Language Trainers Blog

I came across this on Tumblr recently. Although the point being made with regards to English is interesting, it bothered me more that pronounced is spelled incorrectly. Twice!

It seems that native speakers of certain languages are able to roll their ‘r’s more easily than others. For me, as a native English speaker currently learning Spanish, it’s very difficult to pronounce rolled ‘r’s, which is also known as the alveolar trill. For example, trying to convey the name of a Cuban bar (Barrio) was particularly difficult when trying to arrange to meet up with my Spanish friend Eva recently. Pronouncing ‘r’s in an English accent, in the English form, is a huge disadvantage to communication in Spanish.

An Italian friend tells me that some children are taught the word “rabarbaro” (rhubarb) at school to help them pronounce their ‘r’s correctly. This word is not commonly used in the Italian language otherwise. In fact, when I told my Italian flatmate this word, he didn’t know what it meant. It could have been my pronunciation of course, but I wrote it down for him as well!

Having said all of this, one of my best friends, Mairi, is Scottish, and has no problem with rolling her ‘r’s, especially as you need to roll the r in her name to pronounce it correctly. So, is it down to accent?

This led me to try and find a way to learn how to do this properly. It is all in the tongue vibration, apparently. A lot of online help assumes you have an American accent, but I know of a few tips for us Brits.

The short term solution, for emergency use whilst you practice getting your tongue around your ‘r’s, is to pronounce the r as a hard D. You have to say it really fast to get away with it, but it does work! “Barrio” becomes “baDio,” and at least Eva will now know where I want to meet up for cocktails in the near future.

It’s better to try than to risk becoming a tentative speaker, as this is something that can really damage your confidence with speaking new languages.

Of course, in the long term, the only solution is practice, practice, practice. This video tutorial really helped me work out how to position my tongue properly, which is the basic principal to getting your alveolar trill right. If you’re not a visual learner, the WikiHow article is useful too. There are tongue twisters you can use to practice, but assuming that if you’re not confident with your rolled ‘r’s just yet, your level of Spanish isn’t advanced enough for this, so I like to stick to a short list of familiar words to practice with to begin. “Ferrocarril” (railway) is the perfect word to start off.

What works best for you? Does anyone have any other tips?

The people at Hotels.com have been busy conducting surveys recently, and their latest research seems to confirm what we already knew…British people are not renowned for their language skills.

64% of the 2000 Brits surveyed didn’t know a word of any other language. One of the reasons given for this was “expecting hosts to speak English.” (!)

63% of those polled had no idea what the Dutch word “goedemorgen” means. I don’t speak Dutch, but could easily guess that it would be “good morning,” due to the similarities when trying to pronounce it.

1 in 50 respondents claimed to understand everything that was said to them in at least one other language, but could not reply.

I think the results, even from a small sample of the population, are pretty embarrassing. What can we Brits do to turn this stereotype around? Obviously, Language Trainers students are at a huge advantage here!

I had a conversation with two friends regarding learning the other day; one is French, the other Italian. Both agreed that it wasn’t as necessary for native English speakers to learn another language, as English is the one language a lot of people know. They also both started to learn English at a young age, and live in the UK to understand the language better.

Is this where we are going wrong? Is it the education system, or are we simply lazy? What are your thoughts?

In my last post I talked about couples communicating in other languages, and wondered how successful it can be. I’ve also talked about what is sometimes called getting a black-haired dictionary (learning a language from a paramour, in this case a Chinese girlfriend to teach you Chinese). If you have a partner who speaks a different language from you, will it always help you learn that language? Not necessarily.

Depending on your situation, having your partner available to you may be very successful, or not really help you with your language progress at all. Obviously, one of the big factors is the personalities of the people involved. Not everyone is a good teacher, and not everyone is a good student. Some students don’t like being corrected (and some people can’t help correcting others - I’m one of them!), and some teachers find it too frustrating to repeatedly go over the same point. If the teacher already has a good grasp of the student’s native language, it may just seem easier to use that language for communication, and forget about the student learning more.

I know a couple where the husband speaks very little English (but he is currently learning), and the wife speaks very good Chinese. The husband says that his wife is a really bad teacher. I think she may just get frustrated easily and prefers communication to be fast and easy.

Have you been in a relationship where you have been the student or the teacher? How has it worked out?

I was reading a really interesting blog post on Speaking of China, a blog by a western woman who is married to a Chinese man. The post was all about love and language, and people who communicate with their loved one/s in a language that is not native to one or both parties. She was asked whether she had a better relationship with her husband in Chinese or in English. She said that it fluctuated between the two (and may be slightly better in English because of her husband’s studies in the US), but that they have some kind of hybrid Mandarin-English language that they communicate in.

Her English-speaking friend then said that she communicates best with her Chinese husband in a third party language - Japanese. They had met and come to know each other in Japanese, and they both had to try hard to be understood (and understand each other) in that language. I think it says a lot that both people have to compromise and put effort into communicating with each other (instead of it being easy for one person and difficult for another, or frustrating to everyone involved!).

I often wonder how close relationships can be if the language used is a non-native one. On one hand, if you can only say certain things,  you might avoid getting into in depth arguments, but on the other, how can you really get to know each other? I’ve seen plenty of couples where speaking is not necessarily the main goal (if you know what I mean!), but if you want a deep relationship, how good do the language skills have to be?

Everybody has different aims to consider when learning languages. One of them is whether to focus on written or conversational language. Of course, you don’t have to focus entirely on one (and I wouldn’t recommend you to), but it will affect things like the type of texts or materials you study from.

At the moment, I’m studying a reading textbook, which has short essays followed by comprehension questions. My teacher is careful to point out which things are only suitable for written texts (and so I should avoid saying things that way). There are also discussion questions so I can get my fill of speaking practice. This method suits me right now as I am using language mainly for work, where I am communicating a lot by email.

My friend is using a textbook that is made up of conversations about various topics. It includes follow up questions and audio as well. This method is great for beginners and people who need language for everyday situations.

Which method do you prefer? Do you think a distinction needs to be made?

When you learn a language, do you choose your accent, or does your accent choose you? Perhaps you are learning in a rural place and get used to the local accents because you talk to the locals. In this case, do you insist on training yourself to use a ’standard’ form of speech? Obviously, regional words and phrases may make you easier to understand for locals and more difficult for others, but if you were as comprehensible as other regional speakers, would you mind having an accent?

When learning Chinese, would you go with southern pronunciation, or the Beijing accent which has pronounced arrrrs, like a pirate? For Spanish, would you learn Mexican Spanish or Catalan? For English, American or British? And would you specify even further?

One of my favourite waiters is a Chinese guy who speaks in a faux Cockney accent. He not only puts on the strong accent, but uses a lot of slang, too. He is very proud of the fact that he has English friends and has a believable accent. He gets better every time I see him, and there’s nothing like having a Chinese guy call you geezer and tell you that the nosh is pukka!

Do you worry about your accent, or do you just focus on knowing the words to use?

I’ve written a lot about trying to listen to as much language as you can, whether it be in real life, or (even better) in a format that you can listen to more than once, and hopefully read along with.

I’m lucky to have a language teacher who has a very pleasant voice and manner of speaking, so when she records texts for me, it’s never a chore to listen to (although I do sometimes have to talk myself into listening to lessons rather than music or podcasts in English). However, I’ve heard a lot of people whose recording voices are almost painful to listen to, and I would struggle to make it through the few minutes it would take to listen to an article.

One particular example was an audiobook version of a book I’d already read and liked. The narrator had a grating accent and manner of speaking that emphasised all the wrong parts of the sentence and set my teeth on edge. I had to stop listening after less than a chapter.

I’ve found that I am more judgemental of speakers of my own language, though. I tend not to notice accents so much with foreign languages, and I’m not advanced enough yet to know if they are pronouncing things wrong. I haven’t found a foreign language speaker that I can’t listen to yet, which is probably a good thing!

Have you ever had to switch audio off because of the reader?

I’m reading a collection of essays by David Sedaris called Me Talk Pretty One Day. Some of the essays, including the title one, are about his struggles as an American visiting a small town in France and trying to pick up some of the language (there, in Paris, and in New York City). His partner speaks French, so that leaves him as the only non-French speaker in the town (something that I can relate to, though not so much with French).

He starts off pretty much only knowing the word for bottle opener, which he uses with all the local merchants. He proceeds to type all of his new words (using an old-fashioned typewriter) onto index cards, which he then keeps in a box. His progress is quite slow, and with example words like exorcism, slaughterhouse, and sea monster, I can sort of see why. However, his choice of vocabulary doesn’t stop him from trying to use it with the locals, which I can respect.

His method of keeping new words together allows him to state that at the end of his sixth trip to France, he had learned 1,564 words, which he held all together in a box. I rather liked this statement, and the concept of knowing precisely what your knowledge was.

I don’t know how many foreign words I know, but I would kind of like to. Do you keep track of your progress in any countable way?

I’ve seen my fair share of awful translations into English, which I forgive because most of the time they are hilarious, and I imagine that the people who commissioned them probably don’t have much more than an online translator available to help them.

Sometimes, though, I come across words that look like legitimate English words, but I have no idea what they mean. Sometimes I can glean a fair idea from the context, but there are times when I just have to look up the word to see what they are talking about. I don’t know why, but people seem to pick the most obscure or out-of-date words they can when doing formal translations.

I was editing an English translation of a Chinese document and one of the sentences said that there was no disporting allowed in the office. The word sounds like the opposite of porting, whatever that might mean. Or does it have something to do with sport? Teleporting? Apparently it means “To amuse oneself in a light, frolicsome manner”. Like, to frolic. I guess the sentence wanted to say ‘no jacking around’ or ‘no horseplay’.

I remember once reading a placard in a museum that said that the museum’s city was aiming to be refulgent. This one I had no idea about at the time. There’s something about the F that makes me think it might be a negative word, but the context was completely positive. I had to satisfy my curiosity later and looked it up. It means “to shine brightly”, which I guess is a fine ambition for a city.

Have you found yourself learning new words in your own language through the efforts of non-native speakers?