5 ms·

I think people really overdo the idea that certain sounds simply cannot be replicated by non-native speakers. If there is any remote proximity to native speaker

I think people really overdo the idea that certain sounds simply cannot be replicated by non-native speakers. If there is any remote proximity to native speakers and a bare minimum effort is made to practice tricky sounds, it's totally doable. I certainly picked up French quite easily in school. Later, in university, I picked up Italian very easily (though I had some exposure from older relatives). More recently, I absorbed a tiny bit of "hey how are you" Mandarin from coworkers, who were surprised at my ability to accurately parrot some words after a little bit of practice.

qalmakka 5y ago
Sure certain sounds can definitely be picked by non-native speakers. I'm not an English or German native speaker, but I've learned to pronounce /x/, /ç/, /θ/, /ð/ and the guttural Rs just fine, all sounds I didn't grow up with. It took time, exercise and willpower, and I'm kind of a language nut so I always put in some extra effort to get my pronunciation right. A common person that doesn't know the slightest amount of German is definitely not going to put in the effort to learn how to say [ch] right, just to say "Freidrich".
mmarq 5y ago
Of course you can replicate all sounds, I can pronounce Friedrich, but an Italian speaker with no exposure to German (which is 99% of the population) will inevitably butcher it, because both the R and the “voiceless palatal fricative” do not exist in Italian phonology. This hypothetical Friedrich can either accept that he is talking to foreigners that can’t pronounce his name as native Germans, or he may spend 2 hours trying to explain how to articulate a voiceless palatal fricative, assuming he can put that in words (I wouldn’t know where to start to explain how to pronounce “gli”). We all know what a polite person would do.
- jagger27 5y ago
  Perhaps my perspective is skewed as a Canadian consistently exposed to multiple languages in media and in casual conversation. Italy shares borders with two German majority speaking countries (Switzerland and Austria) and is close to Germany itself. Wouldn't Northern Italians especially have good exposure to them? As for the Italian 'gli', that was probably the hardest for me to pick up.
  - mmarq 5y ago
    No, apart from Alto Adige, which is an Austrian region occupied after WWI, still inhabited by Austrians, nobody has any exposure to German. (I honestly don’t know if they consider themselves Italians or Austrians, but they usually are native German speakers and have limited knowledge of Italian). It is hard to find a 45+ year old Italian who knows a foreign language.

qalmakka 5y ago

Sure certain sounds can definitely be picked by non-native speakers. I'm not an English or German native speaker, but I've learned to pronounce /x/, /ç/, /θ/, /ð/ and the guttural Rs just fine, all sounds I didn't grow up with. It took time, exercise and willpower, and I'm kind of a language nut so I always put in some extra effort to get my pronunciation right. A common person that doesn't know the slightest amount of German is definitely not going to put in the effort to learn how to say [ch] right, just to say "Freidrich".

mmarq 5y ago

Of course you can replicate all sounds, I can pronounce Friedrich, but an Italian speaker with no exposure to German (which is 99% of the population) will inevitably butcher it, because both the R and the “voiceless palatal fricative” do not exist in Italian phonology. This hypothetical Friedrich can either accept that he is talking to foreigners that can’t pronounce his name as native Germans, or he may spend 2 hours trying to explain how to articulate a voiceless palatal fricative, assuming he can put that in words (I wouldn’t know where to start to explain how to pronounce “gli”). We all know what a polite person would do.

jagger27 5y ago
Perhaps my perspective is skewed as a Canadian consistently exposed to multiple languages in media and in casual conversation. Italy shares borders with two German majority speaking countries (Switzerland and Austria) and is close to Germany itself. Wouldn't Northern Italians especially have good exposure to them? As for the Italian 'gli', that was probably the hardest for me to pick up.
- mmarq 5y ago
  No, apart from Alto Adige, which is an Austrian region occupied after WWI, still inhabited by Austrians, nobody has any exposure to German. (I honestly don’t know if they consider themselves Italians or Austrians, but they usually are native German speakers and have limited knowledge of Italian). It is hard to find a 45+ year old Italian who knows a foreign language.