#pronuncation

[thefrontgardenatbagend]

Okay, the curiosity is killing me ... (and just because I'm a nosey bitch, where do you come from?)

How do you personally pronounce his name? (Capitalisation is to distinguish sounds not stress and because I'm too dumb to figure out how to italicise it on a poll!)

LAHnce-AH-lot

LARnce-AH-lot

LAHnce-UH-lot

LARnce-UH-lot

LAHnce-EH-lot

LARnce-EH-lot

the correct pronunciation is [put in the comments], you heathen!

Voting ended onNov 26, 2024

To thank you for your participation, please accept these photos of my favourite Lancelots for your consideration. Just look at their cute little faces!!!!

[jackhkeynes]

Vowels that will unnerve most Americans

/marɪj hʊrɪj wɛːrɪj t͡ʃɛrɪj blɜːrɪj dawrɪj

fjɵːrɪj kwɔrɪj ɪːrɪj stɑːrɪj goːrɪj prɑjrɪj sɪrɪj/

<marry hurry wary cherry blurry dowry

fury quarry eerie starry gory priory Siri>

Simply speak a dialect where all of these vowels are distinct, like me, and watch them scatter in fright and awe 😎

Vocaroo is a quick and easy way to share voice messages over the interwebs.

[arabic-langblr]

Hi i was wondering if you could help because I’m trying to learn the Arabic alphabet but I’m having some trouble distinguishing between the sound and pronounciation especially of the letters د and ض ?

Hi, anon.

The letter د (read as daal) is close to the sound of the English d, while the ض  (dhaadh) is much thicker and deeper (although it has no equivalent in other languages).

Here’s an [audio file] comparing both letters 

دال- دُبّ - دال - دانَة

Daal - bear - Daal - Dana (which means the big, valuable pearl)

ضاد - ضِرْس - ضاد - ضِفْدَع - ضِفْدَع

Dhaadh - molar - dhaadh - frog- frog

Notice how the word ضفدع has both ض and د try to listen to the recording several times so that you can hear the difference in the pronunciation.

I have posted some tips about how to pronounce the letter ض in [this post], you can check it out too. 

[jackhkeynes]

Fun Fact 5/5/19

My idiolect of English (I’m approximately from Manchester, UK) has 18 vowels, here given with IPA and comparison the Well’s lexical sets:

Short Vowels:

/a ɛ ɪ ɔ ʊ ə/ trap=bath, dress, kit, cloth=lot, foot=strut, commA=lettER

Long Vowels:

r-liaison:

/ɑː ɛː ɪː oː əː/ palm=start, square, near, thought=force=north=cure*, nurse 

y-liaison:

/aj ɛj ɪj oj/ price, face, fleece, choice

w-liaison:

/aw əw ʉw/ mouth, goat, goose

(*the vowel in “cure is a whole mess that i don’t have time to get into right now)

Now, all of these except /ə/ can appear as the vowel in a one-syllable word. And indeed, the sounds /b_d/ can take any other vowel and still be a word! I just think that’s super rad :P

Proof: 

<bad bed bid bod bud>

<bard/barred bared beard board bored bird>

<bide bade/bayed bead buoyed>

<bowed bode booed>

Can any of y’all do something similar in your language or idiolect? :D

[hipster-summer-daisies-aesthetic]

[sarcastic-commentator]

Russian Makes No Sense

John Doe: Vasya Pupkin

Poltergeist: Barabashka

Lucky: Fartovy

[languagethoughts]

Rio de Janeiro

You may think this is pronounced “Ree-oh day Ja-nay-ro”. But you would be wrong.

In Brazilian Portuguese, it is pronounced “Hee-u Ji Ja-nayi-ru”. Mind blowing.

Below is a link describing all this:

http://hackingportuguese.com/pronunciation/portuguese-r-the-long-version/

[understandeveryword]

Learning the sounds of Mandarin with Anki

I'm using Gabriel Wyner's pronunciation trainer flashcards to learn the sounds of Mandarin along with the pinyin writing system, which is the official phonetic, romanized writing system for Chinese. It has plenty of non-logical spelling and pronunciation rules to keep me busy. Gabriel's flashcards are excellent, with audio and visual elements, and every sound has example words so I am picking up a little vocabulary. The audio drills you on the 4 tones used by Mandarin speakers, which are typically the hardest thing for foreign speakers to hear and produce. There are also lots of cards for "minimal pairs", which give you two examples that sound very similar, and ask you to identify which one you are hearing.

The flashcards were created for Anki, which is a program using SRS, or spaced-repetition-software. Gabriel explains in his book, Fluent Forever, that the most effective way to remember new information permanently is to make yourself recall it just before you forget it. Anki keeps track of this for you after you give it feedback on how well you know each flashcard. Once I learn a new card, I tell the software I know it and it will schedule it for me to review in a few days. If I still know it the next time it comes up, it increases the number of days (aka interval) until I see it again. Eventually, the interval will become long enough that it is permanently embedded in my long-term memory. If I can't remember, the software resets the card to a shorter interval and starts the process over again until I can remember it. Using SRS, I am using my study time much more efficiently because I don't review the same cards every single day like I used to (try to) do with Arabic. Each day the software automatically gives me several new cards to learn, along with any cards that are scheduled for review. It keeps the workload manageable - I'm spending about 30 minutes a day reviewing flashcards - and hopefully will make all the information stick.

So far I'm 4 days in with the pronunciation trainer, and 16% of the 900 cards have been introduced. I'm hoping to have at least seen all the cards and have a decent familiarity with the sounds of Mandarin by the time I fly to Taiwan on June 7th.