In most English language dialects I’m aware of, the voiced plosives (/d/ /b/ /g/) at the ends of stressed syllables frequently have the effect of lengthening the vowel, which remains lengthened even after intervocalic /d/ has evolved into the flap. In terms of what sounds neutral or unaccented to me, this makes “feudal” and “ladder” sound different from “futile” and “latter”. At the same time, I can’t help noticing that it’s practically impossible to confuse most of these word-pairs in context, either because the two words are from different parts of speech (“ladder”, “latter”), or else one or both words comes up in limited specialized contexts (“feudal”, “futile”).
I’ve noticed that German learners of English often have trouble with the vowel sound in words like “club” or “Cuddy”; and may pronounce it more like their own O-umlaut. Another one that often gives them trouble is terminal “l”, as in “full”, “roll” or “Al”. It’s been ages since I spent much time among native German speakers, but when I did it seemed like those two were always the last English sounds they needed to learn, long after they’d already mastered all the other phonetic peculiarities of English like “th”, /z/ at the ends of words, etc.
Well, I didn’t read all this thread, but I’m familiar with the “kitchen/chicken” mistake from West Africa. One I heard quite a bit was sheet/shit. When my secretary in Portugal asked me a question about a document being on a “fool shit”, I had to puzzle over it for a bit before replying. I finally realized some time later that a romance language speaker is going to see the word ‘shit’ as being pronounced ‘sheet’, so would likely say ‘sheet’ sort of like ‘shit’.
That’s a sound that Thais and a lot of other peoples over here have trouble with too. (They tend to give it the short-O sound in “top.”) We don’t really ever think of it as something tricky specific to English, but it largely seems to be.
That’s not limited to Romance languages, actually.
It’s linked to what Chronos said about Spanish but which got derailed by the question of “how many vocalic phonemes does Spanish have”: speakers of a language which doesn’t include those two sounds will tend to hear and pronounce them as the one their native language has (which seems to be /i/ most often, but IANAL, just someone who’s been fascinated with languages since age 6). This includes for example Japanese, which has two “i” sounds but they’re not the same two as English.
It’s also the reason speakers of languages which have /z/ but not /θ/ or /d/ but not /ð/ will conflate them; there’s of course other pairs.
Such as that first example, that applies specifically to Spain’s armies (in Latin America that post IS one or another flavor of “sargento”). But yes, the observation is correct, as my hometown newspaper exemplifies continuously: * El Nuevo Día* will have absolutely no consistent editorial policy on how you translate a whole bunch of terms (military, political, mechanical, geographic and others); if their only source is in another language they’ll do a mechanical translation of each part of the term, or else cut-and-paste straight from Spain/Mexico/Argentina/Colombia sources resulting in a mishmash of terminology from the whole Iberosphere (I blame this on that there’s a lot of insecurity as to whether we are “saying it right” or have been corrupted by Anglo influences).
The tricky ones are the false cognates. “Compromiso” in Spanish is commitment in English.
So is Brigada. The whole mouthful which I hadn’t wanted to post is Sargento de Brigada de Infantería de Marina (if it’s the Spanish marines) or Sangento de Brigada de Marines (if it’s the American ones).
A Coronel de Brigada would be called Coronel, a Capitán de Brigada would be called Capitán… the one who gets abbreviated by the same name as a unit is the sarge (perhaps linked to sergeants being more common than colonels and captains).
And even then we would never really match it exactly since US vs. Spanish forces do not really use the same relative structure (NATO OR classes nothwitstanding). Which is why we really need translators who’ll bother to look up such details and think them out. And not just on these but also in a whole range of areas.
Met a couple of Austrians who were visiting the States some time back. They spoke very good English, but kept substituting ‘W’ for ‘V’ - which had me totally confused, especially since they were replacing a sound German uses with one it doesn’t!
Curiously, the English word “get” can mean “become” as well as “receive”, in phrases like “It’s getting cold outside”. Informally it can even be the passive auxiliary verb, e.g. “they got beaten badly”. The German passive auxiliary verb werden[sup]1[/sup] can also be translated as “become” or “get”, as in becoming or turning into something, but never as “get” in the sense of receiving something.
Given the overlap of some meanings in both languages, I see how it can be confusing for learners of either language.
[sup]1[/sup]Weird is actually a cognate of werden, which makes sense if you think about it. Many things can “look weird” when in the process of becoming something else.
To add to the confusion, the verb bekommen, which looks and sounds like the English word “become”, means “get” in the sense of receive but not in the sense of “become”.
Yes, as in the Weird Sisters or Norns, the Fates of Teutonic mythology. According to the Etymology Online entry the Sisters in question were “odd and frightening” in appearance, which led to “weird” acquiring this meaning as an adjective.
But that doesn’t necessarily rule out the the cognate relationship.
Time words such as “since” and “from” seem to be tricky to translate and there is often overlap. For example I have just got back from a weekend in Lisbon and I noticed a lot of signs outside bars advertising (in English) “Show tonight since 8pm” etc.
The word “desde” in both Portuguese and Spanish can translate quite differently in English depending on context.
Prepositions and/or declensions are always a bitch, in pretty much any language pair you care to name. Now excuse me, I’m having flashbacks to “the uses of ut and cum”… twitch
So nobody mentioned how difficult English is for an Italian ?
*One day ima gonna Malta to bigga hotel.
Ina morning I go to eat breakfast.
I tella waitress I wanna two pissis toast. She brings me only one piss.
I tella her I want to piss.
She says go to the toilet.
I say you no understand. I wanna to piss onna my plate.
She say you better not piss onna plate, you sonna ma bitch.
Later I go to eat at the bigga restaurant.
The waitress brings me a spoon and a knife but no fock.
I tella her I wanna fock.
She tella me everyone wanna fock.
I tella her you no understand. I wanna fock on the table.
She say better not fock on the table, you sonna ma bitch.
I don’t even know the lady and she calla me sonna ma bitch.
So I go to my room inna hotel and there is no sheit onna my bed.
I calla the manager and tella him I wanna sheit.
He tella me to go to the toilet.
I say you no understand. I wanna sheit on my bed.
He say you better not sheit onna bed, you sonna ma bitch.
I don’t even know the man and he calla me a sonna ma bitch.
I go to the checkout and the man at the desk say: “Peace on you.”
I say piss on you too, you sonna ma bitch. I gonna back to Italy.*