Tuesday, January 5, 2010

The Sound of Language

Spoken English sounds ugly to me (though I’m a fan of the written). That’s partly a product of hearing native speakers of American English butcher the sounds of other languages.

It’s not their fault though. With age, the brain becomes conditioned to ignore small differences in sound, probably because it makes understanding your own language more efficient.

Then, of course, there’s the difficulty of actually moving your larynx, tongue, lips, etc., to reproduce the sound…

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