I think English vowels must sound funny because there are so many that occur in very few languages. The words LACK, LUCK, LICK, LOOK all contain vowels that non-English speakers might not have in their language. About half of all English spoken consonants contain a Schwa, which is absent in nearly all other languages, so that must sound very funny. It is hard to convince foreigners that the first syllable is pronounced the same in Fanatic, Financial, Phonetic and Funicular.
It is hard to convince me of that, too.
What? I thought almost every -tion word is the same in Spanish, but replaced with the similar sounding -cion (informacion, ionizacion, masturbacion etc)
So the frequency is about the same as English, and the -io rule doesn’t make a lot of sense.
When people hear what English sounds like, they are usually hearing conversational speakers, not pedantic oraters. In informal contexts, the words are usually pronounced f’natic, f’nancial, ph’netric and f’nicular.
In most languages, even unaccented syllables are enunciated with the recognizable vowel phoneme.
Is there a prize if you can fit them all into the same sentence?
Firstly we must be thinking of a specific region or something as I dispute that most english speakers pronounce those words like that.
Secondly even so far as we do cut some vowels I dispute it’s something particular to English. It’s true if you put Spanish next to English that’s one difference, but languages in general often do this.
Here’s an idea for another thread if someone wants to start it: What Do “What English Sounds Like To Non-English Speakers” Videos Sound Like To English Speakers?
Answer: it sounds like they’re singing.
No. What you are thinking of is the schwa. It’s not the absence of a sound, but a flat, “mid central” vowel sound.
I’m sure that’s exactly what he was thinking and talking about. I figured he was just trying to avoid using too much technical jargon.
Yeah, I think the claim was too strong. It may be true for most speakers of American dialects, but I doubt it’s true of most English speakers generally. The RP pronunciations given by the Oxford English Dictionary, for example, use different sounds for the first vowel of all four words: /fəˈnætɪk/, /fɪˈnænʃəl/, /fəʊˈnɛtɪk/, /fjuːˈnɪkjʊlə(r)/.
Another prize should go to the zombie thread with the most BANNED old users…
In my part of London we have a lot of Russian speakers. When I overhear them in the street or on the tube it seems to have a lot of “sh” and “ch” sounds.
Actually Russian sounds like English played backwards on a recording.