Gerhard,

On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 19:41:57 -0300, Gerhard Fiedler wrote:

> > Learning french in school was always very difficult for me since there
> > were so many things like this which didn't seem to have any reason for
> > being. 
> 
> I'm not sure how that is in German (you know, I just "know" it :), but
> while English has some things going for it in terms of being easy to learn,
> pronunciation is pure hell. As a non-native speaker, even after many many
> years, I still don't know how to pronounce a new word that I've never heard
> before. 

May I let you in on a secret?  Me too! :-)  Not only is there no way to predict how a word in English should be pronounced, it may vary 
depending on where you come from!  Place names in particular, have very strange unpredictable pronunciations which people from other parts 
of the country would not know.  A couple of examples off the top of my head: Prudhoe ("prudduh"), Mousehole ("mowzle") are small towns 
that non-locals would get wrong on the first attempt.  Except that Mousehole is slightly famous and a fair number of people do know about 
it.  Larger towns and cities have pronunciations that "everyone knows", such as those ending "-cester", pronounced "ster", such as 
Leicester "lester",  Gloucester "gloster", and... an exception: Cirencester which is pronounced "siren-sesster".  I don't know why!  Then 
there's Loughborough "luff-burruh", and so on.

BUT!  The thing is that if you get it wrong, nobody will mind.  They will usually know what you mean, and they will correct you, but 
there's no embarassment in that, you didn't know and they are telling you so that you know next time.  And this applies not just to 
placenames, but the language itself - whereas in France to be understood it seems to be necessary to speak not only with the correct 
words, but also accent, intonation, and hand-waving, in England we are used to hearing our language mangled by others (including those 
from other parts of England :-) and we can usually work out what you mean.  And we get very many American TV programmes here, so 
understanding an American accent isn't a problem, but the reverse is not the case.  I was very surprised to find when I first visited the 
US that I often had to repeat myself (sometimes more than once, and slowly!) because Americans aren't expecting a non-American 
accent/dialect.  Witness the fact that when a UK television series is bought by the US, they often remake it with American actors and 
re-set it in the US rather than just showing it as-is.  And I've heard that sometimes if they do show it in its original form, they have 
subtitles!  :-)

Incidentally, I learned French at school for about 5 years, and German for 1 year.  After which my German is *much* better than my French 
(neither is very good though!) for reasons I don't understand, but German seems so much easier, more logical, easier to understand.  And 
of course I can just use neuter for anything that isn't a person, and they'll understand what I mean! :-)

Cheers,


Howard Winter
St.Albans, England


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