raul- voiced alveolar liquid
mɛndozə- voiced bilabial nasal
A lot of people have trouble saying my first name. Some common mispronunciations I've been called are "Rawl", "Ravu", and "Raoo". South Asians tend to call me Rahul and one elementary school gym teacher even called me Rowland. (Don't ask me how). In Spanish where my name comes from the "r" is rolled unlike in English.
As for my last name, the letter z is pronounced [z] in English, [s] in Latin American Spanish, and [θ] in Spain.
Based on what I've learned about phonetics people pronounce my name using the sounds with which they are most comfortable pronouncing and which exist in their native language. For example, most Americans have trouble rolling there r's.
When it comes to pronouncing words in new languages such as Arabic, the difference between the sounds represented by the letters ﻙ ,ﻕ where hard for me to distinguish. Other sounds in Arabic were hard to pronounce but luckily my professor and most Arabic speakers are pretty forgiving and were able to understand my best attempts at Arabic pronunciation.
An approach that I use when learning new languages is trying to mimic the sounds of a native speaker and it has worked fairly well.
An approach that I use when learning new languages is trying to mimic the sounds of a native speaker and it has worked fairly well.
My name has caused so much controversy as well. People usually say oh it’s like hello in Chinese “NEE HAW” or some will say “NEE HELL”. It’s funny but it’s true. It just shows how different everyone is.
ReplyDeleteNow when it comes to Arabic I can’t deny that it is extremely hard but I think what you do with mimicking is a great idea. There are many sounds in the Arabic language that are very hard to pronounce but we have learned that it’s because of certain articulations of our vocal system that either make it easier or harder to pronounce. We become set to certain sounds that its most likely easier to use our own than learn a new one.