interesting accents!

try again · Post by **try again** » 18 Jul 2006 19:18

WELL,it is a problem with P and B,T and D,K and G...

in french, i sometimes got quite confused by them. like Grand-pere,however,i hear they say"grand-bere"..while cafe is gafe.
am my ears right?

IN english,we pronounce skirt's k as /g/..stay as /sdei/ while we don;t pronounce cafe as gafe.
or kate like/geit/...or papa like/baba/,right?

actually,it is the same in korean and cantonese,and they both work.

im just wondering why...why...why...who could tell us about this?? merci beaucoup~

Maïwenn · Post by **Maïwenn** » 18 Jul 2006 19:40

I noticed this hearing and pronounciation problem with Chinese people... But I don't know where it comes from. You do have distinction between b and p in Chinese, so why my friends say pampou instead of bambou ?

We do pronounce b and p like they are written. "Grand-père" is really "grand Père". And in English skirt is pronounced with a k, not a g...

domanlai · Post by **domanlai** » 18 Jul 2006 19:47

i think you are certainly influenced by the pinyin romanization where g is close to k (while k is actually aspirated) and b is close to p (while p is aspirated) for example.

But actually there is not a big difference between French and English as far as g and k are concerned for ex. Try to pronounce Kansas and gang : you will see that in English G and K are definitely 2 different sounds.

I think the difficulty here is from the Chinese background and probably does exist in English but not so obvious.

A good exercice
cadeau / gâteau

try again · Post by **try again** » 19 Jul 2006 09:18

Maïwenn wrote:so why my friends say pampou instead of bambou ?

And in English skirt is pronounced with a k, not a g...

is it? ur friends say pampou instead of bambou?but what does that mean?is it chinese?

well,in english, according to the grammar,skirt's is really pronounced as g...and i hear a lotta english-spoken ppl pronounce it according to that rule.
well, do u pronounce it just as skirt,with a /k/?

try again · Post by **try again** » 19 Jul 2006 09:25

well,as for how it appear like this..
i think i have several ineresting guesses here.

first, maybe the way that the english-spoken or other language-spoken ppl speak is quite casual,so when they sometimes pronounce it a little bit heavy,we hear g, and when light, we hear k, lol~~~am i right?

second,actually according to the grammar,rule,p and b,k and g etc are a pair.so they are pronouced in some way is very familiar, and quite hard to distinguish them by ear, so ppl have to admit that both of them work,right?

ANTHOS · Post by **ANTHOS** » 19 Jul 2006 09:31

The linguists may back me up on this (or not), but I think that there are many different ways of pronouncing what we think of as one sound. So there are many ways of pronouncing 'p' or 'b'.

A classic example is how pronunciation changes depending on context. It is natural for d to become t when speaking fast, in any language I think. So in French, tout De suite, sounds like touTe suite.

When you grow up with one language, your brain adapt to the sounds, and it is easy to mishear/confuse them.

That's what I think.

ANTHOS · Post by **ANTHOS** » 19 Jul 2006 09:34

By the way, try again, those big characters are ugly and it's like you're shouting at us . Could you use them just for headings maybe?

Maïwenn · Post by **Maïwenn** » 19 Jul 2006 09:52

try again wrote:
Maïwenn wrote:so why my friends say pampou instead of bambou ?

And in English skirt is pronounced with a k, not a g...
is it? ur friends say pampou instead of bambou?but what does that mean?is it chinese?

well,in english, according to the grammar,skirt's is really pronounced as g...and i hear a lotta english-spoken ppl pronounce it according to that rule.
well, do u pronounce it just as skirt,with a /k/?

Bambou is the French for Bamboo. But my Chinese friends tend to pronounce it like pampou.

To me, skirt is really pronounced with k. I can't remember any such rule from my phonetics classes. And I've never noticed that some people pronounced g.

try again · Post by **try again** » 19 Jul 2006 09:58

ANTHOS wrote:By the way, try again, those big characters are ugly and it's like you're shouting at us . Could you use them just for headings maybe?

im sorry,anthos...
coz the font setting in my pc is quite small,so i make it bigger here, but i didn;t think that would bring u unconvinience,im truly sorry that that. i really didn;t mean to"shout at u"
now i try to reset the font my pc.thx for ur remind~

try again · Post by **try again** » 19 Jul 2006 10:05

Maïwenn wrote: Bambou is the French for Bamboo. But my Chinese friends tend to pronounce it like pampou.

To me, skirt is really pronounced with k... And I've never noticed that some people pronounced g.

well, i think maybe the chinese ppl u met pronounce it that way. but in china the teacher willl tell the students to say"bamboo",not"pampoo"..and the same thing with skirt or school.
btw,which part of the world do u come from?i think the pronouciation p and b,t and d there maybe is just the oppsite to us~~~lol

domanlai · Post by **domanlai** » 19 Jul 2006 11:33

try again wrote: btw,which part of the world do u come from?i think the pronouciation p and b,t and d there maybe is just the oppsite to us~~~lol

As someone said, a sound might be heard and considered in different ways according to the linguistic background. But I definitely think the gap is not between English and French but more between Chinese on the one hand and French & English on the other hand.

But one thing for sure is that Chinese mandarin does not distinguish very clearly the flwg sounds
d / t
g / k
b / p
because the point in Chinese is to make clearly the difference between the standard sound (thus only one) and the aspirated version of the same basic sound. The rest is not that important.
So if you start from there when analysing western languages, it might be difficult for you to make a clear distinction of the sounds. If you do not make the distinction between g and k, it is troublesome even in English. It is not good to pronounce 'bush' and 'push' in the same way.

You also cited Cantonese, it is interesting to see that in Cantonese the sounds l and n are merged. Therefore there is a debate as to which one is more correct but actually the people who pronouce either n or l do not pronounce a full n or a full l but something in between that does not exist in western languages (at least not in Enlgish or in roman languages I know).

When western people learn mandarin, they are taught to pronounce something in between the b and p because teachers say that it is not a full standard western language b but also not really a p !

Many westerners do not pronounce the word Bejing properly : they pronounce it with a full b which is not correct in Chinese and adopt an english pronounciation of the j.

A much better example of what is typically different between English and French is the letter R. This sound doesn't exist in Chinese and thus the English version is much easier to adopt for a Chinese than the French prononciation.

Maïwenn · Post by **Maïwenn** » 19 Jul 2006 12:10

But one thing for sure is that Chinese mandarin does not distinguish very clearly the flwg sounds
d / t
g / k
b / p
because the point in Chinese is to make clearly the difference between the standard sound (thus only one) and the aspirated version of the same basic sound. The rest is not that important.

That's what I concluded about Mandarin from my experience with Chinese students. Thank you for the confirmation, Domanlai !

Try Again, I'm French, but as Domanlai said my mother tongue's pronounciation is closer to English than yours

Fuokusu · Post by **Fuokusu** » 19 Jul 2006 12:20

Maï : rather "native language"?

Maïwenn · Post by **Maïwenn** » 19 Jul 2006 12:38

Fuokusu wrote:Maï : rather "native language"?

It's the same, both are correct, Fuokusu...

Dada · Post by **Dada** » 19 Jul 2006 20:30

Mai:
Are you sure you can substitute langage with tongue?

Try Again:
Yes, d/t, g/k, b/p, v/f are almost the same sounds. The difference is that in each pair the first one is vocal, the second one is not. To pronounce them you just keep your tongue, mouth, throat in the same position, but for the first one your vocal cords are vibrating, not for the second one. You can practice by saying a loud "d", and then do the same thing but empeaching your cords to vibrate. (You can feel them vibrating by touching the front part of your neck.)