Stewart Stremler wrote:
begin quoting Bob La Quey as of Thu, Jun 28, 2007 at 10:12:00AM -0700:
[snip]
BobLQ "My problem with Spanish is a I do not hear it well."
That was/is my problem with spanish. At one time, I was a fair reader and
an okay writer of Spanish, but I found spoken spanish to be nigh
incomprehensible. (I do not percieve any word-breaks in a "native
speaker's" typical conversation.)
--
When confronted with a non-native speaker, it helps to s l o w d o w n.
Stewart Stremler
Yes, but, it, helps, much, much, *much*, more, to,
enunciate, each, word, with, a, clear, break, in, between.
On several occasions I've encountered someone speaking English LOUDLY
and s l o w l y, and getting nowhere. I come up and in a regular tone:
Say, exactly, the, same, thing, with, clear, breaks, in,
between, each, word.
And it's amazing how quickly they get it. It's sounds far more bizarre
than speaking slowly, and it does take practice to get used to doing
it.[1] But it takes a non-native speaker virtually no time at all to
hear the individual words and understand. It truly does give them the
*breaks* they need. (Pun intended.) It's much easier to read a
language that you don't know than to hear it because audibly, there are
very few breaks. In writing, they are mostly obvious.
The next time you have a hard time understanding some Spanish speaker,
ask him to write it *or* say to him:
"No entiendo bien. Por favor, enuncia, cada, palabra, bien,
separada." He will look at you with the strangest expression. But
then, if he is truly wise, he will see the wisdom of it, and will
oblige. However, my experience is that most seem to feel that you are
setting them up to look foolish. Maybe that has something to do with
the prevalence of all the Punk'd type of shows they see. But even if
they don't enunciate each word with a clear break, they will at least
make a stronger effort to help you understand.
[1] The hardest part is resisting the temptation to insert breaks, be,
tween, the, syl, a, bils, of, the, words. (And you
*do* have to concentrate in order to avoid it.) That would just throw
the non-native speaker for an even bigger loop and make a big mess of it
all. But it is *well* well worth it if you can pull it off.
--
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