# Any sounds in other languages that can't be distinguished in English? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 6, 2013, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481 "2013-08-06T09:36:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/41 "2013-08-06T12:17:59Z")
The point is, surely, that there is a difference between sounds that one language group does not use, but can nevertheless hear, and those that they simply cannot hear. I don’t know about Spanish, but as a British English speaker, I don’t use the vowel that is in the French _tu_, but I an hear how it differs from any of the English vowels and even (after high school French classes) reproduce it more or less. Japanese babies, I have been told, if they are exposed only to Japanese, altogether lose the ability to distinguish between an English R and L sound at an early age, and there after cannot learn it (or only with the utmost difficulty). I believe it has been experiemntally demonstrated that very young Japanese babies can make the distinction, but they lose teh ability to make it as they learn their own language. I have heard a Japanese speaker of otherwise excellent, barely accented English, trip up quite embarrassingly over the L-R distinction, apparently quite unaware that he was saying “lice” when he meant “rice”. (The joke he was trying to make fell completely flat because of this.) I do not doubt that, as **Blake** says, there are sound distinctions in other languages that babies who grow up hearing nothing but English lose the ability to distinguish, just as Japanese babies lose the ability to make the L-R distinction. Of course it is difficult to become aware of this, beause we simply do not hear it. I do wonder, though, if it can really e true that, as I have been told, American midwesterners can hear no difference at all between “Mary”, “marry,” and “merry” (which all sound quite distinct to me). Might it not be the case that their dialect simply does not bother with the distinction, so that they do not worry about which vowel sound they use, or usually listen for the difference, but they nevertheless could hear it (in British English, for instance) if they wanted to make the effort? (I am not saying this is so. Maybe they really _cannot_ hear the difference at all, like a Japanese and L/R. However, given that they and I will, in most circumstances, understand one another very easily, it seems a bit unlikely.) ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/42 "2013-08-06T12:22:21Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > Ha! Depends on the borough 😉 > > My son’s name in Luke, and I recently learned that Brits call him “Lee-ewk.” I am British and I have never called anyone anything resembling “Lee-ewk.” Neither have I heard any other British person do so. It is possible that British people do not say “Luke” quite the way you do, but we do not say that. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/43 "2013-08-06T12:29:27Z")
> [@BwanaBob](#): > > I’ve heard many British accents; they do not all use “ny” in the words you’ve listed. Are you claiming that it’s true for RP English? West country and possibly Norfolk accents render ‘new’ something like ‘noou’. Northern Ireland, it sounds like ‘nouy’, but by and large, British English pronounces ‘new’ starting with a ‘ny~’ sound ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/44 "2013-08-06T12:33:53Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > Oh, okay. Yeah, it’s ironic – but makes sense – that spelling errors can be EASIER to make in Spanish (but in fewer situations, e.g. “ya me boy”), because speakers are so used to “one sound=one letter” being the norm, whereas English-speaking children are taught from pretty early on to separate spelling from pronunciation (to a a degree) in their minds. And why around here in PR, the school subject of ESL is unfairly referred to as “el difícil” (the hard one) even though there is nothing particularly difficult about the language itself – people get hung up on written-language phonetics. To be fair, in some accents/dialects of English, the “canyon” sound does approach “ca’ñon” more than “can’ion”, less of a hint of voiced vowel before the o. And yes, in PR dialect we also hear a difference between the latter form of the English 'ny- and the Spanish ñ, though with the rise of Miami-based “Hispanic” media the new generations are getting a lot of US-Spanish influence in our TVs. BTW in English, I do not hear a diphthong at the start of “nucleus”. And the “y” part of the sound in “news, neuron, neutral” I hear as part of the “ew” or “eu” diphthong. Now, some of the Russian sibilants and the signs for voiced vs unvoiced, those are hard to tell for me. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/45 "2013-08-06T12:40:59Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > … \*Spanish is borderline – it has no native words beginning with ñ, but it does allow it for a few recent foreign borrowings like “ñu,” while English used the linguist’s “gn” to write this same borrowed word as “gnu” – but most English speakers refuse to violate the language’s order laws, and so say either “new” or “ganoo”). 😕 I’ll have you know that my moresco sauce is _echt_, thank you very much, made with [ñoras](http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%91ora). ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/46 "2013-08-06T12:49:21Z")
The title of the thread asked about distinctions, so I will mention a couple. Some languages, but not English, distinguish between the initial consonant of “keep” and “cool” (although we actually pronounce them differently, “cool” being further back). Here’s another. When I first moved to Montreal, I watched some baseball on French TV. I came away believing that the word for “strike” was “brise” (which made a bit of sense; it means breeze). In fact it is “prise”. What happens is that “prise” is pronounced with a non-plosive “p” and, to an English speaker, the main difference between the initial “p” and “b” is not in the voicing but in whether it is plosive. I’m from Philadelphia and we use a different vowel in the words “sad” and “bad”. To me, they are entirely different, but most Americans cannot hear the difference unless I exaggerate it. (The first is lax and the second tense.) ---
**Author:** ![Bozuit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/edb3f5/32.png) [@Bozuit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bozuit)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/47 "2013-08-06T12:52:51Z")
> [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](#): > > Another sound English doesn’t have is the one between “K” and “G” used in Arabic and related languages. Remember Muammar Gaddafi? His last name was occasionally spelled Kadafi, Qaddafi, Gathafi, and any number of similar variants. My understanding of the different spellings for Gaddafi is that his surname is generally pronounced with a K/Q sound in Arabic (I’m not sure if there is a difference), but with a Libyan accent it’s more like a G sound, so some prefer a K/Q transliteration and some prefer a G. I may well be wrong, though. ---
**Author:** ![Keeve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f07891/32.png) [@Keeve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Keeve)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/48 "2013-08-06T13:01:06Z")
Man, this is certainly one thread that would be a lot more productive if we were physically together an talking among ourselves. Trying to explain these subtle differences in writing is NOT simple! > [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](#): > > Another sound English doesn’t have is the one between “K” and “G” used in Arabic and related languages. Remember Muammar Gaddafi? His last name was occasionally spelled Kadafi, Qaddafi, Gathafi, and any number of similar variants. Anyone know exactly which Arabic letter that is? I’ve often wondered about its relation to the Hebrew letter “ayin”, which most Americans simply leave silent, but it is properly some sort of throat-clogger ([Wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayin) calls it a “voiced pharyngeal fricative”) that the ancient Greeks transliterated as gamma, as in the place-names Gaza and Gomorrah. Anyway, another consonant that many Americans have trouble with is the Spanish “d”, which is somewhere between the “d” and the hard “th” (as in “the”). The clearest example I’ve heard of this - if you listen closely enough - is in Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad”. (Come to think of it, I should check out that “z” too.) ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/49 "2013-08-06T13:06:41Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > I am British and I have never called anyone anything resembling “Lee-ewk.” Neither have I heard any other British person do so. It is possible that British people do not say “Luke” quite the way you do, but we do not say that. Well, you sort of are making the point of the thread. Many (most?) Britsh-variants English speakers pronounce the vowel in Luke with some palatization. Enough to sound like “Lee-ewk” to my ears, but not to yours. Once again, the subtle interplay between brains and waves of air pressure which makes these discussions so interesting, and often frustrating or conentious. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/50 "2013-08-06T13:12:52Z")
PS Some Brits certainly do notice the difference – a Brit actually _corrected_ me once for pronouncing my son’s name the American way (like with “kook” or “spook”, NOT like “cucumber” or “spew”). ---
**Author:** ![Keeve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f07891/32.png) [@Keeve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Keeve)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/51 "2013-08-06T13:25:14Z")
> [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](#): > > Remember Muammar Gaddafi? His last name was occasionally spelled Kadafi, Qaddafi, Gathafi, and any number of similar variants. Wow. “Any number” is exactly correct.[Wiki’s second note here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moamar_al-Gaddafi#Notes) says the following: > [@](#): > > Due to the lack of standardization of transcribing written and regionally pronounced Arabic, Gaddafi’s name has been romanized in various different ways. A 1986 column by The Straight Dope lists 32 spellings known from the U.S. Library of Congress,[7] while ABC and MSNBC identified 112 possible spellings.[8][9] A 2007 interview with Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi confirms that he used the spelling “Qadhafi”,[10] and Muammar’s official passport used the spelling “Al-Gathafi”.[11][12] See note 7 there for the link back to Unca Cecil. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/52 "2013-08-06T13:28:41Z")
> [@Keeve](#): > > Anyway, another consonant that many Americans have trouble with is the Spanish “d”, which is somewhere between the “d” and the hard “th” (as in “the”). The clearest example I’ve heard of this - if you listen closely enough - is in Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad”. (Come to think of it, I should check out that “z” too.) The counter to this is that many Hispanics divide the sounds English spells as “th” into “sounds sort of like our z” and “sounds sort of like our d”. Many give up trying for the exact sound and just use our z and d. ---
**Author:** ![Keeve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f07891/32.png) [@Keeve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Keeve)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/53 "2013-08-06T13:33:23Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > PS Some Brits certainly do notice the difference – a Brit actually _corrected_ me once for pronouncing my son’s name the American way (like with “kook” or “spook”, NOT like “cucumber” or “spew”). I think there’s a big difference between sounds which our ears aren’t trained to distinguish, vs. sounds that our mouths are too lazy to pronounce. I think most/all Americans can hear the “y” in “cyoocumber” and “spyoo”, and we pronounce them correctly too. In fact, my wife and I often joke about people who deliberately pronounce “coupon” one way or the other (koopon, kyoopon). Similarly, I - and everyone I know - was taught in school about “wh”, as in “why”, “when”, and “what”, and how there ought to be some aspiration of air in there along with the “w” sound. But just about everyone is too lazy to say it, unless they’re deliberately trying to show off or be a pedantic geek. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/54 "2013-08-06T13:57:10Z")
> [@Keeve](#): > > I think there’s a big difference between sounds which our ears aren’t trained to distinguish, vs. sounds that our mouths are too lazy to pronounce. Agreed. The first (perception) is relevant when we discuss differences among varieties of the same language, and also when we discuss sounds in different languages. The latter (laziness), however, is usually only relevant when discussing sounds in different languages. In other words, we expect a serious student of a different language to try hard to master any new sounds, but we don’t expect someone to master the pronunciation differences of a different variety of a language they already speak (unless their name is Meryl Streep or Hugh Laurie). ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/55 "2013-08-06T13:58:31Z")
> [@Keeve](#): > > Similarly, I - and everyone I know - was taught in school about “wh”, as in “why”, “when”, and “what”, and how there ought to be some aspiration of air in there along with the “w” sound. But just about everyone is too lazy to say it, unless they’re deliberately trying to show off or be a pedantic geek. [Stewie agrees with you.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CORPnpZKuoM) ---
**Author:** ![Keeve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f07891/32.png) [@Keeve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Keeve)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/56 "2013-08-06T14:21:43Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > [Stewie agrees with you.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CORPnpZKuoM) Perphect! ---
**Author:** ![AaronX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7bcc69/32.png) [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/57 "2013-08-06T14:52:41Z")
Wow thanks for the examples. It feels like discovering you’re colour blind, I think. > [@aNewLeaf](#): > > Not even. Ever been in a beginning Spanish class? No hablo espanol. ---
**Author:** ![obfusciatrist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4af34b/32.png) [@obfusciatrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obfusciatrist)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/58 "2013-08-06T15:11:44Z")
I took on quarter of Arabic in college. Don’t remember any of it but more than anything I abandoned it after that because there were three or four letters that all sounded identical to me (they all sounded like a “d”) but the teacher was constantly correcting me to the point of positioning my tongue in my mouth which produced the right (indistinguishable to me) result but made me so self conscious about trying to speak that I seriously lagged the class (though I was good on the reading comprehension). Others in the class did not have the problem to my extreme so I’m not sure what it was about me. So I switched to Russian and was much more comfortable. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/59 "2013-08-06T15:16:29Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > West country and possibly Norfolk accents render ‘new’ something like ‘noou’. Northern Ireland, it sounds like ‘nouy’, but by and large, British English pronounces ‘new’ starting with a ‘ny~’ sound For pronunciation threads, [forvo.com](http://forvo.com) is a good place to go to hear various accents. [Here’s a bunch for “new.”](http://www.forvo.com/word/new/#en) All the UK and Australian pronunciations sound like palatalized ns to me, i.e. /nyoo/ vs /noo/ (unpalatalized.) The American pronunciations range from no palatalization (brittanic124’s being the clearest) to strong palatalization (Mike\_USA’s being perhaps the most extreme.) ---
**Author:** ![delphica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e9a140/32.png) [@delphica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/delphica)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/60 "2013-08-06T15:22:41Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > I do wonder, though, if it can really e true that, as I have been told, American midwesterners can hear no difference at all between “Mary”, “marry,” and “merry” (which all sound quite distinct to me). Might it not be the case that their dialect simply does not bother with the distinction, so that they do not worry about which vowel sound they use, or usually listen for the difference, but they nevertheless could hear it (in British English, for instance) if they wanted to make the effort? (I am not saying this is so. Maybe they really _cannot_ hear the difference at all, like a Japanese and L/R. However, given that they and I will, in most circumstances, understand one another very easily, it seems a bit unlikely.) I am here to tell you it is true. I am from a region where “Mary,” “Marry” and “Merry” are all pronounced the same. I still pronounce them the same. I didn’t even know that others pronounced them differently until someone told me, I could not hear the difference. The first time someone told me that, I thought it was the set-up to a joke, similar to do “did you know ‘gullible’ isn’t in the dictionary?” After many years of living in a different region, one that distinguishes between the three words, I have learned to hear them differently. I would say it took at least five years (not that I was counting, but to my best recollection). “Merry” broke away first, it took more time to hear the difference between “Mary” and “Marry.” (and frankly, those two still sound the same more often than not unless the speaker is making an exaggerated effort). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481.md?page=4)