begin quoting Ralph Shumaker as of Fri, Jun 29, 2007 at 05:54:06PM -0700: > Stewart Stremler wrote: > >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.
Ah, yes, you are quite correct. > 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. Except in German, right? :) > 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." That's a good phrase to know. [snip] > [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. Indeed. -- Must. Avoid. Temptation. To. Speak. Like. Cartoon. Villian. Stewart Stremler -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
