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> I will never be able to pronounce correctly a word I never heard before. This happens not infrequently to native English speakers. It's especially prominent
by cvoss 1y ago
> I will never be able to pronounce correctly a word I never heard before.
This happens not infrequently to native English speakers. It's especially prominent for people who read a lot when they're young and develop a large vocabulary that doesn't get socialized until much later. My English teacher, of all people, was notorious for this.
Real life examples from native speakers: Emphasizing the wrong syllable in "forage", "respite", and "parameter". Pronouncing "draught" like "fraught". Softening "chasm" and "chaos". And an extra syllable (long e sound) in "homogeneous".
- kergonath 1y agoThis is my experience as well. I would just add > Emphasizing the wrong syllable As a native French speaker, I will never be able to emphasise the right syllable in any language, ever :D Stress is just not really a thing in French, and it is quite difficult to get it intuitively later in life.
- int_19h 1y agoIt's fairly easy when the stress is consistent or mostly so. In English thought it's a phonemic feature in its own right so there's no general rule to memorize in the first place - you just have to learn it for each word.