Talk:Non-native pronunciations of English/Archive 4

Length

Mrzaius seems to believe that the article length is not unreasonable considering the content. I'm liable to agree but I was thinking perhaps we could reenforce that with a bit of discussion. Anyone else agree? Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 04:41, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

The general rule for excessively long articles is to break it up into multiple articles. For example, making this an index page with links to pages on non-native pronunciations for native speakers of language X. -Stian (talk) 21:47, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

References for Italian accent features

Hi there, do you have formal references for the Italian accent features? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.3.86.43 (talk • contribs) 23:07, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes; the Italian section is based on this report. —Angr 09:00, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

mention the/a/an?

You reverted it, but it is mentioned in other languages. (eg. chinese) It should be consistent, so either leave it, or delete it from other sections too.88.101.76.122 01:25, 12 July 2007 (UTC) Second paragraph talks about grammar issues, so I think it should be mentioned.88.101.76.122 01:28, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I'll work on cleaning this article up today. —Angr 07:18, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Cleaned up

Okay, I have removed everything that was not backed up by a citation to a published source, per Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research. I've also removed things where the cited source referred only to the pronunciation of the original language, not to a foreign accent of English. Since none of the information about grammatical mistakes was sourced, it was removed too, but it shouldn't have been here to begin with since the scope of this page is only pronunciation. —Angr 09:00, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

• reverted. You deleted whole article! Most of these was written by people who knows people speaking that language or people from those countries who learn english. I think its not good idea to delete everything just because you don't belive them. This page is to help english people to gues speakers nationality. And grammar mistakes belongs to it. As there is no article talking about grammar, maybe it would be better to rename it?
  • Whether I believe it or not has nothing to do with it. Wikipedia policy is that all information has to be verifiable on the basis of reliable, published sources, and that original research is not allowed; that includes people adding information based on their own experiences. I had to delete nearly the whole article, because nearly the whole article violated Wikipedia policy. If you want to add information back in, that's fine, but you have to find and cite published sources to back up your statements. —Angr 09:45, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
    • Ok, I will, but what about you finding proof that bannanas are yellow? There is other thing on the world than wiki rules: common sense. So please, leave as it is and wait for other wikipedians to resolve this issue.
    • you obviously haven't chcecked sources. Most thing you deleted are sourced by http://classweb.gmu.edu/accent/ It is huge database of recordings of foreign speakers.
      • That site provides recordings but no analysis. You cannot listen to, for example three Czechs speaking English and then write about how Czech speakers in general pronounce English without doing original research. You have to find secondary sources where that analysis has already been done (such as the analysis of Italian children's pronunciation of English that sources the Italian section), and cite those. In the meantime, the "long" version of this page violates Wikipedia policy, so please stop reverting to it. —Angr 10:34, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
        • That site provides recordings and transliteration to IPA. I don't know what more you can want. You are little arrogant, I think. This rule is obviously to prevent someone to publicise own scientific research. If you see photo of yellow fruit, it doesn't mean you did "research" to know the fruit is yellow.88.101.76.122 11:18, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

An edit counts as original research if it does any of the following:

    * It introduces a new theory or method of solution;
    * It introduces original ideas;
    * It defines new terms;
    * It provides or presumes new definitions of pre-existing terms;
    * It introduces an argument, without citing a reputable source for that argument, that purports to refute or support another idea, theory, argument, or position;
    * It introduces an analysis or synthesis of established facts, ideas, opinions, or arguments in a way that builds a particular case favored by the editor, without attributing that analysis or synthesis to a reputable source;
    * It introduces or uses neologisms, without attributing the neologism to a reputable source.

This article is not against any of those, so it does NOT break this rule.88.101.76.122 11:29, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I added template it needs more sources. I think you can't protest against that now.

On the contrary, the "long version" (which you persist in reverting to in spite of it violating Wikipedia policy) does:

• introduce original ideas
• introduce arguments, without citing reputable sources for those arguments, that purport to refute or support another idea, theory, argument, or position
• introduce analyses or syntheses of established facts or arguments in a way that builds a particular case favored by the editor without attributing that analysis or synthesis to a reputable source

Requesting sources without removing unsourced statements was an acceptable solution two years ago, when I first complained about the lack of sources here. But in those two years, although much more original research has been added, the only sources that have been added are the few that are there now. I'm tired of waiting. The unsourced information on this page cannot be allowed to remain. —Angr 12:20, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Where it introduces new ideas?

Where it introduces argumensts? I agree that I added argument why Czech people miss articles, but fact that Czech language does not have articles is mentioned in Article (grammar). Czech is my native language so you can trust me, although I'm avare I'm not reliable source for wikipedia.

According to Wikipedia:No_original_research#Primary.2C_secondary.2C_and_tertiary_sources primary sources are acceptable.

Even without enough sources, this article is useful for people who want to guess nationality, or for people who want to know where they can make mistakes in English. So, if you think that sources are not reliable enough it would be beter to find some, instead of deleting everything.88.101.76.122 12:35, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Where doesn't it introduce new ideas and arguments, apart from the few that are sourced? Almost every section is new ideas and arguments. Primary sources are acceptable under some circumstances, "but only with care, because it's easy to misuse them. For that reason, anyone—without specialist knowledge—who reads the primary source should be able to verify that the Wikipedia passage agrees with the primary source. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a secondary source." The sound recordings on the site you linked to do require specialist knowledge to verify that what we say agrees with the primary source, and do call for the kind of interpretation that requires a secondary source. Finally, it is up to the editors seeking to add information to provide sources. Unsourced information can be removed by any editor at any time. The editors of this page have had two years to add sources, and--with the exception of the few sections I left--they haven't, so their additions are getting removed. —Angr 12:48, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I quote from Wikipedia:Verifiability:

“ Be careful not to go too far on the side of not upsetting editors by leaving unsourced information in articles for too long, or at all in the case of information about living people. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, has said of this: "I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons." ”

Considering that this is not negative information about living persons, I think the two-year grace period the editors of this article have had to provide sources is certainly long enough, and quite probably too long. One reason that it is dangerous to leave the unsourced information here for so long is that it leads newer editors to believe they're entitled to add unsourced original research of their own, and to restore it when it is removed [1], [2]. —Angr 06:54, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

This article as I read it on 14 July seems pretty cut and dry. I haven't seen the state it was in before Angr's revisions but I tend to agree with his points about unsourced material. On a perhaps more general point, I'm not even sure the article merits existence. Isn't it well known that a non-native speaker of a language may attempt to assimilate the phonemes of L2 into a more comfortable pattern (that of his/her L1). Isn't that obvious, or couldn't it be summarized in a sentence or two. While it is perhaps interesting that native speakers of French want to pronounce the rhotic sounds of English in a way that resembles the rhotic sounds of French, or that the Italians tend to pronounce them as the rhotic taps of Italian, or that the Japanese tend to have difficulty distinguishing the liquid approximants of English [l] and [r] because these are allophones in their L1, don't these statements amount to merely instances of the phomemic principle in action? I think that this article as it stands could be expanded to include every living language and an inventory of its phonemes and how those compare to English phonemes (and when backed up by research, how those speakers tend to do in attempting to tackle the English phonemes). But would there be any purpose in iterating a list of links to the phonology of every language, under the guise of an article about 'non-native pronunciations'? Or would it be best to assimilate them into a general statement about the tendency to rely on one's native phonemic scheme and incorporate that into an article about English Pronunciation or English an a Second Language? Joshua Crowgey 09:56, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

The article shouldn't have been "cleaned up" anywhere near as drastically as had been done by Angr. It was rendered virtually useless in that state, only covering four foreign accents (and only one was covered thoroughly). I don't feel it would have to be extended to cover every single language, but I feel that the existing text shouldn't all be violently ripped right off of the page thus making the article the equivalent of a stub. I doubt that there would be that many sources from which to cite this material, but we have to find a way to make this article a useful one, right? — 00:04, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Without sources, the article was already virtually useless. Any of the information I removed can be re-added once sources are found; if there are no sources, the information doesn't belong in Wikipedia. Adding sources is the only way to make the article useful. —Angr 06:49, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

There is source with many recordings and IPA trascriptions. Although primary source, it is acceptable, as anyone who uderstand IPA can verify the facts.88.101.76.122 10:22, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

No, it is not acceptable, as it requires linguistic training to interpret. WP:NOR says of using primary material, "anyone—without specialist knowledge—who reads the primary source should be able to verify that the Wikipedia passage agrees with the primary source. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a secondary source." The IPA transcriptions of the site you mention do require specialist knowledge to interpret. You have to find secondary sources. —Angr 10:26, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

You need IPA to read THIS article. So, who understands this article, will understand that source too.88.101.76.122 10:30, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

You need to know more about linguistics than just how to read the IPA to interpret the material in that source. —Angr 10:56, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

No, you don't.88.101.76.122 11:08, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Being able to read IPA doesn't mean a person understands concepts like "vowel shortening", "final devoicing", "palatalization", etc. We need secondary sources that explain for us that these things are going on. And you have now reverted four times in less than 24 hours and have been reported at WP:AN/3RR accordingly. —Angr 11:31, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

So did you, because I'm only reverting your reverts.Errorneous 12:16, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

And again, who doesn't understand terms in article won't be able to understand it. So, anyone WHO IS ABLE TO UNDERSTAND THIS ARTICLE will be able to understand primary source too.Errorneous 12:39, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

No, I didn't, because you didn't only revert my reverts. Two of them ([3], [4]) were made by others. And while I still disagree with you about the acceptability of using that site, the point is moot because it was never cited as a source in the article anyway. —Angr 14:15, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Several participants in the current editing controversy are anonymous IP addresses. I wonder if it might be wise for interested parties to sign up for accounts, lest perhaps someone might decide this back-and-forth activity looks like vandalism and requests semi-protection on the article. Richwales 07:42, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

ok, I will.88.101.76.122 10:22, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Angr that sourcing was quite scant and that secondary sources that provide analysis are a lot better than primary sources. I've put a lot of effort in this page and used the interpretation that one can use a language's phonology to apply some of the characteristics of second language transfer. However, this interpretation is technically one of original research.

Essentially, Angr's edits will only improve this article. If an editor feels strongly enough about a certain section, they can add it with sourcing (which I will do pretty soon with Russian) and if they can't find sourcing then it will stay off. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:47, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Tags, and a compromise

Errorneous, in a recent edit summary you wrote "There were no tags before I added them". Actually, the article was first tagged for lacking sources exactly two years ago today. Two months later, SimonP moved that tag to the talk page, where it remained until I removed it five days ago upon removing all the unsourced information from this page. So the article or its talk page has been tagged as needing sources for two years. I offer a compromise to our dilemma: rather than delete the unsourced information from this article, I will comment it out instead; that will leave the information where editors can easily find it if and when they are ready to add sources, but will hide it from readers. —Angr 15:54, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

UNSOURCED???

What dou you mean unsourced? Is there any source in this galaxy you would accept as good enough????Errorneous 00:22, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I mean unsourced because you didn't add a reference to any source verifying that information. Look at the sections on German, Hungarian, Italian, and Spanish: they all tell us explicitly where the information is coming from. When you "un-hid" the info on Mandarin you didn't say where the information came from; I checked Chinglish, and that article also doesn't cite its sources, so it's no help. Where did you get the information about how Mandarin speakers pronounce English? —Angr 05:40, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Last link in exrnal links.Errorneous 12:13, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I believe the use of that site as a source for this page has been nixed. As I believe Angr explained above, it's a primary source and what we need here are secondary sources. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 01:20, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

That's a different site. The link he's referring to is no longer in External links, it's now in References. —Angr 04:22, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Intonation and the Indian subcontinent

I tried to reinstate a comment about intonation patterns in languages of the Indian subcontinent. Although I had a source (an article about intonation in the languages of India), the comment in question was quickly reverted on the grounds that the source I cited talked only about native intonation, and not specifically about the carryover of said intonation into English. I disagree with this action and think it's not at all unreasonable to use this kind of reference, but I think it would be better to have more than just two opinions on this. What do other people out there (not including myself, and not including the editor who did the revert) think about whether this kind of source is or is not relevant to the subject of non-native pronunciations of English? Richwales 05:25, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

While I agree that it's not an unreasonable inference to make, it is technically original research. I support Angr's action. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 05:49, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Original research

Hello, I think it is a bit exaggerated to comment out a lot of the information because of NOR. There are some things which are just so bloody obvious that no one would actually ever bother to make a scientific claim concerning them, like German final devoicing, or substitution of /th/ by /s/ in the same language. I suggest to comment them back in, but leave a citation needed tag. This informs users that there IS something which wikipedians know abt non-native pronunciations of English, but that the sourcing situation can still be improved Jasy jatere 09:20, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

That was the situation on this page for two years. No one added the sources. At some point, unsourced information has to be removed from visible article space. And what seems "so bloodly obvious" to you may not seem obvious at all to other people. Keeping the info on the page but commented out was a compromise; I originally wanted to remove it completely from the page. —Angr 09:50, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I've also seen sources that do talk about such phenomena. It might not be an area of serious study that people have picked up on but that simply means we can't put it in because it's not been studied at the detail that we'd like. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 17:43, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Much if not all of the material that Angr is so determined to exclude is absolutely familiar to teachers of English as a Foreign Language, and they would not even bother to look for a printed source. An article can be useful – not the same as ideal – even if it contains inadequately sourced material: the right solution is to include the material but mark it as unsourced. For a general source, An Outline of English Phonetics by Daniel Jones explains the difficulties that non-native speakers have in producing particular sounds. However, this is an old book – first published in 1918, and my copy dates from 1960 – so that typical English pronunciation has changed a lot since it was written. There ought to be a more recent book covering the same ground. EEye (talk) 12:00, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

As I have pointed out, the unsourced material was marked "unsourced" for two years and nothing happened. The threshold for inclusion at Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth, so the mere fact that these phenomena are familiar to EFL teachers is not sufficient if they can't be attributed to reliable sources. —Angr 12:05, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

And while such teachers may not bother to look up printed sources, they're not constructing an encyclopedia. We should because we are. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 17:12, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Russian: "/l/ may also be a velarized [ɫ]"

What? That IS the proper pronunciation of L in most variants of English. --nlitement ^[talk] 00:57, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Good point. Russian /l/ is velarized in all contexts, though while in English it's only at the end of a syllable. But this statement isn't sourced anyway. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 04:14, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, that depends on the dialect of English. In Scottish English, Australian English, and some flavors of American English, /l/ is velarized in all contexts. In Irish English, /l/ is clear in all contexts. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 06:17, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Russian /l/ is not velarized in all contexts. Russian has two /l/ phonemes, and minimal pairs exist. EEye (talk) 11:42, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Russian also doesn't have th as in "this" or in "thick". Former becomes 'z', latter becomes 'f'. I don't know the IPA-speak but I think that should be reflected in an article. Ilyak (talk) 22:31, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Then find a source that says it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 22:54, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Scandinavian/Dutch sections pls

I'm not qualified to even begin writing such a section, but I see the need for one; I was raised in an area where both accents were common (well, five or more once‘ you break down Scandinavian). About Scandinavian languages, Norwegian in particular because it is partly tonal, the tonal/intonation flavour carries over, but there are vowel and other changes. This article only refers to pronunciations, but grammar-mangling by users of English by those from other Germanic languages is always interesting....Skookum1 (talk) 19:23, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Skookum1: I have some data on this, but I've been unable to find reliable sources (other than my own first-hand knowledge) and as a result, adding it would violate Wikipedia's prohibition on original research. If you are aware of any academic texts on the subject, I would be happy to look at them and add a plain English excerpt to the article.

-Stian (talk) 05:13, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

First Nations English/Native American English

Maybe a touchy subject, also maybe not much studied, and in general most speakers of these do not have another language as a mother tongue, though their parents/grandparents may have. Just fielding the idea, it's more a pronunciation thing than anything else, though there are special words/usages, and not standard across the continent; but always a recognizable "accent".Skookum1 (talk) 19:28, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I've noticed that too. But I wouldn't call it a non-native pronunciation of English, so this page isn't the place for it. —Angr 19:41, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Foreign accent

A foreign accent has little to do with memory. It has as much to do with memory as a melody in the brain has to do with a musical instrument. And every musical instrument – let it be piano, accordion, violin or whatever – plays the melody with its own “accent.”

When a child begins to speak it sets its articulation base on that of the people surrounding him. Then a phenomenon happens that can be illustrated as a lens directing sunbeams on a piece of wood. Transferred to people the sunbeams are air coming from lungs, the lens is the active part of the articulation base and instead of piece of wood there is pharynx’s surface (“focus”). This surface placed under heavier pressure and vibration gets activated in the course of time. I named this activated place “the nest of articulation.” Physical qualities of the nest were conditioned by certain positions of the active parts of the articulation base, but later, when tissues have lost their capability to change it begins to function only on these terms that existed at the time of its creation. By the other positions of the tongue and lips the nest of articulation responds with silence. Changes taking place in the process of speaking are different according to different languages. They become fixed and inconvertible. A grown-up person can correctly place his articulation base, but the pharynx-surface that must react in this position is not in working order. For that reason the speaker is forced to put into operation limited possibilities of his native-language instrument – that is, to speak with an accent. To pronounce a foreign language correctly it is necessary to create through exercises quite a new nest of articulation, but because of the great amount of work needed it is practically impossible. Since the core of the problem is the mechanical removal of tissues it can be done with a laser scalpel.

It would be ideal if a child could learn a foreign language at the same time as his native language. It is likely that a nest of articulation can be made by the use of some special sentences, only it is necessary to find a way by which a child is willing to practice with them outside of a foreign-language environment.

In the English Wikipedia it is said that the foreign accent “arises when the phonology of one language spoken by a person (usually that of his native language) influences his pronunciation of a second language (usually one that he acquired much later in life).” That is an erroneous point of view. Phoneticians have not a single piece of evidence to prove it. Even their special terms do not give the essence of the problem. So cannot hit the target terms “accent,” “interference,” “phonological deafness,” not to mention words which obviously are used at the moment of despair like Beatrice Honikman’s “phonetic substance” and Peter Ladefoged’s “property of culture.”

Leonhard Klaar —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.40.13.194 (talk) 07:30, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Interesting. So you're saying that it's purely physical why people of one language have difficulty with another language. I presume that you haven't actually studied the phenomena or read up on it, otherwise you wouldn't say that there's no evidence. Remember that half of the language interference has to do with perception as well as production so that, for instance, speakers of English are hardly (if at all) able to distinguish between emphatic and unemphatic consonants.

Also note (and a number of the examples on this page show this) that the articulation tools may activate in the same place and manner of articulation between another language and English but there is still difficulty. For instance, Spanish speakers have difficulty distinguishing between /tʃ/ and /ʃ/ not because the latter is more physically difficult to pronounce for Spanish speakers but because it is not a sound of Spanish while the former is.

While it's true that unused places or manners of articulation can be a factor making a sound difficult to produce even long after it's easy to perceive, attributing foreign accents to phonological differences is indeed accurate. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 17:37, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Here is the place phoneticians make a mistake.

Another reason for our lack of phonetic imagination is the fact that, while our ear is delicately responsive to the sounds of speech, the muscles of our speech organs have early in life become exclusively accustomed to the particular adjustments and systems of adjustment that are required to produce the traditional sounds of the language. All or nearly all other adjustments have become permanently inhibited, whether through inexperience or through gradual elimination. Of course the power to produce these inhibited adjustments is not entirely lost, but the extreme difficulty we experience in learning the new sounds of foreign languages is sufficient evidence of the strange rigidity that has set in for most people in the voluntary control of the speech organs. The point may be brought home by contrasting the comparative lack of freedom of voluntary speech movements with the all but perfect freedom of voluntary gesture. (Edward Sapir, Language p.45)

The muscles are not the cause of the "strange rigidity of speech organs"! The active parts of the articulation base, mostly the tongue and lips, direct the air flow coming from the lungs to the wall of the pharynx as a mirror does with a gleam of light or magnifying glass with a set of sunrays. With the positions of the tongue and lips the area is determined where (in case of a child) young tissues are placed under more intense pressure and vibration. This will affect the local area’s characteristics. Different languages have different positions of the active parts of the articulation base, and as the result of that, the most affected area on the pharynx wall is also different. Under the optional impact of air pressure and vibration that lasts for months and years, the activated area is formed that I called the nest of articulation. The nest of articulation characteristic of some language is formed in collaboration of certain positions of the active parts of the articulation base and lung air, and later when the tissues are incapable of changing, the speech instrument can only be used with the same positions of the tongue and lips which were in force at the time of its creation. If there is no nest of articulation typical to a certain language, then, of course, nothing can be used even if the positions of active parts of the articulation base are right.

The accent arises when the foreign language is spoken with the speech instrument of the native language which gives the wrong shade for the sounds. For some foreign sounds this instrument is totally unsuitable if it lacks the needed sound altogether (like the sound "l" in Japanese). Every language has its own speech instrument which is formed in a person’s early youth and lasts till the death of the person.

Leonhard Klaar —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.40.13.194 (talk) 07:51, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't follow. Your allegory with light beams doesn't clarify what you're arguing in any convincing way. Do you have sources to back up your arguments? Maybe they can put the argument you're putting forth in clearer terms. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 09:30, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Durability of sounds is fantastic

I was born and raised in the countryside without a foreign-language influence, for which reason my Russian pronunciation was terrible. I decided to get rid of the accent at all costs. After some months of practising I understood that Russian pronunciation differently from that of Estonian comes from another spot. So I attempted with positions of my lips and tongue to press Russian words to their own place. Although I never had doubts with regard to my method of the irrefutable evidence of its correctness I got many years later.

I always took the most difficult words for exercises and found that I have to concentrate my attention to naturally going over from one sound to another. Some of them proved to be completely out of my reach. To carry out my task I had to remove tissues. Often my throat was as sore as if I had angina, and several times my spittle became pinkish – apparently somewhere I’d burst a capillary.

The most difficult sounds for Estonians are the Russian "z" and "ž" because we lack them altogether. In the sentence "On eto lutše menja_znajet" the first natural going over from "ja" to "z" was successful 45 years after beginning my exercises. At first there was a very narrow passage to produce the sounds, but little by little I broadened it and now – 5 years later – the going over comes out quite naturally (Russian look!).

But there are much more difficult places like going over from the Russian "s" to "ž" and from "d" to "z" for example "u nas_živjot" and "bud_zdorov". I clearly feel the hindrance, I am diminishing it steadily but still the natural going over is not accomplished. Maybe a laser scalpel is the solution?

The quantity of sounds and their durability is fantastic and everyone has its own place! When will phoneticians draw a map of them?

Leonhard Klaar —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.40.133.134 (talk) 13:34, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, there's a diagram of the vocal tract that appears in every phonetics book.

But really, there's no indication that your difficulty in the production of Russian sounds is not connected to how your brain is wired to acquire language. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 20:10, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

German

Ok, you idiots who always delete my improvements. I have fought tough, but lost in the end. Now would you please, at least, delete the whole German section! You know, there certainly isn't anything less significant for a German accent than a velar or not velar -l-. This section, the way we see it, is a joke! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.52.169.3 (talk) 21:43, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

All you have to do for your edits to be kept, as I already mentioned, is cite your sources. As long as what you want to add is based on previously published material and not merely on your own personal experience, there's no reason it can't be added. —Angr 22:19, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

For those who understand German, I can advise the article 'Systematische Aussprachefehler deutscher Muttersprachler im Englischen — Eine phonetisch-phonologische Bestandsaufnahme' by Biersack 2002. Everything from the substitution of the /th/ for [d] or [s] to the monophthongization of many of the english diphthongs should be included. Just google it, it should be good enough as a reliable source. 77.132.166.156 (talk) 22:02, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

There's a PDF of that article at [5]. —Angr 22:16, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Missing sections

I don't know how to fix it, but if you click to edit the Japanese section, you will find that a bunch of other languages, including Korean and Portugeuse are not showing up, even though they have been written about. I think there is a critical object tag missing somehwere, but I don't have the programming capability to fix it. Somebody out there who can? :)76.171.53.59 (talk) 18:54, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

They've been intentionally commented out because they lack sources. Commenting them out was the compromise between leaving the unsourced information visible (unacceptable under Wikipedia policy and to me personally) and deleting it entirely (unacceptable to other editors). —Angr 19:53, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Sources

As a native speaker of Norwegian, a long-time (10 years) resident of the US and hobbyist linguist, I could easily add a section on pronunciation mistakes made in English by native Norwegian speakers. However, I am unable to find any other sources on the subject (or at least, Google is unable to.)

I thought about writing an article of my own, publishing it on my web site, and linking to that as a reference. However, I'm pretty sure that would violate wikipedia etiquette.

I also thought about adding the information and appending a "citation needed" tag, but other languages that were added in this fashion seem to be commented out.

I understand the importance of sources, and I see the merit of pointing it out when a claim is undocumented. But when we start removing unsourced, yet possibly (or even likely) correct information from an article altogether (as has been done here by commenting those sections out), does that not detract from the value of the article?

I'm making no edits to the article itself at this time, but I'd be interested in what other people think on the talk page. -Stian (talk) 21:47, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

It wouldn't so much violate Wikipedia etiquette as fail to meet the guidelines of WP:RS, as information collected by an amateur and self-published on the Internet would still not be considered a reliable source. Adding {{fact}} tags to information that one adds oneself is theoretically possible but definitely weird. I know that this is a topic that is of interest to amateur linguists, and everyone thinks they know something about it and wants to add their own personal impressions, but that is simply no way to write an encyclopedia. Scholarly sources do exist on the topic of foreign accents of English; it's just a matter of finding them. It may be necessary to abandon the comfort of one's computer room and go to the nearest research library to do so, however. There's a lot more information about linguistics in books and journals than there is on the Internet. I commented out the unreferenced sections because I had tagged them "unreferenced" two years earlier and nothing happened. At some point, one has to be finished waiting for sources to arrive and simply remove the unsourced claims, as Wikipedia policy expects. (See Jimbo's quote at WP:V#Burden of evidence.) —Angr 22:03, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Well said, Angr. I think one can look at the types of sources already cited to see the area of scholarly research that covers the phenomena of language acquisition. For what it's worth, I also have a little tid bit about the importance of citations on my user page. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 04:13, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. Regardless of the technicalities that make self-published primary sources inappropriate, they are still inappropriate, and I will not pursue that option. I will furthermore keep my eyes open for a reliable source on the subject, although I suspect it will be hard to find -- any research publications on the matter are likely to be obscure.

-Stian (talk) 05:10, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Russian - devoicing and [dʒ]

• [dʒ] could be pronounced as 2 separate consonants: [d] and [ʒ], although its voiceless counterpart ([tʃ]) exists in Russian.

• Voiced consonants in Russian are devoiced at the end of a word or in front of other voiceless consonants, so "big" may be pronounced as /bik/, "god" as /got/, etc.

Aeusoes1, you deleted these 2. It's not an OR, it's the Russian accent feature, "could" and "may" mean that people who haven't mastered the ENglish pronunciation, pronounce them these way. please explain. --Atitarev (talk) 03:05, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I say OR because it's not sourced. This particular article has had an issue with unsourced claims and adding more is now highly frowned upon (See earlier discussions above). In addition, the first entry you put is unclear and the second you put is already there (albeit hidden). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:08, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Finland

Finns joke even among themselves about this. Some Finnish public persons should never speak English... Often, pronunciation is "literal", letter by letter, foreign phonemes substituted with local ones. Someone? --Janke | Talk 08:08, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

There was such a paragraph, but it was helpfully removed. I haven't watched this page for a while, but apparently the editors have given up on listing all accents and have only "examples". --Vuo (talk) 22:25, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Everything that was unsourced was removed. If you have a source that can be added, feel free to restore the info, which of course can still be found in the page history. —Angr 07:34, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Japanese

Don't native speakers commonly tend to say "o" at the end of sentences often (since "o" is the direct object in their language)? Or is this just an error made by the few that I know? Anarkafrica (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 14:35, 19 November 2008 (UTC).

I'm not sure about that. Another possibility is that Japanese phonotactics allow for only a consonant-vowel structure of any syllable so that a word ending in a consonant is difficult for such speakers and they automatically add a vowel. It's similar to the tendency of Spanish-speakers to insert a vowel before some consonant clusters. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:40, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I confirm what you say - Japanese is written (ignoring kanji) with a syllabic script (see katakana for instance), which allows only for lone 'n'. All other sillables follow the "one consonant-one vowel" pattern, and it's even impossible (at least in the script) to mix any consonants with any vowel - some combinations do not exist, even if they can be simulated. This gives incredible results when English words are used in Japanese (and this happens a lot). English becomes /inguriʃi/, Virginia becomes /birudʒinia/, and "Last chance" becomes /rasuto tʃensu/. However, I do not know well Japanese, this is approximate knowledge from what I read on the subject, so some details may be inexact. The examples I made are taken from a Japanese course for Italians (http://www.komixjam.it/lezione-di-giapponese-2/) by replacing the Romanji word transcription (i.e. the transliteration of Japanese with the Latin alphabet) with its IPA translation. --Blaisorblade (talk) 21:42, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the Japanese writing system reflects Japanese phonotactics exactly. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 05:44, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Removing comments

While commenting out the unsourced material so that it appears only while editing was a nice compromise between those who wished to remove unsourced material and those who wished to keep it, there are three primary concerns that I have.

1. According to WP:How to edit a page#Character formatting, commenting in the page source is "Used to leave comments in a page for future editors." Using this feature to hide unsourced material is inappropriate.
2. Per WP:V: "Any material lacking a reliable source may be removed." Editors have been given more than sufficient time to provide references and the information remains unsourced. This is not a topic that goes unstudied. I've done a bit of research to create the lead overview section; believe me when I say that there are oodles of scholarly resources available.
3. The information is likely to be only vaguely correct anyway. Even if it seems to correspond to your personal experience, academic and scientific research on the matter can give statistical, sociological, and acoustical analysis that even scientifically-minded folk would not be able to give.

So I'm removing the unsourced material. If someone really wants to access it again, there's always the edit history. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 06:49, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Aeusoes. —Angr 12:42, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

"Imperfectly learning"

I'd really like to see these words removed from this article. Aeusoes and I had a discussion about it on his talk page but were unable to come to an agreement. It would be great to add some other voices to the conversation in search of a compromise. I'm cutting and pasting our earlier conversation below.--Joelh (talk) 22:05, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I'm pretty new to wikipedia so not sure if this is the place to do this, but I'm wondering if we can chat about the phrase "imperfectly learning English pronunciation." I changed it the other day (when I wasn't logged in) and I'm wondering if you can tell me something about the rationale. I'll go ahead and declare my biases as someone interested in / sympathetic to the notion of world Englishes, so I guess what I'm saying is it seems to me the 'wrong' pronunciation of one variety of English can in fact be *the* pronunciation in another variety. Maybe it's not that simple, but I'd like to hear your thoughts. thanks! --Joelh (talk) 02:42, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, basically any variation (especially diachronic) occurs from imperfect learning. So the pronunciation changes that occur across generations occur when children imperfectly learn the language of their parents. You're right that it doesn't mean that one variation is right or the other is wrong, only that the transmission of language learning is imperfect so that there are differences. As the article itself states, the "non-native" pronunciations themselves can trasmit to the monolingual children ESL speakers so that, for example, there is Chicano English, which has pronunciations influenced by second language transfer from Spanish.

A while ago, there was a section at non-native pronunciations of English that discussed Indian English, but it was decided that there were enough native speakers of English in the Indian subcontinent that one couldn't really describe it as "non-native" pronunciations anymore. So, we took it out.

Does this clarify things a little? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 18:37, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

That helps me understand where you're coming from, but I guess the word "imperfect" suggests certain things that are problematic for those with a more sociocultural view of language -- even to say "imperfectly learning" seems (to me, anyway), to suggest some judgements about non-native speakers that might even be distracting to the greater purpose of the article, which I think is in fact quite informative. In your opinion, is the integrity of the article at stake if the phrase "imperfectly learning the pronunciation of English" is removed? I think removing it would get the same point across and avoids a possible grey area. Let me know what you think. I appreciate being able to discuss this civilly! --Joelh (talk) 19:45, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Your recent edit prompted me to look up the wording in the source:

"Corder 1967 suggested that while a large number of errors in second language acquisition are due to interference from the native tongue, some result from strategies similar to those used in first-language acquisition."

Considering that the source says "errors", I think changing it to "imperfectly learning" is gracious enough. Remember, "imperfectly learning" is just saying it's not perfect, not that it's wrong or indicates low intelligence or anything. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 09:12, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough, but we're talking about Corder 1967 -- there have been other ways of looking at SLA in the intervening half century. I'd be happy to provide sources describing the process of L2 acquisition in ways that are not error-based, but it looks like what we've got here is a fundamental difference in the way we understand the process of SLA -- a debate which is mirrored in the literature. What can we do to resolve it? Is there a third way between me wanting that phrase gone and you wanting to include it? What about something along the lines of "which differ from native speakers' pronunciation?"--Joelh (talk) 20:24, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Maybe you could provide some of those sources. This is something that the article only mentions in passing, so we don't want to devote too much attention to it in this article (as opposed to at Second language acquisition) but there may be a quick phrase that we can replace or augment "imperfect learning" with. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 03:30, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Bulgarian

The lack of citations is not reason to remove a whole section, that's pure vandalism. Besides: there are no sources in the section "Italian" too, but it's still there. Kreuzkümmel (talk) 20:31, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

If you look in the archives and see above, there actually was a Bulgarian section that sat around without citation for quite some time(From March 2005 until all uncited information was taken out in June of 2007) despite calls for sourcing. Also, if you look closely, everything else in the article is actually sourced. We have policies against original research, which User:Angr and I pointed out above is exactly what this page consisted of. Do you have sources? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 21:10, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

I would like to know why User:Angr and you feel to have the right autocratically to decide how this article should look like? If you remove the section instead of adding tag, this would be vandalism. Kreuzkümmel (talk) 21:27, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

You can read the archives for specifics, but the long and the short of it is that {{citation needed}} tags are not a substitute for citations (I opine about that here). Wikipedia's policy is that editors ought to be given a reasonable amount of time to provide sourcing. Two years is more than enough time. It seems rather clear that you are practicing original research, another no-no at Wikipedia. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 22:05, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

This site used actual recordings of non-native pronunciation of English and indicates what errors are likely to be made by such speakers. Can the site be used as a source here? Kostja (talk) 15:52, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think so. In many cases, there is no analysis. Moreover, the analyses that are there are for the individuals and this article covers generalizations. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 16:05, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I admit, you gentlemen are completely right. Although I fear you would have to remove every single sentence in Wikipedia, which a certian user has written relying on his knowledge, but which is not directly supported by a reliable source. Kreuzkümmel (talk) 01:16, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Don't lose hope. There is a lot at Wikipedia that is uncited, but there's also a lot that is cited. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 03:23, 20 December 2010 (UTC)