Hi!

--- Birgit wrote:

> >On the matter of pronunciation, according to
> the latest research it seems
> >that by about age 6, the mouth is pretty much
> set in a certain way. Any

don't forget your *ears* seem to 'form' a certain
way too! (probably better the say the sound
filtering software gets installed and can't get
reinstalled).

I don't know if you've made the same experience,
but when I tried to speak Dutch, if I *forgot* to
roll my g's then the Dutch misunderstood what I
was saying.

From observing what is was they *thought* I said,
it seems as though they *cannot hear* a 'g'
unless it's rolled! So "Gude Morgen" comes across
to them as "Ude Moren" if you forget to roll the
g's.

In lots of cases this causes them to completely
misunderstand what I was trying to say - it's not
like they just said "oh, here's a foreigner who
can't roll his g's", but they actually heard
other words.

Of course, there are milder cases of this in any
language (if you forget the umlaut in the German
"heute ist ein schwueler Tag", for instance), but
then the German woudl at least *hear* the
un-umlauted u (and probably quickly understand
the mistake). The Dutch issue is different,
because a sound that speakers of most languages
can hear just get's 'filtered out' of what they
hear.



=====
Kindest Regards,
- DeepStream
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