Pronunciations (Re: Does Viktor Krum become an important character?)

[Paula "Elanor Pam"]

No: HPFGUIDX 118906


Original Message From: "Renee" <R.Vink2 at chello.nl>

<snippage>

 Ces:

 >> My point here is though, most people take time to learn a correct
 pronounciation of someone's name.  And Hermione isn't all that
 difficult to say after a few times.  <snip> <<

 Renee:
 > Has it occured to you that some people are unable to pronounce 
 certain sounds in foreign languages because their own language 
 doesn't *have* those sounds? (AFAIK, neither French nor Bulgarian 
 have the English H-sound.) Sometimes people simply can't hear a 
 sound foreign to their own language well enough to reproduce it. 
 Babies and young children can aquire any phonetic system, but if 
 the language they grow up in lacks particular sounds, their ability 
 to produce them gradually diminishes and sometimes is lost altogether. 
 <snip> <


Now Elanor Pam:

As someone who studied linguistics for a year, I agree completely with
Renee. I, for example, am brazilian and started studying english at 9. There
were many english songs available for me to get pronounciation from (even
though I wasn't into radio and my family's situation wasn't good enough to
buy international vynils/CDs frequently!) and I always got very good grades
in oral tests, but I'm well aware I write better than I speak. The teachers
were brazilian as well, after all.

Either way, english phonectics is relatively close to brazilian :/ Let's
take another example: I can't blame my 100% japanese teacher for calling me
"Paura-san" instead of "Paula-san" even though she's known me for 2 years.
She's also been calling my classmate Glaubert "Guraruberuto" for these same
2 years.

The point of this linguistical crap: Krum can't say Hermione. That's NOT his
fault. His system just can't create certain sounds.

Elanor Pam, who studied English, Spanish, is studying Japanese and shall
tackle German next year. And that knows she won't for the life of her be
able to make that german "R".