Do you understand Russian?  How about French?  Italian?  German?  I’ll bet you don’t think you understand all of them.  I’ll also bet that you can understand far more than you think you can.  And, with practice, and active listening, you’ll understand even more.

Not long ago I was idly listening to a National Public Radio broadcast while driving.  What caught my attention was a Russian man discussing how easy it is for English speakers to understand Russian (!) if we just focus on it.  As an example, he spoke a number of sentences in very slow Russian and then asked a non-Russian speaking member of the audience to translate.  Over and over again, the audience member was able to translate with incredible accuracy.  And, so was I as a listener.  Amazing!

So Many Similarities Between Languages

The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects.  They are most of the languages of Europe, the Iranian Plateau and southern Asia.  Although they have taken different paths, they spring from the same roots.  Thus, many words between many languages are similar.  The differences are often in where the sound is pronounced in the mouth, where the emphasis is placed in the word, and in the music or rhythm of the language.  Once you realize that the words are so similar, with active listening you can understand far more than you ever thought was possible.

I am a native English speaker.  When I was in school I studied French.  As an adult I have studied Spanish.  French was hard for me, as I was young and I didn’t understand the different grammatical structures, and I certainly didn’t understand how to speak with a French accent.  Nonetheless, I studied hard, and eventually became somewhat proficient in the language.

Then, when I began to study Spanish, I really paid attention to the sound and structure of the language for the first time.  I was astounded at how similar it is to French.  It immediately made sense to me.

Then I began traveling.  Although I haven’t studied or spoken French for 35 years, I recently found that I could still understand it quite well.  The same with Italian.  Except I have never, ever studied Italian.  Once I realized that it is just like French and Spanish, it was incredibly easy to understand (when spoken slowly, or written).  The words are all basically the same.  Portugese is the same.  I can’t speak it, but to me it basically seems like Spanish, with a Portugese rhythm to it.  Amazing.

But I thought I could never understand German.  For me it has always been extremely difficult to hear the sounds of German.  English is a Germanic language, so I could understand many written German words, but never spoken.  Then one day I was out hiking with some German clients.  We met an elderly German man on the path, a man who had been living in America for the past 40 years.  He was delighted to have the opportunity to speak German with my clients, but he spoke very slowly and deliberately, as it had been a long time since he had spoken his native language.  He must have had a very serious American accent to his German, because I understood every single word of his side of the conversation.

Listen for What is the Same

Once you realize how similar the languages are, and understand some very basic differences in sounds and pronunciation between the languages, it will make learning to speak and understand another language very much easier.  In order to listen to another language actively, to try to understand it, listen for the similarities, rather than the differences.

For example the word for When (English) is wann in German, quand in French, quanto in Italian, cuanto in Spanish.

One (in English) is ein in German, adin in Russian, un in French, uno in Italian and uno in Spanish.

Water (in English) is wasser in German, voda in Russian, eau in French, aqua in Italian, and agua in Spanish.  The more language you know, even if you think you don’t know it, the easier it is to learn even more.

Use all the resources you have, but your very best resource is your ability to listen, to distinguish, and to find similarities.

Come Ski With Me

Wanderlust

My children are all adventurers, who love to travel.  It seems like one or more of them is always off traveling, or even living somewhere besides near me.  I don’t think they’re trying to escape from me.  I think they’re just full of wanderlust, and want to see and experience everything there is to see in the world.

Sometimes this bothers me.  Like right now.  I have no children living within shouting range, or even driving range.  After having 4 children at home for so many years, it is often very strange to not have even a single one of them around.

Yet, I know this is pretty much all my fault (well, my husband’s fault as well).  When they were young we made every effort to take them to new places, new countries, to experience new and interesting things.  So, it’s no wonder now that they love to go, and have left me behind.

In fact, right now my oldest daughter is on vacation in Mexico, and my oldest son seems to have moved to Medellin, Colombia, at least for the time being.  Something my son said to me the other day (via SKYPE, a wonderful, wonderful invention), is actually the subject of this post.

“Street English”

My son, Cole, speaks quite a bit of Spanish.  We lived in Puerto Rico when he was 13, then he was an exchange student in Paraguay when he was 18, and then spent another year in Costa Rica when he was at the university.  He also has a degree in Spanish from the University of Nevada.  He’s always felt very confident in his ability to speak Spanish to anyone, anywhere.  He’s a very casual guy, though, and his Spanish is that of a young person, and is full of slang and street expressions.  He speaks in Spanish the same way he would speak to his friends in English.

Years ago, when I taught English to teenagers, I used to explain the difference between “street English“, or the English they would use with their friends, and what I call “cash English“, or the English they need to learn and speak to be successful in the world of work.  This is, of course, a more formal language, with a different vocabulary, and a different set of social rules for usage.

At the time, I recall that the students didn’t have any great understanding of why they had to use different types of English for different situations.  I hope that over the years they have remembered the lessons, and now know when to use which English.

“Cash English”

The point of this is that my son is now living in Medellin, Colombia.  He just purchased a house, and is looking for a job there.  He just told me that he didn’t realize how little Spanish he knows.

Trying to buy a house or actually doing work in another language requires a whole different kind of vocabulary than he has ever learned.  Remember, he has a university degree in Spanish, but he still doesn’t have the proper vocabulary for what he is doing now.

Cole didn’t learn the language he now needs in years of school, or even years of living in Spanish speaking countries, because what he was learning and using all that time was “street Spanish”.  Now he needs a crash course in “cash Spanish”.  Fortunately, he is mature enough to realize what he needs, and he is intent on learning it.

When Kim and I first started the Lake Tahoe Institute of English we were very surprised by the seemingly high level of English our clients already had when they came to study with us.  What we have found, though, is that we spend a great deal of our time working on “cash English” with our clients.

We have had clients from all over the world, and in all different businesses, but nearly all come to us to learn for a very specific purpose.  They can easily carry on a very general conversation with us from the very beginning, but most need help to learn the language of their particular business, or they need to know how to formulate questions, and how to answer specific questions related to their disciplines.  They need help learning the language of negotiation, of problem solving, of team building, of management.

Here at the Lake Tahoe Institute of English, we focus on “cash English“, the language professionals need to learn.  In order to earn the respect and cooperation of other professionals around the world, there needs to be not only a common language, but a common vocabulary and a common usage of the language. Wish our son luck in learning the nuances of “cash Spanish” really quickly.  He needs a program like ours!

A friend of mine, who is Portugese, was raised in Mozambique, and who has traveled extensively in Brazil, demonstrated this to me recently. When speaking the Portuguese of her mother, from Lisbon, I can only describe it as a rather somber sound. Saying the same thing, in her Portuguese from Mozambique, her rhythm sounded more poetic to me. Then, with her Brazilian interpretation, I heard the samba in it. It was interesting for me, as a non-Portugese speaker, how each regional sound was so differently melodic. If I was a Portuguese speaker, it might not have been so very distinctively musical.

The Music of English
English is much the same. The English considered, at this point in time, to be most “standard”, is west coast American English. This is the English used by American newscasters, and is readily understood by most all English speakers. This English has a particular rhythm and lilt to it, different from the English spoken in places on the east coast, in the mid-west, and, most notoriously, the American south. And of course, all of this differs from the English spoken in the UK (which has many different melodies of its own), Australia, New Zealand, and the many English-speaking islands of the Caribbean and Bahamas. They are all lovely, and all distinct.

Listen to Traditional Music to Understand the Music of the Language
A good way to gain an understanding of the music of American English is to listen to the traditional American forms of vocal music: folk music, blues, and of course, the very influential jazz. This is what we’ve listened to for generations, and this is the musical poetry we have transformed our speaking into.

In fact, listening to traditional native vocal music is a very good way to understand the music of any language.

In the last 2 posts, I’ve talked about pronunciation as a function of the position of the mouth when speaking English. There is, of course, more to it than that, although I believe mouth position makes the biggest difference in speaking English clearly and understandably.

But, it is not the only thing. Also very important is where the stress is placed in a word, and the music, or intonation of the language. Today I’m going to give you the bad news about word stress in English, and the best way to cope with it.

Bad Habits

English, Russian and Greek have the same bad habits when it comes to word stress. That is, just like most else in English, it is irregular. Which syllables are stressed varies from word to word. There are no rules. This is very difficult for speakers of other languages to understand, since most languages have very specific rules about stress, with few exceptions.

For example, in French, the last syllable is stressed. In Spanish, it is normally the next to last syllable. In German, it is the first syllable, with some exceptions, and in Japanese, the stress is even.

One of the things that makes speakers of English as a foreign language difficult to understand (but also what makes their accents so charming) is that they continually stress the wrong syllables in a pattern familiar to them. In English, the syllables in a single word can be stressed in a number of different ways, with each way having a different meaning. So, it is very important to stress the syllables correctly.

Here are some examples of words that look like they would be pronounced the same, but are not:

noble: honorable, distinguished, aristocratic
Nobel: a prestigious award of achievement

invalid: a sick or disabled person
invalid: not valid, void

personal: individual, private
personnel: a group of people employed in an organization or place of work

pronouns: parts of speech that subsititute for nouns, such as he and she
pronounce: to say words

advantages: benefits or gain
advantageous: beneficial, useful

content: subject matter of a book, speech, etc.
content: satisfied and happy

So, you can see how important it is to stress the correct syllables in order to convey the correct meaning.

As Ususal, Listen!

As usual, the best thing you can do is listen and listen and listen to spoken English. You can memorize some pronunciations, but with enough listening, the correct pronunciation will sound right intuitively. Soon, it will become habit.

Also, it is very helpful if you become aware of the stress rules in your own native language. Once you are aware, then you can guard against using your habitual stress rules to pronounce English words while you word to make the correct stresses habit.

English is such a difficult language! So many rules, and so many exceptions to every rule. How anyone trying to learn the language could possibly remember even half the rules and exceptions is beyond me. Trying to memorize and master the rules makes learning so tedious and frustrating. Plus, that’s not how to learn a language.

In this second of a series of posts about pronunciation, I will be talking more about pronouncing the sounds of English. I don’t mean, at least at this time, the sounds of the letters, or where you place stress in a word. I mean the basic sound of the entire spoken language. I talked about this in the last post, and want to continue here. I’m talking about the point of articulation and point of resonance that makes the sound of the words.

The Point of Resonance in English

As you may recall from my last post,  in English, the point of articulation and resonance is in the middle of the mouth. English is spoken from a kind of a hollow in the middle of the mouth, the tongue most often bounces off the gums above the front teeth, and the lips, jaws, and corners of the mouth remain relatively relaxed, at least as compared to many other languages. In order to improve your English accent, your mouth must be in the correct position. The best way to learn the correct position is to imitate the English accent of someone speaking your own native language.

Getting Your Mouth In Position

At first, when you get your mouth in the correct position, your jaw, lip and tongue muscles will no doubt feel tight and tired. Keep practicing, though, until it becomes natural and instinctive when speaking English. This is really important. You cannot make the sounds that are exclusive to any language without having your mouth in the right position. An example of this is English speakers trying to roll their r’s. Unless we tense our tongues, lips and corners of the mouth, we cannot speak forward in our mouths enough to make the rolling sound. It just won’t work. Just try to roll an r sound with the point of articulation being in the center of the mouth. That’s why you laugh at us!

German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian and Polish are among the many frontal, or dental languages. The tongue in these languages is always somewhere around the front teeth, tapping against them. This is not the case in English. English is spoken as if the speaker has a hot potato in the mouth.

Following are a few examples of how the mouth is held in other languages, by way of comparison to English.

It’s All In Your Mouth

In English, the jaw is fairly relaxed, and the mouth is held in a medium open position. The tongue is held in the middle of the mouth, and the corners of the mouth are relaxed. The tongue hits the gums above the front teeth more often than the teeth themselves.

In French, the tongue is kept slightly raised to make a narrow tunnel in the vocal cavity. The muscles at the corner of the mouth are tensed and the lips protrude a bit when speaking. The tongue is always in the vicinity of the front teeth, in a more forward position than it is in English. The point of resonance is high.

Spanish speakers keep their jaws loose, their mouth in a medium open position. The tongue is held slightly raised and forward, always in the vicinity of the front teeth. The lips are relaxed, but the muscles at the corners of the mouth are slightly tensed. The point of articulation is near the front of the mouth.

In German, the jaw is tight, and the mouth is held in a somewhat closed position. The tongue is held slightly raised and forward. The lips are relaxed, but slightly protruded, and the muscles at the corners of the mouth are a bit tensed. The point of articulation is back in the mouth.

Russian speakers keep their jaws loose, with their mouth in a fairly wide open position. The tongue is held raised and slightly back. Lips are relaxed and slightly protruded, and the muscles at the corners of the mouth are relaxed.

Imitate Accents

Practice imitating the various accents of foreign speakers speaking your native language. That is where it is easiest to see how each language requires a different mouth position to speak the language properly. Then, practice speaking your own language with an English accent over and over again, until you can feel the difference between how you would normally hold your mouth to speak, and how you need to hold your mouth to speak English.

You know, it’s one thing to speak another language, and it is entirely another to speak another language so that it can be understood by others. I know that sounds pretty obvious, but you would be surprised how many people don’t pay any attention to speaking clearly and understandably. And that, really, is the most important part of communicating. Well, of course! You can have the largest vocabulary in the world, but if I can’t understand what the heck you are saying, you have wasted your breath.

What really drives me crazy are all those pronunciation diagrams that are out there which supposedly show you where your tongue is supposed to be in your mouth when you are speaking. Maybe it’s just me, but I can never figure out what they’re showing. And even if I could figure it out, how could I put it into action? I can’t see what I am doing and match it to the side-view drawing. And how could I possibly remember that, when I am in the middle of talking, anyway? It’s like learning grammar – fairly useless as a practical exercise to help learn to speak another language.

Mouth Position is Critical

I think the best way to start working on pronunciation is to get your mouth position right. Every language requires its speakers to hold their lips, mouth, tongue, and jaw in a different position. The proper sounds cannot be made unless the mouth is held properly. Mouth position is critical.

So, first notice how you hold your mouth when you speak. Is your jaw relaxed or tense? How about the muscles at the corners of your mouth? Tight or relaxed? Your lips? Are they relaxed against the teeth, or do they push forward a bit when you talk?

And where does it feel like you are making the sound in your mouth, approximately? Forward, middle, high, low, back? Each of these positions makes a big difference in the sounds that are created. This point in your mouth is called the point of articulation, and creates the point of resonance. It is difficult to scientifically analyze these points of articulation and resonance, but, with practice, it is easy to feel them.

Imitate Accents

So, don’t spend time learning exact rules for mouth positions. Pretend you are an actor, learning to do an accent for a film. Imitate the sounds that an actor makes. In your native language, imitate someone who speaks your language with an English accent. Can you feel how you have to hold your mouth to speak with an English accent? That is how you have to hold your mouth when you speak English. Only it won’t be funny when you’re actually speaking English!

Speak From the Middle of the Mouth

In general, American English is spoken from the middle of the mouth. A hollow is almost created with the tongue, which is held in the middle of the mouth. The tongue bounces off the ridge of gums directly above the front teeth, not so much the teeth themselves. The lips are back and relaxed against the teeth. The jaw is fairly relaxed and loose, and the muscles at the corner of the mouth are relaxed.

For now, pay attention when you are speaking to how you hold your mouth. Pay attention when you are watching television to how speakers of your native language hold their mouth as compared to those speaking English. Try to get a feel for what it looks and feels like.

In my next post, I will explore this topic some more, and give some suggestions as to how you can learn to speak with a better American English Accent.

I know I’ve talked about Malcolm Gladwell’s books often with my clients.  Many of you have already read them, and put some of his ideas and observations to use in your businesses.  I read his book, “Outliers,” this past summer, and found it, once again, to be very thought provoking.  If you have not yet read it, I highly recommend it.

One of Gladwell’s assertions in this book is that it takes 10,000 hours of doing something to gain mastery of it.  Of course, people have different levels of natural talent for things, and different abilities to learn, but, essentially, he asserts that anyone who spends 10,000 hours doing anything will gain a superior mastery of whatever it is.

Mastery of a Second Language

I started thinking about how this applies to learning a second language.  Of course, if any of us had 10,000 hours to devote exclusively to learning another language, we could all be fluent.  But, who among us has that kind of time?  We’re busy becoming masters at our professions, or other things.  Still, it is obvious that the more time spent with a language, the greater the learning.

One of the benefits of immersion learning is that it increases the hour count of exposure to a language.  If you take a class 2 hours a week, in a year you have only gained 104 hours of exposure to a language.  And, that exposure is probably 50% or more nullified by the amount that is forgotten over the week, and also by the lack of real listening and speaking that occurs in a classroom situation. 

In the typical immersion program, students are exposed to 12 to 20 hours of language instruction per week.  Again, assuming that a student studies for a month, he or she will have been exposed to only around 80 hours of language.  Better, but far from 10,000 hours.

It can safely be said that after 1,000 hours of immersion language instruction, a person could expect to speak and understand a language really well, nearly fluently.  At a normal school, studying 2 hours per week, that means you would have to study 500 weeks (assuming each 2 hours was full immersion, which it can’t be), or nearly 10 years! 

At a typical immersion school, you would have to study over a year to achieve 1000 hours.  At our school, the Lake Tahoe Institute of English, you would have to study for 10 weeks with no breaks.  Far better, but rarely practical for a working adult. 

There has to be another way to accelerate the learning.  And, of course there is.  See my next post to read about my ideas on how to gain 1,000 hours of immersion.