used in the context of an English sentence rather than French, I can't see why it should trouble anyone if most pronounce it 'raysin det ruh'.

[popcorn]

I always find Japanese translation/pronunciation of English words a little bit racist when transcribed back into English - I think I first came across it explicitly in Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue when he said that the Japanese borrow the English word for a picnic and pronounce it "pickunicku" - mainly because it seems a bit like people saying "of course, the Welsh say popty ping". Less so because of things like the r-for-l swap in words like "makudonarudo", more because those u's and o's that get inserted and tacked on feel like they've been added by English-speaking listeners rather than the Japanese speakers themselves.

Given that you've lived in Japan and taught English there, I guess it's less problematic than I've imagined. But what are those inserted u's in pickunicku and makudonarudo all about? If they can pronounce the k's, n's and d's in isolation, why pop a u in? Or stick an o or a u on the end?

(Note: everything I explain below is simplified, there are exceptions and different ways of writing things, but you don't care about those. This is just the general gist)

Japanese doesn't really have a concept of isolated consonant sounds.

For example, Japanese has no concept of a "P" sound. Instead it has the sounds pa, pi, pu, pe, and po. In each of these sounds, the consonant (p) and the vowel (a, i, u, e, o) is baked into a single, indivisible unit. If you want to make a P sound, you have to choose from one of those: pa, pi, pu, pe, or po.

So let's say you're Japanese and you want to pronounce the English word "picnic". The "pi" part is easy because you can just say pi. But what about the "c"? You can't just say "pik" in Japanese - there is no concept of an isolated "k" sound, you've never made that sound in your entire life, what the fuck are you talking about? So you're gonna have to choose from ka, ki, ku, ke, ko. So it becomes piku. Same deal with "nic", which becomes "niku". Hence: pikuniku.

See also furaidopotato, sandoichi, ookesutora, etc. The fact that Japanese has thousands and thousands and thousands of commonly used English loanwords does mean that, to be honest, a surprising amount of speaking Japanese amounts basically to speaking English with a racist accent. (But the same is also true of English: we force Japanese words like karaoke, tsunami, satsuma into our own pronunciation systems, along with words pillaged from every other language going.)

Here's an experiment you might find interesting. Take the word "tsunami", which is a Japanese word. In English, we pronounce the "tsu" as "soo". In Japanese, it's pronounced as it's spelled, "tsoo". Like, with an audible T. Not "tuh-soo", but tsoo, one syllable.

This was difficult for me to pronounce in Japanese for a long time, because we don't have that sound in English. We can inject an extra syllable in there and say "tuh-soo", but a true, single-syllable "tsu" is hard, right? This is what it's like for the pikkunikkers.

But get this.

We do have the "tsu" sound in English. Try saying "hot soup" out loud. There it is: hot soup. That's the Japanese "tsu" sound, right there. You've done it! But your brain needed a vowel before the T, so it can kind of take a run-up to the tsu and then land on it. Why does it need that? Because your brain is dumb! You can physically say the "tsu" sound - and in fact you probably say it all the time - but to say it in isolation, you need to disconnect all the linguistic apparatus in your brain that makes you think you can't say it.

One more example: satsuma, a Japanese word (in fact it's the old name for a Japanese prefecture where they grow a lot of satsumas). We subconsciously divide this as sat / su / ma. That's how we cope with that "T" sound. But to Japanese brains, it's sa / tsu / ma. The "t" is connected to the "su", not the "sa". The result is basically identical, but the process is different.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Fuck off you pompous tit, the conversation was about native speakers of different languages struggling with foreign consonant combinations.

That post was a joke, not making any point either way. Who is the pompous tit again?

[Retinend]

Alright, Mr. Smarty-Pants/Sumariti Panutus! The first example in Macdonalds is indeed what we might call a "syllable coda/syllable onset boundary" and not a classic "consonant cluster".

Regarding "what adding a u adds" - I do think it is because the "syllable boundary" (being fancy), or "consonant cluster" (for short), violates an unwritten rule of pronunciation of Japanese, just as "srrrrii" Lanka deliberately steps outside of the "mould" of English phonology for a second for the sake of accuracy, and at the cost of violating English phonology i.e. risking the average listener misunderstanding you in fast speech.

It would be more natural to say "shrih" Lanka, with the short vowel instead of the long vowel to boot, simply for the fact that there is the precedent of words like "shrimp", "shrunk", "shrill" and "shrapnel", all of which bearing short vowels.

A better example would be "disarray", which would not be normally pronounced "dis/ray". The vowel "a" is necessary because the consonants do not like to lie on a syllabic boundary... at least in the English genius. A contrasting example would be, por ejemplo, "israel" as pronounced by Spanish speaking people. They do not mind "s" and "r" lying on a syllabic boundary.

a counter-example comes to mind: misread, but this notably lies across a morphemic boundary, and the morpheme "mis" is a promiscuous one.

[El Unicornio, mang]

French people trying to pronounce words like "scissors"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgbZsaO5RRs&ab_channel=Balensi

There's a whole series of these types of videos. That's my day sorted.

[Bernice]

(AC Milan is AC Milan in Italian as well as English - thanks to being founded by English cricketers, who apparently couldn't be arsed to use the Italian 'Milano' even when living in Milan.  I bet they called themselves ex-pats.  See also; Genoa instead of Genova). 

Although I've noticed on that front that there's been a shift in the past ten years or so from referring to them as AC Milan, said very much as an Englishman would read it, to simply Milan, pronounced Mee-lan as an Italian would pronounce it. I'm assuming that's the everyday nomenclature in Italy.

I also have the vague notion, but can't be sure, that Sevilla used to be called Seville on these shores when I was a lad.

[JesusAndYourBush]

But what are those inserted u's in pickunicku and makudonarudo all about?

Japanese write foreign loan words in a phonetic alphabet called katakana.  It doesn't have all the sounds necessary to render English exactly so they have to use the closest match.  So for the picnic example there is no character for the 'c' (or 'k') sound on it's own, the closest is 'ku' which is written with a single character.  The same with all the extra vowels you'll see -  it can't be written any other way because the characters don't exist to write it more correctly, and literally every character in the katakana alphabet ends with a vowel.

EDIT: Thanks Ferris for quoting popcorn's post below this, I must've skimmed the last page and literally never saw it when writing this post.

[Ferris]

French people trying to pronounce words like "scissors"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgbZsaO5RRs&ab_channel=Balensi

There's a whole series of these types of videos. That's my day sorted.

We have friends from marseille who are incapable of saying "squirrel". Hours of entertainment.

(Note: everything I explain below is simplified, there are exceptions and different ways of writing things, but you don't care about those. This is just the general gist)

Japanese doesn't really have a concept of isolated consonant sounds.

For example, Japanese has no concept of a "P" sound. Instead it has the sounds pa, pi, pu, pe, and po. In each of these sounds, the consonant (p) and the vowel (a, i, u, e, o) is baked into a single, indivisible unit. If you want to make a P sound, you have to choose from one of those: pa, pi, pu, pe, or po.

So let's say you're Japanese and you want to pronounce the English word "picnic". The "pi" part is easy because you can just say pi. But what about the "c"? You can't just say "pik" in Japanese - there is no concept of an isolated "k" sound, you've never made that sound in your entire life, what the fuck are you talking about? So you're gonna have to choose from ka, ki, ku, ke, ko. So it becomes piku. Same deal with "nic", which becomes "niku". Hence: pikuniku.

See also furaidopotato, sandoichi, ookesutora, etc. The fact that Japanese has thousands and thousands and thousands of commonly used English loanwords does mean that, to be honest, a surprising amount of speaking Japanese amounts basically to speaking English with a racist accent. (But the same is also true of English: we force Japanese words like karaoke, tsunami, satsuma into our own pronunciation systems, along with words pillaged from every other language going.)

Here's an experiment you might find interesting. Take the word "tsunami", which is a Japanese word. In English, we pronounce the "tsu" as "soo". In Japanese, it's pronounced as it's spelled, "tsoo". Like, with an audible T. Not "tuh-soo", but tsoo, one syllable.

This was difficult for me to pronounce in Japanese for a long time, because we don't have that sound in English. We can inject an extra syllable in there and say "tuh-soo", but a true, single-syllable "tsu" is hard, right? This is what it's like for the pikkunikkers.

But get this.

We do have the "tsu" sound in English. Try saying "hot soup" out loud. There it is: hot soup. That's the Japanese "tsu" sound, right there. You've done it! But your brain needed a vowel before the T, so it can kind of take a run-up to the tsu and then land on it. Why does it need that? Because your brain is dumb! You can physically say the "tsu" sound - and in fact you probably say it all the time - but to say it in isolation, you need to disconnect all the linguistic apparatus in your brain that makes you think you can't say it.

One more example: satsuma, a Japanese word (in fact it's the old name for a Japanese prefecture where they grow a lot of satsumas). We subconsciously divide this as sat / su / ma. That's how we cope with that "T" sound. But to Japanese brains, it's sa / tsu / ma. The "t" is connected to the "su", not the "sa". The result is basically identical, but the process is different.

That was really interesting, thanks. It explains why the kanji English translations for video games on Wikipedia are so absurd and sound well dodgy.

[touchingcloth]

(Note: everything I explain below is simplified, there are exceptions and different ways of writing things, but you don't care about those. This is just the general gist)

Japanese doesn't really have a concept of isolated consonant sounds.

For example, Japanese has no concept of a "P" sound. Instead it has the sounds pa, pi, pu, pe, and po. In each of these sounds, the consonant (p) and the vowel (a, i, u, e, o) is baked into a single, indivisible unit. If you want to make a P sound, you have to choose from one of those: pa, pi, pu, pe, or po.

So let's say you're Japanese and you want to pronounce the English word "picnic". The "pi" part is easy because you can just say pi. But what about the "c"? You can't just say "pik" in Japanese - there is no concept of an isolated "k" sound, you've never made that sound in your entire life, what the fuck are you talking about? So you're gonna have to choose from ka, ki, ku, ke, ko. So it becomes piku. Same deal with "nic", which becomes "niku". Hence: pikuniku.

See also furaidopotato, sandoichi, ookesutora, etc. The fact that Japanese has thousands and thousands and thousands of commonly used English loanwords does mean that, to be honest, a surprising amount of speaking Japanese amounts basically to speaking English with a racist accent. (But the same is also true of English: we force Japanese words like karaoke, tsunami, satsuma into our own pronunciation systems, along with words pillaged from every other language going.)

Here's an experiment you might find interesting. Take the word "tsunami", which is a Japanese word. In English, we pronounce the "tsu" as "soo". In Japanese, it's pronounced as it's spelled, "tsoo". Like, with an audible T. Not "tuh-soo", but tsoo, one syllable.

This was difficult for me to pronounce in Japanese for a long time, because we don't have that sound in English. We can inject an extra syllable in there and say "tuh-soo", but a true, single-syllable "tsu" is hard, right? This is what it's like for the pikkunikkers.

But get this.

We do have the "tsu" sound in English. Try saying "hot soup" out loud. There it is: hot soup. That's the Japanese "tsu" sound, right there. You've done it! But your brain needed a vowel before the T, so it can kind of take a run-up to the tsu and then land on it. Why does it need that? Because your brain is dumb! You can physically say the "tsu" sound - and in fact you probably say it all the time - but to say it in isolation, you need to disconnect all the linguistic apparatus in your brain that makes you think you can't say it.

One more example: satsuma, a Japanese word (in fact it's the old name for a Japanese prefecture where they grow a lot of satsumas). We subconsciously divide this as sat / su / ma. That's how we cope with that "T" sound. But to Japanese brains, it's sa / tsu / ma. The "t" is connected to the "su", not the "sa". The result is basically identical, but the process is different.

This whole post of yours is a big bunch of shit; you're speaking to a man who survives on tsatsiki.[nb]I mean to say, thank you for your interesting post.[/nb]

[TheBrownBottle]

Although I've noticed on that front that there's been a shift in the past ten years or so from referring to them as AC Milan, said very much as an Englishman would read it, to simply Milan, pronounced Mee-lan as an Italian would pronounce it. I'm assuming that's the everyday nomenclature in Italy.

I also have the vague notion, but can't be sure, that Sevilla used to be called Seville on these shores when I was a lad.

Yes, the commentators used to switch freely and easily between the two - I also think it's fairly recent that Sevilla has been called that consistently.  Sevilla was also founded by British immigrants - who in this instance could be arsed to give the club its correct name.

Beyond football clubs, the names of football grounds also are occasionally changed by anglophone countries - Camp Nou becoming The Nou Camp (though this seems to have stopped of late), or Estadio da Luz becoming 'Stadium of Light' (the name has nothing to do with sounding a bit awesome - Luz is the name of the suburb where it is found.  Which I reckon makes Sunderland's theft of the name even more daft).

This does seem to be a hangover from the first 'big names' British sides faced in Europe in the '60s, as this practice fell away quickly. 

[H-O-W-L]

they all do the accent when i've haha sweet shop hahA SWEET SHOP GARLIC DEAD Oh why's that then???

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

a true, single-syllable "tsu" is hard, right?

While an uncommon sound for native English speakers without a vowel before it, I don't think this represents a huge challenge to link the t on the palate to the su. As already outlined, the sound already comes after lots (there's one) of vowels. Removing the vowel isn't overly difficult.

I mean, when compared to for example, learning to trill (if you can't, I am learning still) or pronouncing certain accented letters or consonant clusters, this is quite straightforward.

[touchingcloth]

Is there anything more irritating than English speakers pronouncing Spanish words "properly"? Or Spanish words at all?

"Chorizo" is probably the worst offender, with people varying between "cho-ritz-oh" (basically the way an English person would say the word if they hadn't seen it before), "cho-reece-oh" (this is how I tend to say it), and "cho-ree-tho" (the fucking nadir). I hate that Castillian lisp, and I kind of think that given that the majority of Spanish speakers don't use it, then Brits who don't have at least a semi-functional grasp of European Spanish probably shouldn't either.

Your-dad-saying-pie-yeh-yeh is also worthy of grabe.

[popcorn]

While an uncommon sound for native English speakers without a vowel before it, I don't think this represents a huge challenge to link the t on the palate to the su. As already outlined, the sound already comes after lots (there's one) of vowels. Removing the vowel isn't overly difficult.

I mean, when compared to for example, learning to trill (if you can't, I am learning still) or pronouncing certain accented letters or consonant clusters, this is quite straightforward.

Fair enough, but there's a reason we say "sunami" in English and not "tsunami", which is that for English speakers it isn't intuitive to begin a sound with "tsu". It's not the hardest thing in the world to learn (in fact my entire point there is that we say it already, we just don't realise), but many students of Japanese struggle with it.

I gave it not as an example of something that is SO HARD TO LEARN!!! but rather an example of how a lot of language is sort of based on tricks of the mind. Japanese people can say "k" so why do they add "u"? Similar kind of thing.

[touchingcloth]

I mean, when compared to for example, learning to trill (if you can't, I am learning still) or pronouncing certain accented letters or consonant clusters, this is quite straightforward.

Trilling is really hard. I find I either hit it way too hard or not at all when trying to speak at a conversational pace, and I can't get it to come out effortlessly. You could say the r's don't roll off the tongue!!!

European Portuguese has a sort of guttural trilled r which is formed in the back of the throat. It's kind of like the kind of aitch sound Manuel makes for "jello, Mr Fawlty, ji jam from Barthelona", but on the letter r. "Rede" is the word for "net", and it's pronounced like the English "red", but with that Manuel aitch to start. Jrrrede.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Aye. First time I really noticed was hearing the name 'Ferreira' pronounced as it ought to be. Somewhere between the 'ch' in loch and a trill.

I find I can do an shorter Italian style trill so long as there's a hard consonant to bounce off and a long vowel sound. Words beginning R, forget it. Pathetic. If I try and say 'ring' trilled it just sounds like a breathy 'uh-hurhlrinnnng'. Bastards.

[touchingcloth]

Aye. First time I really noticed was hearing the name 'Ferreira' pronounced as it ought to be. Somewhere between the 'ch' in loch and a trill.

I find I can do an Italian style trill so long as there's a hard consonant to bounce off. Words beginning R, forget it. Pathetic. If I try and say 'ring' trilled it just sounds like a breathy 'uh-hurhlrinnnng'. Bastards.

Yeah, "brrrrring brrrrring" is easier to get your gob round than "rrrrrrring rrrrrring".

I have a friend called Rita who pronounces the r in her name like that, and I can't do it without hawking up flem. She has the same syllable in the middle of her surname, though, and I can manage that without much problem.