In discussing with Bob some of his listening difficulties with Cebuano given in his log, I have been thinking recently about languages which may be especially difficult due to features such as vowel reduction, swallowed consonants, extensive mumbling and so on (not sure if they necessarily apply to Cebuano though - just a suspicion). A common strategy for listening is to focus on phonetics and syllable segmentation. In one presentation online, 'Did you say what I thought you did': Teaching Listening (Open University: Batstone & Harper), the authors discuss segmentation, found on pages (of the pdf) 20 & 21. Other papers/studies found were: Facilitating second language listening comprehension: Acquiring successful strategies (ELT Journal: Vandergrift 1999), which provides no discussion (I only skimmed) of these issues. Issues in Second Language Listening Comprehension and the Pedagogical Implications (Kurita 2012), which focuses on metacognitive isssues (skimmed again). What makes listening difficult?: Factors affecting second language listening comprehension (Bloomfield et al. 2010), which references the Defense Department's language aptitude tests, and which is more, but not very helpful. In table 2 on page 2, dealing with the effect of passage characteristics, it has a section on auditory features, including speaker accent, hesitations and pauses, noise and distortion, and speech rate. But again no discussion of the factors I mentioned above. A lot of languages feature various reductions, especially in colloquial speech, and fast speech is a well-known factor, as are accent and dialect issues. And another factor can be spoken speech not matching up well with written. But in searching google I was unable to find discussions of swallowed speech and mumbling, except in relation to speech disorders. On HTLAL I seem to remember Korean being singled out as a language with a lot of mumbled speech by natives. Are there other languages known for swallowing and mumbling presenting great difficulties to language learners. Or other such factors not listed above? And how would such difficulties be overcome? One thing that comes to mind is that one would almost have to have complete mastery (lexical threshold, i.e 98%) of a language for context to help a lot.
In the 8 languages I'm familiar with, I can't say any of them stand out as being harder to understand due to a higher than average amount of non-standard speech. I'm interested in what others think though.
Hmm I can't say that it's a feature of Cebuano or Spanish, but certain people still talk in less than ideal ways and expect to be understood. I've heard that slurring is a feature of Russian, but I never got far enough along to make a call on that. The only thing I can say that makes since is to try transcribing difficult audio. That's what I started doing and I think it's doing some good. Seems like there was something about this back on HTLAL but I can't find it. I thought it was called scriptorium, but that's something else (which I might try with a Greek student who never seems to pronounce anything right.)
I'm not sure it's fair to describe any language as being particularly difficult on those grounds -- every language has some redundancy, and it allows detail to be lost somewhere. But overall, complexity is a zero-sum game. If the soundsystem is messy, there's usually some simplicity or clarity somewhere else that means it's not a problem.
I was looking at wikipedia articles on various German dialects, and came across the following statement in the one on Palatine German language (Pfälzisch) : "Palatine speakers tend to swallow some of the other letters that standard German speakers enunciate." Unfortunately, it neither went into further detail, nor was it sourced.
That sounds a bit like "dialect" bigotry to me. Italian has had lots of Latin consonant clusters simplify to a double consonant: actor is attore (ct>tt), perception is percezzione (pt>zz) and all X is S or SS. Yet, I've never seen Italian described as "swallowing" consonants. It's accepted that these consonant changes are part of the language in bigger languages, but with smaller languages, their seen as gaos. Not on.
Is it bigotry if it is an accurate statement? You gonna go all PC on us ? Note that the assertion regarding the swallowing seems to indicate that both the standard speech and the dialect contained the same letters, just with different enunciation. It seems to me you are instead describing the shift in consonants from Latin to Italian, unless I misunderstand you. Perhaps a native speaker with a knowledge of both the Pfalz dialect and standard German can give us an assessment.
My point is that it assumes that Standard German and Palatine German are the same language, and that SG is somehow more "correct". German minority languages are mostly only used in the spoken mode, so most speakers are only literate in SG. The difference in consonants between the two languages is historical divergence, and the examples in the Wikipedia article look pretty clear. Apfel : Abbel, haben : hawwen/hann.
I took the statement to mean that the enunciation of the dialect did not match its own spelling, while in standard German the enunciation did match the spelling. Thus the comparison between the two forms of German was to how each is enunciated, rather than to divergences in spelling.
The quote referred to swallowing of consonants by Palatine speakers, and noted that standard German speakers enunciated the same consonants. If Palatine German were the only form of German in existence, they would still (assuming the correctness of the assertion) be swallowing consonants that appear in writing. The comparison with another language is not necessary. So then the question is, does that make it difficult to understand for learners.
If you measure the pronunciation of Pfälzisch against the spelling of Standard German, then you will obviously find a larger span than if you compare spoken Standard German against its own spelling. I haven't read much in Palatine alias Pfälzisch (I suppose there is a Wikipedia, but what else?), but I have heard a fair amount of Low German and read texts written by authors from different areas who used at least two orthographic systems specifically devised for Low German. And if you just use a relevant spelling then it isn't a problem at all to imagine how a given text would sound in spoken Low German. Why should it be different for Palatine/Pfälzisch? The real problem with the German dialects is finding good and plentiful resources.
No, because then the writing wouldn't be in Standard German, but in Palatine, and the orthography would reflect the actual consonants, much as on Wikipedia.
Cainntear, I think the actual point of the statement in Wiki is that Palantine enunciation does not reflect its own written form, and the comparison with standard German was tangential. Perhaps you understood it differently though.
Which is beside the point. The swallowing of consonants is done by Palantine speakers (allegedly) in comparison with their own written dialect. That such was compared to standard German is as I said tangential. Forget standard German and focus on Palantine alone. The overall point of this thread is languages which exhibit such features in themselves, and not in comparison with other languages.
That's your interpretation of the sentence, but I just can't imagine any circumstances where that would be the author's intended meaning, so I've removed it from the article. It was unsourced, too. I can't, because this debate starts with an unsourced claim that we are both interpreting in vastly different manners. I believe that the sentence refers to the difference between two languages. It looks to me like consonants in modern Palatine are the result of a process of diachronic lenition. (Reduction in consonant quality over time.)
