Comments on: A Spanish Question

By: Alby

Alby — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 15:17:38 +0000

Actually, I was cheeky there. /v/ is labiodental because friction is caused by the joining of the upper teeth and the lower lip.

It’s Henry Higgins here, darlings.

By: Alby

Alby — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 15:15:30 +0000

Labiodental = lips and teeth. Does anyone *really* like sticking their teeth there? I mean, I’m sure it’s very good for jaw activity, but poor victim!

You tell ‘em, Padz, but wear an armour!

By: Marshall

Marshall — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 17:49:19 +0000

Labiodental consonants! No wonder oral sex has been known for centuries as “French love”…

By: Patrick

Patrick — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 16:43:03 +0000

Oh I completly sympathise with them though Alby. I think it’s so hard to get the accent right. Luckily it seems that’s the one thing that I do have in French. Not that that’s much use if I can’t actually get the words out that I want to! Silly as anything that!

A labiodental consonant?! I’ll tell them that next time: you really ’shouldn’t’ have a problem!
They’ll kill me!

By: Alby

Alby — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 00:57:19 +0000

It’s not a Spanish type of French. It’s called having an accent. We all have one. P

In Spanish both “v” and “b” are pronounced the same: /b/. Spanish people learning French might get confused because of this lack of differentiation in Spanish, but they really shouldn’t, cause “v” is a labiodental consonant in French, and quite distinct from “b”.

I hope you get what I mean. But, gosh, I’ve not spoken any French for years! Well, in fact, I do speak it every once in a while. But don’t try to get me to write verb endings! Hehe.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 16:35:55 +0000

Lol. I think they would strongly assert that they don’t have any patois of any kind. Theirs is perfect French, apparently. Most of the time I can’t really understand my Spanish housemate speaking french because she talks so darn fast but occasionally I actually know the words, just can’t work out what on earth she’s saying. The nuance of French for me is still a struggle since all the tiny differences in accent make a huge difference. I was in Amsterdam over the weekend (more on that later) and in the hostel my group were staying in, one night there were some (apparent) French speakers as well. I say apparent because, as we were getting ready in the dingy collective bathroom everyone shared, two of these girls started talking and I must say it was an experience. Some of my friends are completely bilingual while others like me are much much further down the learning curve. But for all of us it was a bit of an ‘eh?!’ sort of moment. When normally you’d understand the whole sentence, here we were getting only the one word or two. Insightful, I felt!

By: Roisin

Roisin — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 14:03:38 +0000

ahh, those pesky spaniards!
what do they call their spanish version of french then? do they have a particular name for it to differentiate that patois from french ‘normal’?

By: Patrick

Patrick — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:58:27 +0000

I guess I should have explained this a bit more. My Spanish housemate, whose French is far better (conversationally) than mine, asked me this last night. I thought it notable because she comes across, much of the time, as much more confident in her language than I am. However, as I’ve found with quite a few of my friends in my French classes, when original Spanish speakers start to learn French, I often can’t understand what they’re saying because they’re actually speaking a Spanish version of French. They’re using French words but because they keep the Spanish pronuciation it really doesn’t sound like French.

I had never really believed French people who said they couldn’t understand people from Belgians until I got here because I’ve finally noticed just how different some people’s accents are. It’s unintelligible at times!

As Patricia said, en français c’est ’savoir’ but speaking en español il parlerait ’saboir’. I guess it’s only hard because I’m not fluent (by any means!). If I kind of knew what someone was saying, when speaking incorrectly, it wouldn’t be so bad. Just like an English speaker can recognise incorrect English, I hope to attain that level of language in French. Until then, I’m going to have to console myself with a clueless expression!

By: Roisin

Roisin — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 14:53:48 +0000

oooh, had to see that in the cool light of day to get that. How weird – tho does make sense! I’ve got a french friend who was learnign spanish and found it pretty easy – maybe in some part due to the shared spelling of some words…
Well, at least that’s an interesting memento that you may one day use in a linguistics based pub quiz!
;0

By: Lunanina

Lunanina — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 02:56:57 +0000

francais: v
español: b