A bit more north, "up roerd lad, round corner. Ask ye mam". The Bradshaws. Funny... I found a mobile phone the other day (which as a good citizen, I found it's owner). Anyway, I looked for "mum" in the phonebook. Anyway, it was written "mam". So I knew they weren't posh either. In the end she was from the east coast of Ireland!
Manchester area, Tameside but went to a 6th-form college on the outskirts of Stockport. That prompted the change (posh around there). It wasn't chip muffin anymore, but a chip "barm". Oooh sounds posh doesn't it?
When I first met my husband, he made me laugh when he said "Wodka" (it is also written like this in German) and "Vimmen" (women).......not so sure what he was talking about at the time, though......
What about the British chap that recently got done for contempt of court during a trial with a German-speaking defendant.
He offered to translate, as he said he could speak German, and then approached the chap and said:
"Vot is your name?" (heavy German accent)
It's common to all German speakers. You will see the tables will turn once you start to learn German. And the 'e' and the 'i'...and 'f', 'v'... a whole other story.
OMG, folks, if ever i shall meet youse all on any of the gatherings in BE or ZH , i shall keep my mouth firmly SHUT or you'd all fall over laughing about my funny pronounciations i really was proud about my fluent english knowledge, before i realised there were so many pitfalls for an average heidi like me
With respect, I had a browse of this website, and it all struck me as being a little, um, pseudoscientific.
I understand the point that certain languages share certain sounds , which makes German, for example, easier for an English speaker to learn than, say, Arabic (or, to use a painful example from my own experience, s iSwati ). This is a natural consequence of the almost infinite ways in which we can control the flow of air through our vocal chords, mouths and noses to create such delights as voiced alveolar plosives ( d in English), voiceless palatal fricatives ( ch in High German) and voiced bilabial implosives (oh God, not Siswati again!), amongst others. Languages in related families tend, more often that not, to share more sounds than those from diverse families - although there are always weird exceptions to this (there's a weird, barely audible, nasal m in Swedish, as I recall... although I seem to remember being horribly hungover during that particular lecture, so I'm sure someone will put me right).
But frequencies ? Sounds a bit dodgy to me, unless you're talking about tonal languages or the use of intonation, which these chaps do not appear to be.
By the way, there's an excellent book by Michael Swan that explains the main stumbling blocks for speakers of other languages who wish to learn English, including some pretty comprehensive sections on phonology.
Two of my teachers speak English with an accent which would make Monty Python sound like some Peeböls from se Göthe-Institut, Ja????
It was difficult to be cereal during the first lessons...
p.s.
Here are are some Norwegians making fun of both the Danish accent and the Danish Language itself.
Swan is great! Was it him that developed the concept of "phonemic filter" ? As that is exactly what makes adults not hear the new language right. After certain age our brain develops a filter (based on their mother tongue) that subconsciously filters out all the unfamiliar phonemes, hence it is quite hard to hear the subtle phonetic diferences in the language we are trying to acquire. Isn't a human brain a fabulously effective thing?
Thanks for a great reminder of good ol' uni lectures on phonetics, I miss those.
I find switching w/v a mistake not so hard to get rid off. I made students say "very well" so many times, at the end they would finallyt remember that "v" is labio/dental and they must bite their lower lip while saying it and when saying "w" they have to position their mouth as when blowing air. It is fun.
It is hard to teach Czech, the phonemes are rough. There is specifically one that is hard, it is a phone that is produced when a person says "r" and "z" at once (and try not to spit much, there a slight aspiration only). English phonetically is imho easy, so melodic.. I am fighting a bit with French phonemes, but listening to a radio is great. Swiss French is by far more ear pleasing than the Parisian French. The pace is slower, more learners' friendly, fo sho.
The word "question" seems to be a word the Swiss find rather difficult to pronounce and of course any word with "th" in it is simply a torture to pronounce correctly...
I don't know, I think Vayne & Vendy are cute!
In Mexico, tell them your name is Vayne & see if it's any better.
LOL. Very recognisable!
I was listening to radio sunshine and chuckled as the announcer introduced the segment called "news on tits." Can you guess what he was trying to say?
"News and Hits"?
Yes but there is no reason for her to pronounce v as in valley or villiage as a w because v in german is not pronounced like a w .
On a slight tangent - one word the Swiss fail on is "savoury" - translating salzig to salty. English uses salty to specifically describe a salty taste.
In my Swiss choir, we are 4 English (fortunately no Americans as that would have confused things even more) and are currently singing the Handel Te Deum. Came along a long discussion on the pronounciation of "Cherubim".
We all four made it quite clear that the initial "Ch" was not pronounced "K", as some of the remaining 60 members of the choir wanted to do.
Things got trickier around the "u" with variations amongst the 4 of us between "oo" and "euh". Sorry, I'm no good at phonetics, but I hope you get the gist of it.
So even 4 native British-English speakers, presumably each of us with different backgrounds in singing and Latin, couldn't reach agreement. What do you expect the poor Swiss to do?
(Things aren't helped by the second piece we're singing, another Te Deum, by Richter, a German baroque composer, in Latin, which also has Cherubims and Seraphims. As German pronounciation of Latin is really wierd, the four of us kept out of the discussion )
Savoury is also würzig"
Show them the videos below
I've learned there is a difference between "V" and "W" a few years ago when I invited my American friends over to try my specialty veal dish. Although they all agreed it tasted great they were still a bit disappointed as they expected to try whale
cherubim - At least they didn't want to pronounce it "tche - rub - em".
Think "-i" in "alumni". Do you think Romans talked like that? Hairier is the pronunciation of "Cicero".
American speakers learn an anglicized form of Latin, and defend it to death. Once I got into a heated argument with a lawyer friend over correct Latin pronunciation - me bringing evidence from other romantic languages, him saying this is how it's pronounced in the US. Can't fault his logic, can I.