4 ms·

> We don't notice how much adapting and adjusting our brain has to do in our own language, but in a new language, we have to re-learn those sound boundaries, fo

> We don't notice how much adapting and adjusting our brain has to do in our own language, but in a new language, we have to re-learn those sound boundaries, for potentially dozens of new sounds. Some examples from Japanese and English: Japanese distinguishes between short and long vowels and between short and long consonants in a way that English does not. For example, the words kata, katta, and kātā (where ā indicates a long a) are pronounced differently and have different meanings (“shoulder,” “bought,” and “Carter,” respectively). Native English speakers learning Japanese as adults will often think at first that all three words sound the same (kata). Even after they become aware of the differences, they may still have trouble recognizing them in continuous speech. Similarly, English makes phonemic distinctions that do not exist in Japanese. The most well known is that between r and l, so that, for example, “grass” and “glass” can sound the same even to fluent Japanese speakers of English. My first language is English; I moved to Japan at the age of 26 and have lived here for 40 years. Although I speak, read, and write Japanese fluently, I still sometimes mishear words in spoken Japanese because, despite much study, effort, and experience, I have not fully acquired all of the phonemic distinctions.

david-gpu 3y ago
As a consequence of this you will occasionally realize that native speakers distinguish between two sounds that appear the same to you, which means that not only you didn't hear the difference, but also you must have been pronouncing it wrong all along. That's where I am right now in English with "Colin" and "calling", after almost twenty years living in English-speaking countries. Sigh!
- theta_d 3y ago
  Depending where you are, Colin and calling might be pronounced roughly the same.
SagatPetchy 3y ago
Another thing that separates Japanese from other languages is the fact that it's a pitch-accent language. I'm currently learning the language and it's the part I'm struggling with the most. I struggled less while learning a tonal language like Mandarin. Both pitches and tones in those languages are picked up by native speakers naturally, while language learners have to actively adapt from all the habits they've formed in their native languages.
- tkgally 3y ago
  My experience matches yours. In my case, I think it was due to the different teaching methods I was exposed to in the early stage of language learning. I studied Mandarin for two years when I was in college in California. From the first day of class, our teachers drilled the tones into us, and I made a point of memorizing the tones for every word I learned. Our textbooks and dictionaries also marked the tones on all words. I have since forgotten Mandarin, but when I could still speak it a little I think I had pretty good feeling for the tones. Eight years later, when I started taking Japanese classes in Tokyo, our teachers occasionally mentioned the pitch accents and gave examples of minimal pairs (usually hashꜜi “chopsticks” vs. hashꜛiꜜ “bridge”), but they didn’t drill us on them or correct us. None of our textbooks indicated word accents. Even today I am uncertain about the pitch accent for a lot of the words I acquired during my first year or two of Japanese study. I have a better sense for the accents of the words I learned later, because by then I had mostly acquired the pitch-accent phonology by osmosis. When I was a student of Japanese, only a couple of Japanese-English dictionaries, both published by Kenkyusha, and only one regular Japanese-Japanese dictionary, from Sanseido, marked pitch accent for headwords. Years later, when I worked with professional narrators of Japanese, I learned about an NHK accent dictionary that they would refer to when uncertain about how to accent a particular word. One of those Kenkyusha dictionaries is long out of print, and the other—Kenkyusha’s New Japanese-English Dictionary—dropped pitch accent from the fifth edition published in 2003. The managing editor, whom I knew, felt that the Japanese users at whom the dictionary was primarily aimed didn’t need to have the accent indicated. These days, of course, people have much better resources for learning languages. I learned today, from another discussion here on Hacker News, that Microsoft Edge has very good text-to-speech built in. I just now had it read aloud a couple of Japanese sentences containing the two hashis, and the pitch-accent difference was clear and natural.
  - SagatPetchy 3y ago
    Yes, I think you're right. The teaching methods are probably the biggest cause. I studied Mandarin for a year at Leiden University and the tones were drilled just like you mentioned. Also, most people who learn Mandarin are aware of the fact that the tones are an essential part of the language. But when it comes to Japanese, there seems to be a divide between people who think that learning pitch accents is essential and people who think their time is better spent on learning other things. I think a good middle ground is to at least learn about pitch accents until you can recognize them when a Japanese sentence is well articulated. I believe you'll be able to emulate them with enough exposure when you can at least recognize them. The next phase would then be for them to become second nature, but that will probably take many years. By the way, the following two websites are essential to me when it comes to learning pitch accents: - https://www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ojad/eng/phrasing/index https://www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ojad/eng/phrasing/index - https://www.kanshudo.com/searchw https://www.kanshudo.com/searchw The first link generates images that visualize the pitch accents of sentences that you enter. You can then adjust those pitch accent graphs by clicking on individual syllables. It can also generate the (very robotic) audio files of the pronunciations of those sentences. I add those images to the cards in my Anki deck, and reference them after attempting to pronounce the pitch accent of a word or sentence. The second link is an online dictionary that includes the pitch accents of individual words. I use it mostly when I need to double check the pitch accent of a word.
strato-cumulus 3y ago
As an L2 German speaker living in Germany, I have witnessed how slight vowel length differences matter. In my native Polish, vowel length is not phonemic - unlike in German. I've recently had a situation when I pronounced the word Krokette with a long E /krokeːtə/ instead of a short E /krokɛtə/, and I had to repeat myself a few times before the seller understood what I meant. I pay a lot of attention to properly timing my words, because this seems to be the biggest barrier for others to understand me in here. One other thing is stress placement; Polish places its primary stress on the penultimate syllabe of each word, making it probably the only Slavic language without variable stress (sentence stress is an another case). Whenever I hear Czech or Ukrainian - closely related languages - I need some extra time to post-process what has been said, and then I recognize the words that are understandable to me to a significant extent. I'm usually not able to process those in real time.

david-gpu 3y ago

As a consequence of this you will occasionally realize that native speakers distinguish between two sounds that appear the same to you, which means that not only you didn't hear the difference, but also you must have been pronouncing it wrong all along. That's where I am right now in English with "Colin" and "calling", after almost twenty years living in English-speaking countries. Sigh!

theta_d 3y ago
Depending where you are, Colin and calling might be pronounced roughly the same.

SagatPetchy 3y ago

Another thing that separates Japanese from other languages is the fact that it's a pitch-accent language. I'm currently learning the language and it's the part I'm struggling with the most. I struggled less while learning a tonal language like Mandarin. Both pitches and tones in those languages are picked up by native speakers naturally, while language learners have to actively adapt from all the habits they've formed in their native languages.

tkgally 3y ago
My experience matches yours. In my case, I think it was due to the different teaching methods I was exposed to in the early stage of language learning. I studied Mandarin for two years when I was in college in California. From the first day of class, our teachers drilled the tones into us, and I made a point of memorizing the tones for every word I learned. Our textbooks and dictionaries also marked the tones on all words. I have since forgotten Mandarin, but when I could still speak it a little I think I had pretty good feeling for the tones. Eight years later, when I started taking Japanese classes in Tokyo, our teachers occasionally mentioned the pitch accents and gave examples of minimal pairs (usually hashꜜi “chopsticks” vs. hashꜛiꜜ “bridge”), but they didn’t drill us on them or correct us. None of our textbooks indicated word accents. Even today I am uncertain about the pitch accent for a lot of the words I acquired during my first year or two of Japanese study. I have a better sense for the accents of the words I learned later, because by then I had mostly acquired the pitch-accent phonology by osmosis. When I was a student of Japanese, only a couple of Japanese-English dictionaries, both published by Kenkyusha, and only one regular Japanese-Japanese dictionary, from Sanseido, marked pitch accent for headwords. Years later, when I worked with professional narrators of Japanese, I learned about an NHK accent dictionary that they would refer to when uncertain about how to accent a particular word. One of those Kenkyusha dictionaries is long out of print, and the other—Kenkyusha’s New Japanese-English Dictionary—dropped pitch accent from the fifth edition published in 2003. The managing editor, whom I knew, felt that the Japanese users at whom the dictionary was primarily aimed didn’t need to have the accent indicated. These days, of course, people have much better resources for learning languages. I learned today, from another discussion here on Hacker News, that Microsoft Edge has very good text-to-speech built in. I just now had it read aloud a couple of Japanese sentences containing the two hashis, and the pitch-accent difference was clear and natural.
- SagatPetchy 3y ago
  Yes, I think you're right. The teaching methods are probably the biggest cause. I studied Mandarin for a year at Leiden University and the tones were drilled just like you mentioned. Also, most people who learn Mandarin are aware of the fact that the tones are an essential part of the language. But when it comes to Japanese, there seems to be a divide between people who think that learning pitch accents is essential and people who think their time is better spent on learning other things. I think a good middle ground is to at least learn about pitch accents until you can recognize them when a Japanese sentence is well articulated. I believe you'll be able to emulate them with enough exposure when you can at least recognize them. The next phase would then be for them to become second nature, but that will probably take many years. By the way, the following two websites are essential to me when it comes to learning pitch accents: - https://www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ojad/eng/phrasing/index https://www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ojad/eng/phrasing/index - https://www.kanshudo.com/searchw https://www.kanshudo.com/searchw The first link generates images that visualize the pitch accents of sentences that you enter. You can then adjust those pitch accent graphs by clicking on individual syllables. It can also generate the (very robotic) audio files of the pronunciations of those sentences. I add those images to the cards in my Anki deck, and reference them after attempting to pronounce the pitch accent of a word or sentence. The second link is an online dictionary that includes the pitch accents of individual words. I use it mostly when I need to double check the pitch accent of a word.

strato-cumulus 3y ago

As an L2 German speaker living in Germany, I have witnessed how slight vowel length differences matter. In my native Polish, vowel length is not phonemic - unlike in German. I've recently had a situation when I pronounced the word Krokette with a long E /krokeːtə/ instead of a short E /krokɛtə/, and I had to repeat myself a few times before the seller understood what I meant. I pay a lot of attention to properly timing my words, because this seems to be the biggest barrier for others to understand me in here. One other thing is stress placement; Polish places its primary stress on the penultimate syllabe of each word, making it probably the only Slavic language without variable stress (sentence stress is an another case). Whenever I hear Czech or Ukrainian - closely related languages - I need some extra time to post-process what has been said, and then I recognize the words that are understandable to me to a significant extent. I'm usually not able to process those in real time.