Asian challenges hearing and pronouncing R and L

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 6:18 am

You look Chinese, and you say the Chinese language influences your French, and someone in France had assumed you were Chinese? Doesn't seem to be racism at its very worst, Sonya. Many of us who post here work in Asia, and find, for example, that children will routinely scream various assumptions about our nationality at us on the street. Better not to worry too much.

There isn't a language called "Pakistani", and even if there was, I don't think you needed to bring it up really.

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 11:32 am

woodcutter wrote:Many of us who post here work in Asia, and find, for example, that children will routinely scream various assumptions about our nationality at us on the street. Better not to worry too much.

I don't know what age children you're talking about, but I would make a distinction between the behaviour of adult teachers as opposed to kids who don't know any better.

sonya wrote:Out of curiosity, what can possibly be the debate about Spanish v and b? Basically, v and b have both been b since the late middle ages; b has since been lenited into a bilabial fricative intervocalically, g and d have undergone a similar change.

That's the point. That's why Spanish-speakers can have trouble distinguishing between berry and very, although in context it's rarely a huge problem. Something similar happens with d and voiced th, as the dental plosive is softened to a fricative after stressed vowels and may even be dropped altogother (e.g. in Andalucia) so al lado becomes al la'o.

sonya wrote:When I was studying in a French university I had this crazy professor.. like, really crazy, never knew what she was saying and occasionally going off on little soliloquies as if she was in a play by herself, and she was teaching a French for foreign speakers class that I took.

Sounds pretty par for the course for a French university lecturer in my experience! Unfortunately, a lot of university lecturers in France have never had formal teacher training and find it hard to resist the temptation to pontificate. Over here, the "teacher as leader and sole source of information" style class is still very much the norm.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 2:06 pm

lolwhites wrote:Over here, the "teacher as leader and sole source of information" style class is still very much the norm.

Maybe she was trying to make the class more student-centered?

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 8:56 pm

French academics are more self-centred than student-centred. In my experience, they see their job as to show everyone how clever they are. If the students learn anything it's a bonus, but since a student who knows too much might upset the hierarchy, better to keep them in the dark.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 10:58 pm

For example, I said. I think it would be fair to say that in most Asian countries nearly all the people are going to make a whole lot of big assumptions about you based on a white or black face.

Anyway, to a certain extent it is necessary, and even kind, to make a few assumptions about people. It isn't a crime in itself, it is hostility that matters. If this, like, crazy prof (crazy, like all them French profs, eh?) didn't mean to say anything hostile, and Wailing.li's TA didn't mean to be hostile, then even if it is a little ignorant, it isn't racism, and it isn't worth worrying about.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 12:18 am

I'm glad I'm white. Sometimes not proud, though.

sonya · Post by **sonya** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 4:36 am

No, no. Where did you get racism? -- are you still talking to me? And there is no argument about whether or not I'm Chinese. The point that I was making was that I had a crazy teacher situation happen to me too, and you have to see how funny and ridiculous it is. We seriously called her Crazy. The prof assumed I couldn't pronounce certain things the other East Asian students were having trouble with. But, no matter how many times I said it correctly, she was filled with disbelief that an Asian could pronounce consonant clusters, French r, etc. She looked silly picking the wrong person to make her point with, then insisting upon it, plus we all almost vehemently disliked her already. Me, I was insulted that she picked on me when I was so proud of my good pronunciation, until I saw other people rolling their eyes and snickering. Then I realized, so she's an idiot, and other people think so too. Then I just felt cooler than her.

The thing about Chinese wasn't that I have a Chinese accent in my French, but that I have a very slight English one. It was a blow to my ego to have her say, "No, you're Asian, you were totally pronouncing such and such," when I wasn't, then not believe English was my native language.

Who ever implied all French professors were crazy? Certainly, their style of teaching is different from the American one. I would say.. less emphasis on the teaching part (and the French students seem really ok with it, so I guess whatever works works). That said, if they were all crazy and did things like this prof did, I wouldn't have emphasized that this particular one was really crazy. She was really, really unique. Nonetheless, at the same time, I had some wonderful professors in France.

I actually specifically studied abroad at this university because I was interested in Western Romance Linguistics and this area is a center for Occitan studies. I geeked out. Professors were so surprised and delighted to have this American come up to them and ask a million questions and basically want to know more than what they needed to know for the exam. Most students just aren't that interested (which was a huge contrast to my linguistics classes at Berkeley). They were even more surprised that I knew some Spanish, on top of knowing English and Chinese. For my end of the year linguistics project, I actually did a phonetics and phonology research project interviewing informants from around the peninsula and Latin America, and wrote a detailed thing in French on the sound systems of various accents and a brief historical linguistics section (why these accents came to be, influence of contact languages, etc).

(wow, I hope this wasn't too long).

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 5:43 am

Well, Lolwhites said most French professors are rotten. It turns out you don't agree with him though Sonya. We must excuse him, he has obviously finally joined the club and developed bitter ex-pat syndrome.

Since Wailing.Li thinks his/her TA is racist, I guess he/she would think your teacher is racist too. She does seem even worse, and you said "outrageous" yourself. I think it is just lamentable ignorance, I don't think it is very amusing really.

I very strongly suspect you have an American accent, not an English one.
Not many people write about linguistics in the manner of Reese Witherspoon in "Legally Blonde". Makes a change I suppose.

sonya · Post by **sonya** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 8:59 pm

Sorry guy. I didn't come on this forum to post with incendiary characters such as yourself, so I won't bother with more of a reply.

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 2:27 pm

My comments are based on my own experiences, presumably sonya's are base on hers. I don't doubt what she says, so either she's been lucky or I've been unlucky.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 11:28 pm

All right, I've been a bit unfair to Sonya, but the point is this. Lolwhites has made a big generalization about French teachers. Sonya is careless enough with her terms to describe a US accent as "English". It is very easy to say something or assume something or even be ignorant of something so that it will upset some group or other.

This kind of thing should not invoke the word "racism", unless it is said with hostile intent. Invoking racism is truly being "incendiary", and invoking racism where there is no ill intent will help to create some.