Talk:Anglophone pronunciation of foreign languages

Sourcing
This page is coming along nicely. My main concern is that this page will become as unsourced as non-native pronunciations of English. I've got a book on Russian phonetics and I think I can give a good example of how I think we ought to source things. AEuSoes1 08:00, 20 February 2006 (UTC)


 * As far as I can see there are almost no sources at all. I know the topic is popular for amateur linguists, but if there are no sources the article should be removed. (Sven)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.56.250.148 (talk) 15:22, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, sourcing is still a problem. I wouldn't delete it as the information is sourceable.  It's a topic that I'm sure has had some scholarly research. — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  04:41, 6 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Accent is a subjective thing. No-one can say with authority, this is Chinese, English, Polish, Russian, etc. accent but native speakers still can tell with a certain percentage of accuracy. Finding sources on this is really hard. Good luck with your search. Should we discard the information just because we can't find sources? We should also be reasonable and require sources if there is an opinion that the information is incorrect, in some instances, at least. I'll clarify a bit more when I have some time, I have to go now. --Atitarev (talk) 05:52, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
 * At Talk:Non-native pronunciations of English, editors have outlined a number of reasons for removing unsourced statements even if they seem correct.
 * I would remove all unsourced statements by now, but if I did that there would be almost nothing left but the Russian section. I have, however, gone through and removed the most dubious (IMHO) of statements. — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  19:51, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Which dialect(s)?
The fact of the matter is that English dialects are different enough that different dialects of English will approach other languages differently and have different problems with phonemes. Should we limit our discussion to one particular dialect or a specific set of dialects or should we limit our discussion to features that occur only among most speakers of English. So most speakers may pronounce a language's rhotic as or  while only speakers in a few dialects (like California English) will have difficulty with  and Australian English is one of the few dialects that would have no difficulty with. AEuSoes1 08:00, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
 * You have got to remeber that foreign languages have dialects as well such as Parisian French, Québécois French, Alsantian French and Vaudois French. 159753 09:30, 20 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, but most students learn the "standard" form with very little regard to dialectal features until much later (if at all). Although I do recall an east-coast friend of mine learned Continental Spanish while I learned New World Spanish; so she speaks it with  and I do not. I link that to the fact that my teacher was of Mexican descent.  AEuSoes1 09:45, 20 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Likewise, most foreign students learn one of the two "standard" varieties of English, i.e. either Midwestern American English or Southeastern British English. Less common dialects like Southern American English or Australian English are largely ignored in ESL classes. 161.24.19.82 19:19, 8 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I believe all comparisons regarding pronunciation should be based on the language standards that are most often taught to foreign learners. In the case of Spanish, that would be Castilian Spanish (as opposed to Rioplatense or Mexican Spanish). In the case of French, the natural choice would be Parisian French, as opposed e.g. to Quebec French. English poses an additional difficulty though in the sense that two different pronunciation standards are actually used in EFL classes, namely General American English and Received Pronunciation (RP) British English. Likewise, in the case of Portuguese, foreign learners may be taught to speak either with a Brazilian or an European Portuguese accent (which, like General American and RP, may differ considerably from each other). Whenever the distinction between different standards/dialects is relevant to the argument, an explicit reference should be added to clarify which variety of the language has been considered.

Finnish tuli/tulli
I think you have a problem here. Tuli is pronuced TOO-li, tulli is TOOL-li and tuuli is TOOOO-li, I should know as I am learning the language. 159753 09:30, 20 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what you're getting at. The only difference that I made in the pronunciations from what you put was that I decided not to split up the geminated /l/ with a stress mark.  But since we're talking about Finnish, the phrases hyvää päivää, nimeni on Jaakko and terve, nime on Jaakko should be translated in the article. AEuSoes1 09:45, 20 February 2006 (UTC)


 * In Finnish, you generally don't pronounce double consonants, except when it is a suffix like -ssa/-ssä (in) or -lla/-llä (on). Thus each consonant is pronounced separately, kuka (how) is pronounced ku-ka, but kukka (flower) is pronounced kuk-ka. Hyvää päivää, nimeni on Jaakko means “hello, my name is Jaakko" (the Finnish version of James). 159753 10:06, 20 February 2006 (UTC)


 * This is made up. Finnish always distinguishes between double consonants. It's English that ignores them. Ironically, it's exactly the '-lla' and '-ssa' where certain dialects (Satakunta etc.) ignore the difference (e.g. metsäsä instead of metsässä "in the forest"). Also, "kukka" is pronounced with a lengthened 'k', not two short 'k' 's. The same is true for other stops, that is, 't' and 'p'. The difference of long and short sounds remains phonemic, e.g. tapan sinut huomenna "I will kill you tomorrow" vs. tapaan sinut huomenna "I will meet you tomorrow" --Vuo (talk) 20:11, 3 April 2009 (UTC)


 * According to the Finnish phonology page, nearly every consonant has some sort of doubled form. I still don't get what your grievance is. AEuSoes1 22:44, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

The biggest mistakes anglophones (and probably others) make in pronouncing Finnish.

1) Not distinguishing between single and double letters. You will get corrected constantly for this one. Not just vowels (tuli/tuuli) but consonants (koko/kokko, korpi/korppi). Think of English - "blackats" is meaningless if you mean "black cats". Finnish distinguishes between tule, tuule, tuulle, tuulee, tulee, tullee, and tuullee.

2) Having learned this rule, overdoing it to a ludicrous extent. No need to wait a second between two k's.

3) Failing to place the syllable stress correctly. The first syllable ALWAYS receives the strongest stress, so it's HEL-sin-ki not Hel-SIN-ki, KEK-kon-en not Kek-KON-en. In long words later syllables will receive a secondary stress.

4) Mispronouncing dipthongs, such as pronouncing "sauna" as saw-na. And all the others, as in the ei/ie confusion. And yes, in German I did once refer to scheisspulver (shit powder) when I meant schiesspulver (gunpowder).

Spanish possible additions
I don't know how many of these are appropriate, since I don't know how many English speakers have the same Spanish problems that I do.


 * This is already on the page, but I suffer from gender mix-ups sometimes. (For reasons unknown to me I like to think I tend to err towards the feminine.)


 * My Spanish class has generally remembered to pronounce final /e/, but who knows?


 * I've heard the tap "r" mispronounced as a [d]. I think this is because the former is an allophone of the latter in English.


 * I personally suffer from a hypercorrection of the first two problems where I don't pronounce [x], but it tend to be word-initially.


 * The rare word-final [x] (the only example I can think of right now is reloj meaning "clock" or "watch") tends to either not be pronounced or indicated by what I think is an aspiration of the preceding vowel. (I think I suffer from both of them about equally.)


 * When learning, I've heard of orthography mix-ups where [x] is pronounced as an English /j/. For me this tended to happen with Spanish soft /g/, but now it tends to be rare for either one.


 * We Anglophones have a bad habit (so bad that I think it's already on the page) of varying the Spanish vowels.


 * The Spanish /ñ/ isn't pronounced exactly correct. It tends to be either [nj] or palatal .


 * As Aeusoes1 mentioned earlier on the page, we may be taught to use [s] instead of [θ].


 * We might make /b/ and /v/ distinct when it's actually the same sound in Spanish, which depending on the English dialect is [β] (I think), which doesn't exist in English; [b]; or [v].

Feel free to comment or add to the list. 18:46, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, /b/ and /v/ are equal as far as pronunciation goes, but that does not mean that there's only one way to pronounce them; depending on where they stand in a word, they can be pronounced as [β] or as [b] (not sure whether the latter symbol is the correct one, my IPA knowledge is limited). &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?) Seen this already? 07:40, 27 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Two additions I made were removed rather than edited, which in this context seems inappropriate. The first deals with the problem English speakers have of reducing vowels in unstressed syllables to [ə] or, less commonly, to [ɪ]. I think this should be included as should the examples to clarify this phenemenon. The other is addition ws to include the IPA symbols for the fricative allophones of /b/ /d/ /g/ in syllable-final (rather than word-final) and intervocalic position.s These are, respectively, [β], [ð], and either [γ] or [ɰ]. I do not think these IPA symbols should be removed since many people won't automatically know, for example, what a frivative allophone of /b/ would be. The total removal was justified by the comment "this is not an instructional guide." While that might justify the removal of some of the advice on how to practice removing a non-native accent, it is not germane to the above-mentioned material all of which, I believe, should remain in the article.Interlingua 23:08, 22 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I removed them because I associated all the information with the instructional tone of your additions. Although it may be a little redundant, you are right that the information is appropriate.  For future reference, though, <γ> is not the same thing as <>. AEuSoes1 00:45, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


 * That's right. Thanks, I was sloppy. I knew the <γ> didn't look right and wanted to be sure not to confuse it with <> but ended up not choosing the correct symbol, <>. A question or two, AEuSoes1. Aren't these allophones fricatives, rather than approximants? The only approximant is [ɰ], which in many dialect is, along with [ɣ], an allphone for /g/. I think you've removed the approximant [ɰ] several times from this article, but isn't that one of the ways /g/ us pronounced intervocally? Second, we've both reverted several times on whether the fricativazation happens in word-final or syllable-final positions. It actually seems we've both been wrong. It would be better to say that /b/, /d/, and /g/ are always realized as fricatives [β], [ð] and [ɣ], respecively, EXCEPT after a nasal (/m/ /n/) or in utterance-initial (not just word-initial) position. And for /d/ there is the additional rule that it is not realized as [ð] after laterals /l/. This is the explanation given in Barrutia, Richard and Armin Schwegler. Fonética y fonologia españoles. John Wiley, 2nd Edition,, 1994, pp. 116-121.Interlingua 18:01, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


 * According to what I've read, the allophones are approximants. What makes things confusing is that the symbols for fricatives are used for approximants, often sans diacritics.  I have heard native speakers use fricatives, and this may have to do with careful speech.  Although a velar approximant is technically represented with, my understanding of the convention is to use <> with a lowering diacritic; this is more for consistancy's sake since the two represent the exact same phone.
 * As for the distribution, your source backs up the Spanish phonology page's explanation. AEuSoes1 01:00, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

On this side of the world, Western and Southwestern US, in the Spanish that we encounter and try to use [x] is generally pronounced as an English /j/ as is g before e or i. That is to say, since my knowledge of IPA is so limited as to be non-existant, The x in Mexico; the g in gentes, Angel and Rangel; and the j in juntos and Javier are all pronounced as an Englsh h.

Also, just to make matters more confused than they already are, there is no [θ]. Final d is either a stop or nothing (a cessation of sound) depending on the context and the speaker. Even people from countries that claim to speak Castilian rather than Spanish have no [θ].

JimCubb 00:32, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Accusative vs. Dative
In the section on Finnish, what does that distinction between accusative and dative mean? As far as I know Finnish does not have dative case. Did the writer mean the distinction between accusative and partitive or something else? Ossi 10:13, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Phonetic Phobic
I stumbled across this page when viewing Special:Recentchanges and all the  stuff threw me for a loop; until I hovered over it and saw the title attribute from the span. It seems that adding a template similar to or at least a link to IPA_chart_for_english at the top of the page would be helpful to non-linguists who happen by this article and wonder what sound  is. MeekMark 02:56, 8 May 2006 (UTC)


 * It's true that the symbols can be daunting, especially at the start. This is true both for the symbols for sounds and also the various framing marks which are used to show just what the inside text is supposed to mean: < >, / /, [ ], | |. AEuSoes1 has been especially careful in the use of these symbols, and that's a good thing. Briefly, the different framing marks are used for three purpose. Wikipedia has a good summary of these conventions in the aritcle on phonetic transription.
 * < >. These are angle brackets or chevrons and are used to enclose the actual orthography (writing or spelling) and not the transcription of it.
 * / /. These are slashes and are used to enclose phonemes.
 * [ ]. These are brackets and are used to enclose phonetic transcriptions.
 * | |. These are pipes and are used for morphological (word) analysis.Interlingua 17:44, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Spanish question
It says in the article that "In unstressed syllables, English speakers are very likely to merge and  to : pintar  becomes .Would this result in two otherwise distinct Spanish words sounding the same? Although I have taken three or four years of Spanish (depending on what you go by--I took Spanish in seventh and eighth grade, which is the first and second half of first-year Spanish respectively), nothing comes to immediate mind about when this would be a major problem. --67.10.111.125 22:08, 24 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, it would create mergers. I never noticed it myself, but it makes a bit of sense.  If it's too objectionable, we can either take it out or alter the language to make its tendency not so strong. AEuSoes1 03:58, 25 June 2006 (UTC)


 * If you can come up with a merger, put it and translate the words. [Edit at 23:42, 3 July 2006 (UTC): Well, translate it if appropriate. I don't know if a translation would be appropriate or not.] If you can't, reword it so it's not as strong. It does happen, so in my opinion it should stay in some form, but examples would be nice. 67.10.111.125 23:38, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Portuguese
I removed the statement that " final 'e' is always silent in Portuguese  " because that is obviously not true. Final 'e' is pronounced as in Brazilian Portuguese and  in European Portuguese. I also added a reference to the difficulty Anglophones have with Portuguese nasal vowels. 201.52.32.9 00:16, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Flowers
I changed the gender/number/case agreement example "the green flowers" (Sp. las flores verdes, Port. as flores verdes, German die grüne Blumen/ den grünen Blumen, French les fleurs vertes) to "the red flowers" ((Sp. las flores rojas, Port. as flores vermelhas, German die roten Blumen/ den roten Blumen, French les fleurs rouges). The reason for the change is that flowers are not usually green, but rather red, yellow, white etc. Please do not change back. 200.177.30.226 10:32, 8 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I opposed an earlier change because I rather like using the same examples for multiple languages. Changing all of them is fine.  AEuSoes1 11:41, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Removed the following from Spanish section
I removed these from the Spanish section because they are grammar issues and the article's title distinctly says pronunciation:

(Snipped for brevity as I have now put the information back. See )

These deserve mention somewhere, but they are grammatical, not pronuncation. –Andyluciano 22:49, 10 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Nevermind, I see now that other languages contain such information. My mistake.  Maybe, though, this article should be renamed or split then? –Andyluciano 22:51, 10 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't mind a rename. An article split would be unwarranted since both the phonology and the other aspects of grammar fit into the same general phenomenon of second language transfer.
 * Also, If we rename this page then that might lead us to also rename non-native pronunciations of English in a similar fashion. So what would some good alternate titles be? AEuSoes1 20:06, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Not pronunciation issues (French)
I removed the following points from the section on French as they all relate to questions of grammar or usage and not specifically to pronunciation:

''Quote > ''< Unquote
 * Speakers may uniformly use dans and en or mix them up, because both translate as "in" in English.
 * The word de means both the partitive, (some/any) and the preposition, (from/to); however, it inflects differently depends on which one. Du, de la, de l'  and des for the partitve and du/de, de, d'  and des for the preposition.
 * Although nous is the second person plural pronoun in Standard French, its use may come off as too formal since colloquial varieties are more likely to use on. See French personal pronouns.
 * Speakers may not include determiners like le or la as often as is appropriate, such as when showing the object of a sentence.
 * English has very little grammatical gender. As a result, mistakes may arise with the French gender system:
 * mon and ton (possessive adjectives "my" and "your" respectively) apply to feminine nouns if they start with a vowel, English speakers may forget and say ma and ta, which are the feminine forms before words beginning in consonants.
 * Feminine and masculine articles, especially for inanimate objects, have to be memorized and speakers may mix them up. e.g. "le main" instead of "la main" (the hand), "la pont" instead of "le pont", "le douleur" instead of "la douleur" (the pain), etc.
 * Speakers may have difficulty with gender and number agreement in adjectives. e.g. "la maison blanc" instead of "la maison blanche" (the white house), "les fleurs rouge" instead of "les fleurs rouges" (the red flowers), etc.
 * Beginning speakers may transfer usage of English auxiliary "be" and use "être" to reflect a continuous aspect, as in "Je suis aller au magasin" instead of "Je vais au magasin" (I am going to the shop). In this example, je vais can mean one of three things: I am going, I go, and I do go.

Picapica 15:28, 31 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I think if you look at the comments on this talk page and at Non-native pronunciations of English you'll find that the general agreement is that grammar is under the scope of these articles. The problem is the article titles are not quite accurate.  I'll reinclude the grammar points and you're more than welcome to suggest alternate titles to the article.  Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]

Well, the "general agreement" in that case is wrong-headed, in my view. "Anglophone pronunciation of foreign languages" is a sufficiently interesting and worthwhile topic to merit an undiluted article in its own right.

A reading of the previous comments suggests that you have been happy enough, yourself, to leave the article inaccurately and misleadingly entitled for nearly eight months, so I wonder why you now graciously invite me to "suggest alternate [do you mean "alternative?] titles". Since you recognize the blatant inaccuracy, why have you not not moved the article yourself, or at least proposed doing so?

The fact that the Non-native pronunciations of English article has been similarly corrupted (thanks for the pointer, by the way) is as plain a case I have seen in a long time of attempting to argue that two wrongs make a right! -- Picapica 18:53, 31 March 2007 (UTC)


 * "I wouldn't mind a rename" was pretty euphamistic. I'm actually not happy with the titles (I even mention this on my userpage as well as in the first section of the other page) but I can't think of better ones.  You'll notice the section above I ask others what they think will be a good title and I've participated in earlier discussions to the same but people don't really make suggestions.
 * While you are entitled to your opinion, you shouldn't steamroll over years of consensus just because you don't find non-pronunciation negative transfer interesting enough.
 * I'm reverting your edits and suggest that you don't restore them until there is agreement to do so. For future reference, please don't remove things without getting a consensus especially when you think that there is opposition to such edits.
 * And yes, I guess I did mean alternative. I'm still open to ideas for more fitting titles.  Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 05:36, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

>>you shouldn't steamroll over years of consensus just because you don't find non-pronunciation negative transfer interesting enough.<<

What have I ever written in this discussion to lead you to suppose, Aeusoes1, that I don't find "non-pronunciation negative transfer" interesting enough? If you are relying upon mind-reading powers, then you need to know that they have failed you on this occasion.

To repeat what I wrote earlier: I removed [...] points from the section on French as they all relate to questions of grammar or usage and not specifically to pronunciation. I made no reference at all to the interestingness or otherwise of the points concerned. I can, however, let you know now (I didn't need to earlier, because the fact was irrelevant to my argument) that, as both a teacher and a student of languages myself, I happen to find them highly interesting. They just don't belong under the rubric Anglophone pronunciation of foreign languages – any more than would fascinating points concerning apples, pears, and bananas in an article on the cultivation of root vegetables.

It should also be pointed out, given the age of the article, that the "years of consensus" can amount to no more than the best part of 13 months and a bit! But since you seem to be fully aware yourself of the mismatch between title and content, I cannot understand why you appear to be so unbold as to do nothing about it because "people don't really make suggestions". It is sometimes necessary, in my view, to get out the old, bold steamroller when the potholes reach a size at which they can no longer be ignored.

What it comes down to is that here we have an article purporting to be about the phonological and prosodical aspects of linguistic interference as realized by mother-tongue English-speakers but in fact encompassing such other matters as syntax ("Speakers [of Spanish] may place adjectives before a noun rather than after") and style ("Speakers may speak [Finnish]] too formally").

Three possible solutions are:

1. to rename the article

2.1 to split the article by topic (phonology, syntax, etc.)

2.2 to split the article by "target" language (German, Russian, etc.)

I am against solution 1 as the article risks becoming, if it has not already done so, over diffuse.

The articles created by either of the splitting options would be subdivided in terms of the other (for example, under 2.1, Phonology: German, Russian, etc. / under 2.2, German: phonology, syntax, etc.) and the new articles would, of course, be interlinked to each other as well as to the general articles on such matters as linguistic interference.

Of the latter two solutions, I would support 2.2, as being of potentially greater interest to language teachers and learners.

Could we now have a formal discussion of these options here? -- Picapica 20:22, 1 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I think we're getting off on a negative footing. I'm excited that there's someone else interested in this and the other article and I look forward to working with you.  I apologize if I've seemed dismissive or overly harsh.
 * I agree that there is a mismatch with the titles and the content. Because both the phonology and grammar issues come from second language transfer, I don't think that this warrants separate articles.  I'm not so much unbold as I am lacking in an idea for a better title.  Anything we say about this article should also apply to the other, so although this article is only a year old the other has been around for almost three.
 * On a side note, something that I had been thinking about (although not actually done since I'm on a poorly executed wikibreak) is organizing the languages by family rather than alphabetically (like in List of common phrases in various languages). This would help reduce the size of the articles because there are many instances of all the languages in a family having a common feature.  Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 22:01, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Am on a week's wiki- (and real-life) break myself from today, but I look forward to continuing the discussion after Easter, Ae. ¡Hasta entonces! -- Picapica 19:16, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Have just put up some points on Hebrew. I didn't want to start on grammar, as it could be a much longer job - my personal feeling is that it should be a separate article--Yehoshuafriedla (talk) 04:53, 22 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Let me explain you how anglophones pronounce French :


 * The consonant [ʁ] is extremly hard for anglophones, so they say it like [ɹ], namely their way to pronounce r, or [x] when they really want to imitate the strength of this sound;
 * they always say [w] instead of [ɥ];
 * Replace [y] by [ju(ː)];
 * [ø] and [œ] by [ɜ(ː)];
 * [o] by [ou] or [əʊ];
 * sometimes [ɛ] by [e];
 * [a] by [ɑː];
 * the three nasal vowels are not so easy either : [ɑ̃] is said like [ɒn], [ɔ̃] like [ɔːn] and [ɛ̃] like [ɑːn]. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yakuzanodon (talk • contribs) 16:45, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Arabic
I removed the following from the part in the Arabic entry about case-endings:

as with the subjunctive mood in the Romance languages, these areas are see seen as difficult for both native speakers and non-native speakers, though to a somewhat greater degree for the latter...

The reason is that native speakers of many romance languages actually do use the subjunctive mood instinctively (although certain prescriptive forms may differ from common usage.) It would sound wrong to French ears if one said "Je veux que tu vas" instead of "Je veux que tu ailles," whereas the sociolinguistic situation of Modern Standard Arabic is such that very few if any actually speak it as a native language, and the "correct" use of case-endings is more a question of stylistics and formality than of "correctness," partly due to the fact that case-endings are all but absent from the written standard, and partly due to the fact that the case-endings are fossils that serve virtually no grammatical purpose today, whereas the subjunctive in Romance languages persists because it can, in fact, modify meaning, as in "Je cherche un homme qui ait ce que je veux" compared, semantically, with "Je cherche un homme qui a ce que je veux."

Esperanto
On the Esperanto pieces, although I don't speak the language, I do know about how a beginner may make mistakes.

Firstly, one can get muddled especially on the , <ĝ>, and <ĵ>. Take the word, “ĝangalo” meaning jungle, the ĝ is pronounced like a soft j sound and one can forget that there is a circumflex over the first g so one could pronounce it like “gan'galo” rather then “jan'galo”.

On the diphthong , you wrote about about  which isn't an diphthong at all, an Esperanist would say the letters separately. Also, the sound comes from Belarussian, an anglophone would not have used it.

However, we both recognized that the letters <ĥ> and  would have problems, as they both have sounds that English doesn't use. The letter sound [ts] isn't used, I have used the symbol [ʦ] as it more widely known. 159753 16:51, 19 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Since there are no native speakers of Esperanto, there should not be a section on that pseudo-language in this article — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.225.170.9 (talk) 05:24, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Native Esperanto speakers appears to disagree with you. Double sharp (talk) 13:08, 30 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Esperanto is of marginal importance. Also while some people do speak Esperanto as a mother tongue, it is usually the language of home, not the wider community they live in everyday (outside conventions). Many of the other Esperanto speakers they are exposed to are non-native which is also significant and puts it in a similar bracket to Neo-Hebrew, Cornish and other revived languages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.249.184.248 (talk) 09:31, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

removed bullet point
I removed the following since it is factually not correct


 * The word de means both the partitive, (some/any) and the preposition, (from/to); however, it inflects differently depends on which one. Du, de la, de l'  and des for the partitve and du/de, de, d'  and des for the preposition.

The forms given for the partitive are correct for affirmative contexts, but wrong in negated contexts (pas de (*la) soupe). The forms given for the preposition are correct when used with proper nouns, but not with common nouns e.g. je viens de *(la) forêt. This is not to say that speakers of English would not have problems with them.

Furthermore, the use of 'inflected' in this context is unfortunate, since de la is clearly not a case of inflection, consisting of two phonological words. Jasy jatere 09:34, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Definite articles in French
I've marked the statement ''Tendency to pronounce unstressed vowels as a schwa ([ə]). This leads for instance to le (masculine definite article) and la (feminine definite article) being pronounced the same'' as dubious. While I don't really have much of a problem with the first part, I've never heard an English L1 speaker realize la as [lə]. If they do say [lə] for la, I would argue that it's more because of a gender misassignment and in their head their thinking le, than the former opinion. If the article's opinion were true, we would expect the rendering of the Spanish la to be [lə] in unstressed situations as well, and through years of Spanish classes with English students, I can attest that's just not true.--el Aprel (facta-facienda) 04:50, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Non-pronunciation items
I have removed all items that don't have to do with pronunciation. I suppose now I will be deluged with attacks for having ignored the talk page, etc. I personally do not see anything debatable about the fact that an article entitled "Anglophone pronunciation of foreign languages" can only have pronunciation items in it. It is a waste of time to "debate" something like this. The deleted material is presumably good, valid material and has a place on Wikipedia. Please put it somewhere else and stop bickering. Thank you. Troglo (talk) 19:27, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I think in the past I've argued against this sort of thing, but considering the whole page is unsourced anyway I wouldn't be surprised if these are wholly untrue in the first place. — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  20:04, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Voiced "s" in Spanish
The article contains this statement - "They also may voice s if it appears between vowels, such as rosa ('pink') as [ˈɹo.zɑ]; while this would be correct in Italian, s is never voiced in Spanish." If we're going for accuracy, then this would be incorrect. Between vowels it certainly is not /z/ but before any other voiced consonant /d/, /b/, /g/, /l/, /m/, /n/, /r/, ect... it is voiced ([z]). Perhaps we don't need any detail on these specifics in this kind of an article, but I personally believe that we should avoid blatant lies to children. I propose at least changing it to say that there are cases, but it's generally not where an anglophone thinks it is... or something. I don't really know. I'm brand new to this but just spotted a mistake and thought I'd let it be known. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Drizzitdudden (talk • contribs) 11:15, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * This article is about the ways English speakers pronounce other languages. The statement isn't saying that Spanish /s/ is voiced between vowels but that English speakers may incorrectly do this when speaking Spanish.  Most of this article is unsourced, which is problematic.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  18:44, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

French rhotic
"The French rhotic is trilled and usually a uvular /ʁ/; English-speakers tend to use the approximant [ɹ]."

I don't understand - surely /ʁ/ is by definition not trilled? Lfh (talk) 13:56, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

French words ending with "-lez"
English speakers tend to butcher things like "voulez-vous" by rhyming "voulez" with "lay", when the vowel sound should really be more like the "ea" in "idea". I have no idea how to phrase this properly though, so I'm just adding it here in the discussion. /85.229.218.226 (talk) 19:16, 7 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what you're getting at, but the <-lez> in "voulez" certainly does not sound like the  in English "idea". Frerin (talk) 00:32, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Deep, deep need (!! ! )
The most common reason for me being annoyed on Anglophone pronunciation is Latin. Mostly because Anglophones tend to believe either that Latin is English, or that the English so called pronunciation of Latin is the original one. F.ex. the constellations. ... said: Rursus ( m bork³ ) 12:34, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I believe we have an article about the pronunciation of Latin words in English. I don't remember the title of it.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  20:29, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Traditional English pronunciation of Latin? Double sharp (talk) 13:07, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Anglophone pronounication of Serbian in Serbian TV-shows
1. /a/ will sometimes become /æ/ (example: word "uraditi"(/uraditi/)will become /uɹæ:dıtı/

2. /v/ will become /w/

3. /ʥ/ will become /d͡ʒ/

4. sometimes /i/ will become /ı/

4. sometimes /l/ will become /w/

5. sometimes /ɲ/ will become /nj/ or /n/

6. sometimes /ʎ/ will become /lj/, /w/ or /l/

7. rhotic /r/ will become non-rhotic

8. /ʨ/ will become /t͡ʃ /

and so on... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.87.248.174 (talk) 16:09, 22 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Anglophones are common on Serbian television? —Tamfang (talk) 01:33, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

German /a/
There are several German vowels that create problems for English speakers: .... is very similar to the accent of northern and central England. Hall (2003) suggests that the vowel in English hut is closest. Eh? German /a/ is very similar to what in north/mid England? Which dialect's pronunciation of 'hut' is closest? —Tamfang (talk) 05:52, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Anglophone pronunciation of Japanese?
There is no section in this article about Anglophone pronunciation of Japanese, but that's why I came to this article in the first place. I'm curious largely because I want to know what the Japanese language sounds like spoken with a British accent. I mean, I know some Vocaloid users made Oliver sing things in Japanese, I saw some on YouTube, but he's a robot. I want to know what a human with a British accent sounds like speaking Japanese. I imagine r trouble among the more recent beginners, some saying l, and then a few aspirated consonants scattered here and there, some trouble figuring out pitch accent... am I correct? (I mean, definitely the part about pitch accent, it's hard for nonnative speakers to catch.) But still, anyone know the answer?

Sincerely, Hawkers Genome — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.49.62.170 (talk) 13:34, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Those are some good guesses. I don't really have the answers, but here's a starter reading list (based on a cursory academic search) that might help, either for yourself or anyone else who'd like to contribute to answering this:
 * That last one is actually an anthology, so there's a handful of articles there that should be helpful. — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 15:07, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * That last one is actually an anthology, so there's a handful of articles there that should be helpful. — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 15:07, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * That last one is actually an anthology, so there's a handful of articles there that should be helpful. — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 15:07, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * That last one is actually an anthology, so there's a handful of articles there that should be helpful. — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 15:07, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

In my experience, English learners of Japanese often stress certain syllables of a word as in English, which must sound bizarre to Japanese. And yes, you are right Japanese "r"s seem be a problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.249.184.248 (talk) 09:34, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Velar fricative etc
English speakers often struggle with the velar fricative in other languages along with other guttural sounds such as in Arabic, and the Welsh "ll".

English speakers sometimes substitute this sound with a "k" sound e.g. "lock" for the Gaelic "loch", or for "h" especially when it comes at the beginning of words - so Javier in Spanish comes out as "Havier".

Also this article has too much info on Esperanto, a language of marginal importance, and not enough on certain major European languages many English speakers learn.

Other traits - you might want to find ref.s for these (mostly my experience but I believe these to be factual)


 * German "s" often pronounced the same way as English. Native speakers of German pronounce it more like the English "z".
 * "Z" in German and Italian, pronounced as in English, when it is more of a "ts" sound.
 * French "j" and Russian "zh" pronounced like English "j" rather than a "dzh" sound.
 * Welsh "ll" pronounced like English "l" or "hl".
 * French and Portuguese vowels denasalised.
 * Dutch "g" pronounced as English "g".
 * The distinctive "d" and "t" sounds in Hindustani languages merged into the English sounds.
 * Failure to distinguish between soft and hard consonants in many languages including Russian.
 * Trouble with guttural sounds and glottal stops of Semitic languages.
 * Introducing English stress patterns into Japanese.

The article mentions Mandarin, but not Cantonese, a language which has had long term contact with English, especially in Hong Kong. -109.249.184.248 (talk) 09:27, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

p.s. Please do not contact my discussion page, this is a shared IP. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.249.184.248 (talk) 09:26, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Those are interesting points, but we would need sources to back up claims we make in the article. — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 18:25, 14 May 2020 (UTC)