# 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:** 4
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/61 "2013-08-06T15:23:39Z")
English has a voiced dental consonant (D) and an aspirated dental consonant (T); Thai has both of these, but also a third closely related consonant which is neither voiced nor aspirated. You can train yourself to say it, but it may always be hard to distinguish it – the part of the brain that distinguishes phonemes develops very early. (A fourth related form – a dental consonant which is _both_ voiced _and_ aspirated – occurs in a few languages, e.g. Sanskrit.) Similarly, Thai has an unaspirated unvoiced bilabial to go with B and P. My Thai is pretty good, but I still often “think” such a consonant is the voiced form (or, for a different speaker, the aspirated form). Thai has many different vowels, often distinguished by duration or tone. I also find these hard to distinguish. ---
**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, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/62 "2013-08-06T15:36:37Z")
And then there’s Hindu which adds both aspirated and unaspirated "t"s and "d"s into the mix, but articulated near the palate (but not palatalized–the technical term is retroflex) instead of the teeth or alveolar ridge. The upshot is you basically have four distinct sounds that will be heard as a “t” and four that will be heard as a “d” to most English speakers. It will probably sound a bit different, but I don’t think most people will be able to put their finger on it. When imitating an Indian accent, one of the ways to get part of the way there is to replace the alveolar consonants with retroflex ones. ---
**Author:** ![Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e47c2d/32.png) [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hershele_Ostropoler)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/63 "2013-08-06T15:41:02Z")
The /p/ in “spot” versus the /p/ in “pot”. Different in, I believe, Hindi, almost certainly among others. ---
**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, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/64 "2013-08-06T15:43:21Z")
> [@delphica](#): > > 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?” In grad school a fellow student I (me from the Pacific Northwest with familial Kansas influences) was friends with was named Sheri (from Hawaii). She constantly complained that I pronounced her name as Shari. In two years of her trying to get me to hear the difference, I never did. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Panic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/don_t_panic/32/398_2.png) [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/65 "2013-08-06T15:46:04Z")
Sets of similar sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme are called [allophones](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allophone). A native speaker of a language where two or more sounds are allophones will normally perceive these as the same sound, and will have trouble hearing the difference in other languages where these sounds aren’t allophones. There are several sounds that are allophones in English but aren’t in other languages. One example is aspirated and unaspirated p (p as in “pin” or p as in “spin”). One is followed by a puff of air and the other one isn’t. An English speaker will simply hear both of these as “p”, but in other languages, such as Mandarin or Hindi, they are completely separate phonemes and are used to differentiate meaning. Edit: As noted by **Hershele Ostropoler**. > [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](#): > > The /p/ in “spot” versus the /p/ in “pot”. Different in, I believe, Hindi, almost certainly among others. (Personally, even when listening to demonstrations by linguists, I seem to have an extremely hard time hearing these as different sounds.) ---
**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, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/66 "2013-08-06T15:58:29Z")
> [@AaronX](#): > > Wow thanks for the examples. It feels like discovering you’re colour blind, I think. Excellent analogy, I’d say. Another would be when those of us exposed to just one language as infants first realize (typically around age six or seven) that what we call a “ball” (say) is called different things by speakers of different languages, and we’re all “right.” ---
**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, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/67 "2013-08-06T16:02:16Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > There are several sounds that are allophones in English but aren’t in other languages. One example is aspirated and unaspirated p (p as in “pin” or p as in “spin”). One is followed by a puff of air and the other one isn’t. An English speaker will simply hear both of these as “p”, but in other languages, such as Mandarin or Hindi, they are completely separate phonemes and are used to differentiate meaning. > > (Personally, even when listening to demonstrations by linguists, I seem to have an extremely hard time hearing these as different sounds.) Me, too, but luckily, even if we can’t quite _perceive_ the difference when someone else talks, at least we can learn to _produce_ the two sounds appropriately when learning to speak the language. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/68 "2013-08-06T19:00:24Z")
British English speakers tend to have trouble pronouncing Irish names like Haughey, Doherty, Gallagher, etc. usually coming out like Hockey, Dockerty, and Gallagger. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/69 "2013-08-06T19:49:25Z")
> [@obfusciatrist](#): > > 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”) . There are two “d”, two “s”, two “t” in arabic (and maybe other pairs I don’t remember), one being more emphatic than the other. I used to pronounce the emphasized letter with a deeper voice which was the best I could do to pronounce them differently. The worst arabic letter, however, is the Hayn. I used to try pronouncing this one by pretending I was throwing up (not joking). On the other hand, it’s during my short attempt at learning this language that I learned and realized that the difference between the letters “b” and “p” was minimal (“p” doesn’t exist in Arabic) ---
**Author:** ![xnylder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/bbce88/32.png) [@xnylder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xnylder)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/70 "2013-08-06T19:54:49Z")
I took a linguistics course in which the teacher demonstrated how to teach sounds that exist in a foreign language but not in the student’s native language. As an example, she taught us the voiceless stops of [Inuktitut](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuktitut), which while spoken in our province (Quebec) certainly wasn’t familiar to any students in the class. In our class of English/French bilingual students, everyone could pronounce “p”, “k”, and “t” right away, but “q” took practice. ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/71 "2013-08-06T22:30:59Z")
> [@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.) As a Midwesterner born and bred, Id say there is no difference in Mary, merry, and marry. I can, however, hear how others pronounce them differently (and wrong of course :-). ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/72 "2013-08-06T22:37:27Z")
An example of a sound distinction that is not phonemic in English is the Lithuanian dark l and light l sounds. Very difficult for this English speaker to learn to pronounce correctly. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/73 "2013-08-06T22:48:42Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > 1. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that sound just “ny”, practically identical to the sound in the English “onion”? > 2. Even if there is a subtle difference, I have no trouble \*distinguishing \*that sound. English may not use a perfect equivalent to it, but no English speaker would ever hear meñana and think that it rhymed with banana. Hence the sound is distinguishable to any English speaker. In that sense it’s equivalent to the aspirated “ch” of German of Semitic: not a sound that English speakers _use_, but one that is clearly distinguishable to them. This seems to be a very good example. You hear mañana as manyana precisely because the ñ sound doesn’t exist in your native language. (And also, quite possibly because your non-native Spanish teacher pronounced it as manyana.) I see a very similar phenomenon with Irish. Most consonants in Irish can be either broad (velarised) or slender (palatalised). Non-native speakers pronouncing Irish words tend to fit them to the constraints of English phonology by adding a spurious “w” sound after the broad consonants (and maybe a “y” sound after the slender ones). So the name of the Irish political party “Fine Gael” ends up being mispronounced as something like “finye gwale”. ---
**Author:** ![Kiyoshi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e19adc/32.png) [@Kiyoshi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kiyoshi)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/74 "2013-08-06T22:53:02Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > (Personally, even when listening to demonstrations by linguists, I seem to have an extremely hard time hearing these as different sounds.) I can hear the difference between aspirated P/T/K (as in pot/top/kin) and unaspirated P/T/K (as in spot/stop/skin). But I can’t hear the difference between unaspirated P/T/K and B/D/G. For me, this was by far the most difficult part of Italian pronunciation (Italian only has unaspirated consonants). Apparently Korean has **three** types of consonant: Unaspirated, aspirated and tense. I’ve watched some videos and am completely confused about the distinction between them. I’ve also watched videos about Arabic, which has unaspirated and emphatic types of consonant. They sound exactly the same to me. No difference whatsoever. ---
**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, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/75 "2013-08-06T23:18:33Z")
> [@hibernicus](#): > > This seems to be a very good example. You hear mañana as manyana precisely because the ñ sound doesn’t exist in your native language. > > (And also, quite possibly because your non-native Spanish teacher pronounced it as manyana.) - Or\* (once again), because either Blake or his non-native Spanish teacher, or both, _did_ pronounce it “mañana”. We have established that \*\*not all \*\*English speakers diphthongize – i.e., pronounce an “-ee-” – when pronouncing Spanish words with ñ, nor do they pronounce an “-ee-” when pronouncing native English words like “canyon,” “onion,” and “senior.” Such English speakers “hear mañana as manyana” **correctly**. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/76 "2013-08-06T23:21:48Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > The problem comes when you transliterate from one language to another. For example, in Japanese the English “love” is transliterated as “rabu”, because Japanese doesn’t have an /l/ or /v/ sound, so it goes for the closest. In addition there are fewer vowels in Japanese, so the Japanese /a/ is closest to what is written as “o” in love, and a Japanese word cannot end with a consonant other than /n/, so /u/ is added at the end. This is somewhat misleading, Japanese does not have English’s “r” (ɹ) sound either – which is called the alveolar approximant (English “l” is the “lateral alveolar approximant”, the sounds are almost identical). What it has instead is the alveolar tap/flap ɾ. Some dialects of English do have this sound (phonetically, if not quite phonemically), it’s the sound the letter “t” makes in words like kitty or better (or the name Katy). Japanese also **can** have final consonants other than “n”, most notably ʃ (the “sh” sound in English) and s. For instance, despite its spelling the copula “desu” is really pronounced more like “des” for a lot of speakers. The final “i” in “shi” is also dropped a lot. It’s also semi-common for “k” and “g” finals after a geminate consonant (small tsu in Japanese orthography, double consonant in Romaji). For instance, the name of Sonic the Hedgehog in Japanese, “Sonikku za Hejihoggu”, usually has the final "u"s of both the words as either absent or only barely perceptible (sounds more like a tonal lift of the final consonant than an actual separate phone). The final vowel can also be omitted depending on the initial sound of the following word, though I’m less clear on the rules for this. Of course, this heavily depends on the dialect and how careful the speaker is being. That said, “rabu” would probably have the final sound be noticeable. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/77 "2013-08-06T23:39:17Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > - > > Or\* (once again), because either Blake or his non-native Spanish teacher, or both, _did_ pronounce it “mañana”. We have established that \*\*not all \*\*English speakers diphthongize – i.e., pronounce an “-ee-” – when pronouncing Spanish words with ñ, nor do they pronounce an “-ee-” when pronouncing native English words like “canyon,” “onion,” and “senior.” Such English speakers “hear mañana as manyana” **correctly**. Ah. I understand the point now. I am familiar with many English speakers who really do think there is a “y” sound in mañana, and so I assumed that this is what Blake was saying. But now that you point it out (and keep pointing it out until I listen and understand :o), the “ni” in onion really is quite similar to the palatalised n in mañana. It still doesn’t explain why many learners think there is an “l” sound in “lluvia”, which is probably just a spelling pronunciation (also possibly perpetuated by bad teachers). ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2013, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/78 "2013-08-06T23:49:16Z")
> [@hibernicus](#): > > I am familiar with many English speakers who really do think there is a “y” sound in mañana, and so I assumed that this is what Blake was saying. But now that you point it out (and keep pointing it out until I listen and understand :o), the “ni” in onion really is quite similar to the palatalised n in mañana. Many English speakers definitely do think the palatal nasal sound followed by a vowel is just “ny”. It’s actually where we get the word “Yen” from. The Japanese word for “Yen” is “En”. However, due to the large ratio of Yen-per-dollar, most prices and conversion rates are written in thousands or tens of thousands of yen. Those respective words? Sen and Man. So you have a bunch of Japanese people saying seɲ en and maɲ en which sounds a hell of a lot like “sen yen” and “man yen” to English speakers. Hence why it’s written “yen” here rather than “en”. ---
**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 7, 2013, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/79 "2013-08-07T01:15:54Z")
> [@hibernicus](#): > > Ah. I understand the point now. No worries. I still appreciate what you taught me about the British and American approximations of the Spanish/Italian mid-vowel “a”. (Basically, you convinced me I was mistaken when I put Gordon Ramsey down for his pronunciation of “pasta” and “Nicaragua”). ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2013, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481/80 "2013-08-07T01:39:24Z")
In my experience, English-speakers have a hell of a time trying to reproduce the rolling "r"s in Russian, and the glottal "r"s in Hebrew. Soft consonants in both Russian and Hebrew are a challenge as well, and I don’t know who, other than people born in Iraq, can pronounce the “ayin” in Hebrew correctly. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sounds-in-other-languages-that-cant-be-distinguished-in-english/665481.md?page=5)