You are my density @Gain and I know that you have watched back to the future
Which Americans canāt even pronounce!
R is usually among the last phonemes that even native English speakers grasp. The liquids L and R are tough. Thatās why young Amewican childwen tend to tawk wike this fow a whiyo.
Most/many Europeans use a ārollingā R.
Well the characters help already, besides ppl tend to know a bit Japanese from the anime and stuff.
Japan borrowed the entire Chinese literary apparatus, of which characters are the most visible part.
They borrowed the word combinations and onyomi pronunciations.
This comedian gives a linguistics lesson on Japanese and Chinese. Heās a little off because he suggests there are no cognates.
https://youtu.be/Lz7zYGuM_LM
besides ppl tend to know a bit Japanese from the anime and stuff.
Who is āpeopleā?
people who are interested in japanese stuff sure, normal people, no.
The liquids L and R are tough. Thatās why young Amewican childwen tend to tawk wike this fow a whiyo.
Liquid L and R are at least easier than alveolar trill R for most Taiwanese. For some reason Iāve been making that sound in kindergarten, Iād run around the playground making trill sound, so it never was a challenge for me, but my parents couldnāt make the trill sound if their lives depended on it.
Because the sound exists in Mandarin.
Iāve heard English people say āwewldā instead of āworldā
Liquid L and R are at least easier than alveolar trill R for most Taiwanese.
Some people just canāt seem to trill their Rās. I think even some people for whom itās a native phoneme have trouble with it.
It might have something to do with the same sort of limitation that prevents people from being able to roll up the sides of their tongue, flip it over, or do other tricks with it. I can make a three-leaf clover shape with my tongueā¦
Some people just canāt seem to trill their Rās. I think even some people for whom itās a native phoneme have trouble with it.
You have the front tongue rolling R and throat scratch R (French speakers)
You have the front tongue rolling R
alveolar trill
and throat scratch R (French speakers)
uvular trill, voiced uvular fricative or voiced uvular approximant
It might have something to do with the same sort of limitation that prevents people from being able to roll up the sides of their tongue, flip it over, or do other tricks with it. I can make a three-leaf clover shape with my tongueā¦
I doubt itās anything physical. I can only roll my tongue, making it a simple tube shape, but so can my parents and that ability doesnāt help them make the trill sound.
I also know people who can do the tongue lotus thing and they couldnāt do the simple trill r.
It might just be if they are exposed to it or practiced it at an young age.
Iād love to hear from someone who couldnāt do the simple trill r when they were growing up, but learned to master it as an adult because Iāve never known someone who pulled it off.
Some Taiwanese aboriginal languages have the alveolar trill sound.
From my TUR sheet:
Pangcah (Amis), Atayal, Puyuma, Rukai, Tsou, Paiwan, Saisiyat, Tao, Ita Thaw (Thao), all have the simple trill r sound.
I have a linguistics masterās and have learned bits of many languages, from Old Norse to Arabic, to varying degrees of proficiency but without ever really āmasteringā any of them. I just enjoy the linguistics so much. That said, I can safely say that, for the most part, Mandarin is one of the easiest and also most rewarding languages Iāve learnt, though I only reached intermediate level at my peak.
Other languages Iāve reached a similar level of proficiency are Arabic and French, and by the same level I was drowning in a sea of grammatical rules and general annoyances. In contrast, I found Chineseās grammar by this point to be remarkably uniform. It also helps considerably that itās mostly a subject-verb-object language, like English. I personally find that memorising vocabulary is much easier than wrestling with complicated grammar, and in this Chinese has another advantage because so much of the vocabulary sounds the same! (I donāt know if this is a fact, but I get the impression that Chinese has less sounds than most big languages, especially English.)
Tones are a fucking bastard, but it just takes practice, practice, practice. Yeah, it fucking sucks when you try to order a green tea and the girl behind the counter canāt understand you, but I find that most people tend to be patient.
I personally also find Chinese characters enjoyable and better-suited to the language than using a Romanisation system like Pinyin. I always recommend that people memorise all of the radicals first and then treat the characters like jigsaw puzzles. Iām surprised that so few Chinese courses recommend this approach, because I think it makes learning the writing so much easier.
Over all, I think Chinese is a wonderful language. Nice and straightforward, not nearly as frustrating as what Iāve encountered with Japanese which Iām currently learning. But if you go into it thinking itās āarchaicā and begrudging the people who canāt understand you instead of trying to improve yourself, then you may as well just pack it in and not bother with languages at all.
but I get the impression that Chinese has less sounds than most big languages, especially English
At least for Mandarin, I think itās true. It only has 25 consonants and 9 vowels. Mandarinās simple syllable structure model, with only n, and ng for coda, also contributes to how repetitive it sounds.
Yeah French is such a mess. Thereās no logic to anything, only exceptions and exceptions to exceptions.
Yes! French is a walk in the park compared to Arabic and some of the other languages Iāve dabbled in, but itās all over the place compared to Mandarin. I donāt know how anybody who has gone through French could complain about Mandarin being āhardā.
French is such a mess.
French contributes largely to English being such a mess, too.