New, nucleus, neutral, neuron. All begin with a “ny” sound.
French has sounds that are alien to a native English speaker. Some are quite subtle and barely pronounced, which can be difficult, or even pronounced in a way that seems exaggerated. I’m not sure how they would be defined linguistically, but they’re certainly not easy to replicate without practice. The same goes for French Rs (depends on the person I think).
German also obviously has “ch” as in “Ich liebe mich” which doesn’t exist in English, but isn’t too hard to replicate. Although when I was at school, my friend told me some visiting Germans insisted none of us English people could pronounce “rauchen” exactly right. I’m a little sceptical, but the Germans couldn’t pronounce “squirrel”. No surprise there, even Americans seem to have trouble with it.
Ok, I’m another native Spanish speaker (from a different part of the world), that cannot see onion sounding anything close to “oñión” except on some English dialects. And when I was taught English (way back in primary school), that was not the sound we were told onion was. Though perhaps things like that is the reason my accent is what it is.
I’m not sure about the mention of Spanish having no native word that begins with “ñ”, do you mean you exclude any non-Latin derived words that have been accepted as completely valid in the Spanish language? Because for example, ñame (yam) begins with ñ. Not sure what you consider “recent addition”. And thus, there’s the word “ñoño” (short-tempered person, among other meanings), derived from Latin.
And yes, I’ve had plenty of co-workers and friends who stumble upon the ñ sound. I know they shouldn’t, I know they can make that sound, but they see that and they stumble.
Okay, I get it, I think. Basically, you hear all Spanish speakers saying “can-YOHN,” while English speakers fall into two groups: some say “CAN-yuhn,” while others say “CAN-ee-yuhn.” It’s that “-ee-” that’s the diphthong difference you mention. Well, you have a point. But I think it’s pretty subtle. The position of the tongue is such that a little “ee” will tend to escape, unless the tongue is already plastered against the roof of the mouth even at the start of the sound. I guess that’s what Spanish speakers do, and now I’ll teach myself to do the same (when speaking Spanish).
If the all-caps syllables are meant to be the accent, then you also have the accent placed in a different place (for a Spanish speaker the accent is always in the last syllable). I know different languages put their accents in different places, but if you’re trying to speak in Spanish, use the accent where it would be in Spanish.
Thanks, Karl. You’re right, starting a word with that sound doesn’t violate the laws in Spanish quite to the degree it does in English (as I said, Spanish speakers do pronounce “ñu” like in its original Bantu or whatever, while English speakers fail to). But even in Spanish it’s rare to start a word with this, and usually (not always, but usually) a recent borrowing (that includes “yam,” which I think might be from Tupi.)
Well, in Spanish it’s a rare phoneme, period. The only reason we have so much fun with it is because it’s in España (you guys will have seen any of those pamphlets about spelling reform, I imagine?).
And I don’t hear Spanish speakers say canION. It’s caÑON.
TLDR of any of those: "sometimes spelling is confusing. C may represent Z or K, so let’s just scratch C and use K or Z as appropriate; QU is used exclusively to represent K, so again scratch QU…
blah blah
yadda yadda
but ñ! Ñ i awa! Ñ kana be tauche kositawa!" (in correctly-spelled English: but ñ! Ñ is ours! Ñ cannot be touched because it’s ours!")
Ah, thanks, Nava. That’s wild. Many English speakers bemoan the mismatches between English spelling and the various English sounds (which vary regionally), and point to Spanish as an example of a language with a supposed “near-perfect match” – so it’s funny to see that it isn’t perfect ENOUGH for some would-be reformers. Get a life, people!
Well, they’re parodies, making fun of people who can’t be arsed spell properly (not of people who don’t know how, which is a completely different thing). There are occasional minor reforms (the last Ortografía changes some rules about tildes) but they’re more likely to be a matter of taking into account changes brought by time and technology than any actual attempts to get rid of C and Q.
Surely you’re not saying that most non-US English speakers stress the last syllable? If so, they’re treating it as a recent foreign loan word, while US speakers treat it as a well-assimilated English one. (If you’re right about this, it would be because the transfer from English to Spanish did take place in the US cowboy West, so it’s been part of US English a bit longer than in other places.)
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.
I say it (I think) the same way as Americans. I never noticed it sounding different in Star Wars. And Alec Guinness was English. The way he said it is the same as me. If I try saying it your way it sounds like I come from Liverpool or something. Where did you hear that pronunciation?
I certainly am claiming it’s true for RP. It may not be true for every British accent, but I suspect the majority would pronounce all those words with a “ny” sound. It’s also up for debate whether or not someone saying “noo” is doing so because of their accent or laziness/ignorance. I have a friend who did it when he was younger and it’s not really a characteristic of his accent.
It sounds like you’re trying to fit the whole word into one syllable.
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.
