3 ms·
I've noticed this within accents of the same language. My own English accent has a very mild separation between the i and e vowels in, e.g., bitter and better.
by eythian 3y ago
I've noticed this within accents of the same language. My own English accent has a very mild separation between the i and e vowels in, e.g., bitter and better. To my ear they sound wildly different, but many native speakers from other places and more English-as-a-second-language speakers can really struggle to tell apart what I'm saying, to the point that it's usually easier for me to switch languages to the local one to distinguish the words if the context is ambiguous. Oddly, despite noticing shifts in my accent having lived abroad for some time now, this is something that hasn't budged.
Similarly in my (learnt as an adult) second language, there are a couple of vowel sounds that aren't in English and I usually have to really focus to hear them, and to pronounce them correctly.
- LocalH 3y agoThe classic American example for me was always "ten/tin", "pen/pin", which in my Southern neck of the woods are typically homophones. My girlfriend is Midwestern, and definitely pronounces the "e" more in those variants.
- LastNevadan 3y agoMy favorite example in English is this sentence: "I peered at a pair of pears on the pier." As a native speaker, the sounds in peer/pair/pear/pier are slightly but detectable different. But non-native speakers can almost never say or hear these differences.
- Thorrez 3y agoAs a native English speaker (American) I think "peer" and "pier" are pronounced the same, and that "pair" and "pear" are pronounced the same, but that the 2 groups are pronounced quite differently.