Showing posts with label English. Show all posts
Showing posts with label English. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
In Venezuela (or Spanish speakers in general) people tend to pronounce letter differently of how it should. For instance, Spanish tend to pronounce ‘s’ sounds as ‘z’... that means Spanish people makes real emphasis on the sound of the ‘SS’ sound. Latin Americans tends to pronounce ‘c’, ‘s’, and even ‘z’ as the very same thing...
I didn’t think that would be the case when speaking English till my mates at work actually point it out with the following dialog:
Rod: (I was chatting about... I have not bloody idea, but wasn’t really important...)
J-man: Uhms... I am curious... Could you repeat that last word?
Rod: balbe?
J-man: uhms... again, say it slowly...
Rod: Val-ve...
(J-Man takes a marker and writes in the whiteboard ‘V – value’ ‘b – butter’).
J-man: Could you please read that to me?
Rod: ‘V’... ‘Value’... ‘B’.... ‘Butter’ (thinking what the hell...)
J-man: I am really confused... Sometimes I think I hear you saying ‘b’ instead of ‘v’... At the very first I thought Venezuelans tends to pronounce ‘v’ as ‘b’... But you really make it different so you know how to pronounce it right!
(All of the sudden the pieces fall into place and I remembered that most of the time I don’t really pay attention to my pronunciation which makes total sense to the current conversation).
Rod: Well J... To be honest you are right. Maybe is something unconscious that I do without noticing it... Maybe it has to do with different pronunciation among different languages and I have it all messed in my head :P... I will do better further on.
Thanks god, I had the fortune to find such a place where my team members take the time to actually point this kind of things (otherwise permanent unattended, which might become more severe in upcoming future).
The valuable message in this note is, if you think your pronunciation is flawless, have a nice chat with your friends (native speakers) and tell them to point your flaws :P
Cheers.
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