Lately, I’ve been thinking about how important pronunciation is in the whole language acquisition process. I think pronunciation is a lot more important than simply one of the puzzle pieces in language acquistition; I think it plays an important supporting role, if not a crucial one.

People who have a better understanding or awareness of pronunciation do better at remembering vocabulary and acquiring fluency. Perhaps people who are more gifted for language tend to have better pronunciation, but I also think that helping a student improve his pronunciation will boost his chances for success. I’m not saying you can’t succeed at learning a language without good pronunciation, but I think you can largely determine the level of success a student is likely to have by how well he or she can manage pronunciation challenges. Without good pronunciation, the student will likely be limited in the level he or she will attain, or is more likely to abandon over time.

Some teachers tend to put off correcting pronunciation so as to not discourage students. I think this is wrong. I believe a full phonetic and phonological explanation of the sounds is in order and most importantly, we need to discuss the distinctions between L1 and L2.

What do you think?

I agree with you that pronunciation plays an important role in learning languages. I feel that if a student gets the correct pronunciation it encourages the student to continue learning. It gives them boost and they work more to get correct pronunciation.

I always encourage my students to get correct pronunciation as there are a few alphabets in Hindi that need focus in pronunciation. Also many students do not know the correct pronunciation for these alphabets as at most resources the sounds are not correct and they end up learning it incorrect.

I always give a phonetic explanation of sounds and help them understand how to get it correct as there are some sounds in Hindi that are not found in English and these require attention.

I believe pronunciation to be extremely important— after all, even if one has a large vocabulary and understands the grammar of a language well, if he/she cannot pronounce words clearly, it will be very difficult for him/her to be understood by others, which can be rather frustrating indeed. This is why I offer sessions which focus specifically on pronunciation or “accent reduction”.

What if the learners foreseen goals do not include communication with others beyond showing off. What does it matter how I pronounce the words in my head?

@swarna, here is a question that you may not want to answer without a paid session: listening to Bollywood movies and songs, “mei^”, “vah”, and “yah” seem to vary widely. I assume it is due to colloquial/regional differences like “toe-may-toe” vs. “tah-mah-tah” in America.

Well, this would be different. . . if you weren’t learning for the purpose of communicating with others, you would be seeking a “reading knowledge” of a given language (something that many academics pursue), and being able to produce one vocalization or another accurately does play a lesser role in that.

Mind you, being able to recognize the proper pronunciations of words will still be rather important if you need to be able to comprehend spoken dialogue of any kind. . .

If I were learning a new language I would also learn the correct pronunciation so I may speak that language in case of any need. That is my opinion and what I would do. It varies from person to person and their needs, but I would say that having only a reading knowledge of a language is incomplete knowledge.

Dave, you are correct that this question will need some explanation, but I would like to say that the example you have given of tomato is irrelevant here. What you are referring to is pronunciation of tomato and different to the examples that you have given from Hindi.

I started studying Hindi so I could understand the jokes my friends told each other after dinner. But then I moved, now I doubt that I will ever converse with anybody in Hindi. But I continue studying it out of curiosity and the love of Bollywood I acquired. I assume learning to pronounce from movies and songs is like trying to learn the English word “satisfaction” from the Rolling Stones.

@Swarna, I used the word ‘foreseen’ because I do not think it will happen, but I am not capable of (or interested in) predicting the future.

@Dave: “What if the learners foreseen goals do not include communication with others beyond showing off. What does it matter how I pronounce the words in my head?”

How you pronounce words in your head is indeed irrelevant if you have no intention to ever say them. But if a person doesn’t care about communicating in the language, you’ll probably never meet him in a classroom and this discussion doesn’t apply to him anyway. But the point remains the same: the student will likely never acquire the ability to converse fluently without proper attention to pronunciation. As for whether this would hinder the person’s ability to write and read the language only, I believe it would, although to a much lesser extent. Still, play on words would be harder to comprehend, controling how a sentence sounds to the reader (therefore, how to better word it) would be all but impossible, access to the language would be limited (since much is learned through interaction), etc.

I doubt if I ever will be fluent, but mastering the language on paper may be good enough for me.

This comes back to the question of how we cognitively process proper pronunciation before we say it. How does our brain create verbal words? Is it a three step process where we think of meaning, decide its language, choose its pronunciation, then move our mouth muscles? Or are they all linked together? This will help us understand if poor pronunciation is a road block or something on the side.

I’m not a Psychologist, but the concept of “assimilation” under Piaget’s theory seems to be a good explanation for how we acquire pronunciation. Therefore, I think verbal production is required to perfect pronunciation. I disagree with the idea that students must be immediately corrected; I think it’s okay to put it off until the student is beginning to complete concrete operations in their language. I think the student will assimilate the pronunciation the more exposure, and production, that they have. I’m no scientist either, but three observations have drawn me to this:
1. My original Spanish accent was terrible. After a month in a Spanish classroom, it improved dramatically to a near-native level. While I was very focused here, the key point is that I was never corrected on my pronunciation. I was exposed to good (and bad…. very very bad) Spanish and I auto corrected.
2. My friend always had a mid-grade Spanish accent. Intelligible to a native, but barely. She spoke with this accent in an academic-setting for four years; after two months in Spain, she acquired a near-native accent.
3. Second language English speakers, for example, can retain their pronunciation for their native language while changing their English pronunciation. To me, this seems to make pronunciation very very very separate from semantics, cognitively, and so I think it would be difficult to teach the two directly alongside each other.

I think another good explanation for this is through Krashen, et.al.‘s theory of interlanguage. I think language learning…. and especially pronunciation…. is not a step-based process, but a gradual process, as the student goes up the pronunciation gradient rather than steps. I don’t think that practically, students can be corrected on their pronunciation once. They can be CONDITIONED and eventually acquire the capability of correct pronunciation, but there is no instant conditioning.

That was a lot.

Well Dave, if you want to be more fluent in conversing in Hindi, you are welcome to attend my Hindi class. Speaking it fluently is not that difficult, just needs practice. :)

I will soon. As soon as I’m paying my rent and can meet other commitments.

Right now patience seems to be a positive trait.

Patience is a good trait….I hope you will soon be able to join my Hindi classes. :)

Just wanted to know, do u know a famous saying from Hindi about waiting? :)

I get the funny feeling I’m about to learn.

Well, I would encourage you to find out about it, or may be someone else reading this knows the answer. If you know the answer or want to make a guess, feel free to write it here.

Isn’t the need for patience one of the lessons Krishna passed onto Arjuna? Something about the slowing of the mind (dhairya) being part of self-awareness IIRC. My understanding of Hinduism consists of reading bits and pieces of the Gita as a teenager, and wondering a few years ago how my friends could “worship” a monster like Kali. I was way off track on that one, but I think I learned something so maybe being wrong has its positive points.

Or maybe you mean Siddhartha’s saying that was made famous by Hesse “Cleverness is good, patience is better”.

I looked for a copy of Siddhartha’s saying in Sanskrit but couldn’t find it so let me take a stab at it (please don’t laugh too hard and don’t expect me to ever say those words)
panditya accha hai, ki sabse dhairya

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE…… do NOT refer to Goddess Kali as a monster. It is totally wrong and I feel bad, but may be you are not as much aware about the Hindu Gods and Hindu Mythology. But from reading your post I come to understand that perhaps you now understand it right.

Dave, you have gone a bit far. I was referring to a very simple and famous saying that we Indians use a lot. I will give u one hint—- it has the word ‘intezaar’…. I will wait, may be some one else will read this and answer.

This thread turned out really random :)

@Swarna. Sorry. While I thought I knew something about Hindu mythology, I apparently don’t know enough or I wouldn’t have made the mistake I did. All I can say is that I did not intend to hurt you so please accept my apologies.

As far as the saying, I’ve been waddling through Bollywood, poetry, and joke sites. I think I did find some lines that may qualify but they all look like cookie-cutter love songs or SMS messages so I give up. But I enjoyed the challenge none the less.

Hi all guys!

Very interesting topic indeed….sorry Dave and Swarna V, but I would prefer to come back to the original topic….

In my opinion pronunciation is extremely important….it has always been so, maybe for the fact that my dad is a phonetist and has always spoken my native language perfectly (while being a foreigner).

When I used to speak to him as a child I never got the feeling I was speaking to a foreigner, but to a native speaker, and this is the way one has to learn a language in my opinion. Once you get a good pronunciation somehow you can melt in better and acquire a different mind set, thus you can start applying the process of a different language in my experience.

On the other hand I’ve always been interested in new alphabets so for me starting to read an alphabet is very interesting too. I don’t think one has to read a lot at the beginning, but still learning the Hindi writing system, for example, is extremely important for the phonetic awareness of the Hindi sounds. This does not apply, on the other hand, to Urdu, for example, so I’m quite glad I learnt the Urdu script long after having acquired the knowledge of Hindi, which has the same grammar and structure of Urdu.

I think, as a teacher and a student myself, that correct pronunciation has to be taught right away through images helping to understand the sound production process together with good examples of a correct pronunciation of a sound. After that it is good to correct the students on their pronunciation, but you also have to make them feel at ease with the language and a good thing is to strees more the listening rather than the reading.

@Swarna there are not only English speakers on edufire and in the world, so not all people will refer firstly to English sounds. This is one of the main problems with Hindi. Most books refer to English phonetics while trying to teach Hindi pronunciation. Take an average Italian, for him the Hindi dental ‘t’ or the semivowel ‘ra’ are natural sounds, while they will have big problems with retroflexes and aspirates, a German student told me aspirates are fine for German students etc. Also, the English pronunciation of different sounds will vary remarkably as this is a language widely spoken and you can’t refer to a single English pronunciation.

After getting the correct production of single sounds one has to acquire a correct accent, which is differnt from the pronunciation of sounds.

I am quite sensitive to this aspect and I never know if it’s a good thing, as my accent (in all languages, including my native language!) can differ according to the person I’m talking to or the place where I am…. When I’m in India, for example, my English accent becomes an Indian English accent.

@Dave the different pronunciation of ‘vah’ and ‘yah’ in Hindi does not depend on regional differences as people from the same place may pronounce them differently. Spoken languages are alive so they always offer different options rather than standard rules, but one has to perceive how much freedom you can take in order to sound ‘correct’. This can be done through exposure of course.

In regards to your question about people who are not interested in communicating through a language, you can decide the method for learning a language as you only know your aims, but if you are only intrested in learning the written language you can mainly learn through self-teaching. Anyway, I have noticed that people who learn through self-teaching do not develop listening comprehension too well.

If you like watching Bollywood movies or listen to Hindi songs, you will need some active knowledge of the language in order to recognize sounds. The same goes if you don’t know a word in a song and want to look it up in the dictionary. How can you look it up if you cannot spell it in devanagari (Hindi script)?

I believe all this can apply to any language we learn or teach.

In Italy languages in schools are mainly taught with the old method of teaching mainly the written language. I have noticed that most teachers teaching with this method couldn’t develop themselves a good pronunciation and never expect the student to be proficient in the language. I remember I have learnt a good French pronunciation from a school mate of mine (and not the teacher) who had a wonderful French accent because she used to spend the holidays in France, but you will be surprised to know that she never had extremely high marks in French.

Anyway, I bet that teacher would have a harder time being understood in France if compared to the student!

P.S. @Dave, why don’t you give Superpass a try?

A Superpass is definitely an option, but with my current situation it is tomorrow’s option. But when I get one, you and Anshu will see it first simply because of my past commitments. (Right now my commitment is making my rent.)

For self-study being deficient, I know it is but it is what is in my hands right now. All I was trying to say was that proper pronunciation was less of an issue in my situation, not that it was no issue at all.

I plan to use Bollywood movies as my source for learning to translate as I listen. Right now I am trying to dissect Virrudh which is more difficult that I expected, I think the delivery rate is interfering with my understanding. I am also afraid that I will end-up learning the pidgin Hindi that Mumbai is famous for.

Well, just my thought on this one…but here I go…I am an Spanish native speaker… I lived in the US for about for years and it crossed my way the chance of learning English (a formal college student)…..and I do remember one of my American teachers who said: “You’ll never know who is from here, until they open their mouths…” So, I asked why is that? and she said: There is no way anyone learning a second language will ever have the same accent as that of a native’s, because of the linguistic background that even goes deeper to the way of someone’s breathing while speaking whether a foreign or their native languages…so, here you go…and I don’t really care that much about my accent as long as I know I’m using proper tenses….?!!!

And I was once told by a native Spanish speaker to not try too hard and just live with the fact that you will never sound perfect. He said it was much worse to have a foreign accent than an obviously fake native one.

That said, I do look down on people that order chicken at a Mexican restaurant as if it were a team sport. Are they truly being arrogant and showing no concern for foreign cultures or am I being arrogant as I impress myself with my supposedly “superior” knowledge?