Have you ever had a moment where you said a word that you thought you pronounced was 99% right, but the other person had no clue what you meant? You didn’t butcher it; you were super close to being perfect, but the other person just couldn’t make out your meaning?
I was reminded of those experiences last week as I watched my two-year-old son play with his construction toy set while talking with my father-in-law. Their conversation wasn’t in English; it was in our local language, but this is roughly what happened:
Father-in-law: Say “crane truck.”
Son: Train truck.
Father-in-law: Good! Now say “cement truck.”
Son: Thement truck.
Father-in-law: No, that’s not quite right. It’s “cement truck.”
What was fascinating is that my father-in-law accepted “train truck” as right but not “thement truck.” As I heard them speak, though, I thought that “thement truck” was “close enough,'” while I wouldn’t have accepted “train truck” as accurate, yet my father-in-law was the exact opposite. he point here is that I, a language learner, had quite a different idea of what made a pronunciation “acceptable” than my father-in-law, a native speaker. Just because a pronunciation is “close enough” to my hearing doesn’t mean that it’s “close enough” for a native speaker to understand my meaning.
There’s a fascinating linguistic reason for this divergence, and understanding this explanation has some practical implications for how we learn a language. We’ll look at both of these today, so let’s get started!
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Understanding phonemes
The linguistic reason that you can get a sound “close” but not “close enough” to be understood relates to the linguistic concept of a phoneme. I was going to define phoneme with Merriam Webster, but it was unnecessarily technical. Instead, I asked ChatGPT to define it and it did a great job:
A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a language that can distinguish words from each other. It is an abstract, theoretical construct that represents a particular sound in the mental representations of speakers.
For example, the words “pat” and “bat” are nearly identical. Say them to yourself, and if you’re a native English speaker, you’ll see that there is no change at all between the two words in what your tongue, lips, or vocal box does. The only difference between these two words is whether or not you say them with a puff of air, called aspiration. Put your hand in front of your mouth, and you can feel a puff of air when you say “pat” but there is none when you say “bat.” “Pat” is aspirated (it has a puff of air) whereas bat isn’t. That’s the difference.
The difference between “pat” and “bat” is a single phoneme. It’s a tiny part of speech, not even a full sound, but it distinguishes those words from each other in English. That’s what a phoneme.
Why phonemes matter
There are two reasons why phonemes matter so much to us expats as language learners. First, because what a phoneme is differs from language to language. Second, because each language has a range of acceptable pronunciations of a phoneme. Both impact our ability to understand and be understood in the language we’re learning to speak. Let’s consider each.
Phonemes differ from language to language
Phonemes don’t exist apart from languages, just waiting to be discovered by linguists the way gravity exists regardless of the language you speak. Instead, phonemes exist within a language, and since every language is different, the phonemes that matter in one language differ radically from the phonemes that matter in another language.
For example, in Japanese, there isn’t a phonemic distinction between the sounds we describe as /L/ and /R/ in English. Instead, the phoneme is something in between the two of them. Here’s what this looks like when charted:
So, in English, we have a phonemic distinction between “lane” and “rain,” but Japanese lacks that. Yet Japanese has phonemes that distinguish sounds that we don’t have in English. If I’m attuned to English phonemes—which I am after a lifetime of speaking it—I will mishear the distinctions in Japanese that English lacks and I will mishear the /L/ phoneme as something different from what Japanese people hear.
Why? Because phonemes are what make sounds different from each other within a language. The phonemes that distinguish meaningful sounds in English are different from the phonemes that distinguish meaningful sounds in Japanese.
Phonemes are what make sounds different from each other within a language.
If you’re learning a language, you have to learn to distinguish sounds the way a native speaker does.
Phonemes have a range of pronunciation
The human tongue is absolutely incredible, capable of producing thousands and thousands of different sounds through a wide variety of variables.1 Even a one-millimeter difference in tongue height or tongue placement produces a minute distinction in the sound produced, and each language has a different range of how precise your tongue placement has to be in order to produce a sound “correctly.”
For example, if you’re a native English speaker, say the word “Larry.” Now, intentionally touch a slightly lower part of your mouth (more toward your teeth) and say it again. Keep moving it further down until it no longer sounds like “Larry.” You’ll find that you can move your tongue quite a ways down and it still sounds like “Larry”. I can even touch the bottom of my teeth with the tip of my tongue and it still sounds like “Larry” to me.
Now say “Larry” normally and move your tongue further up toward the back of your throat. Keep doing that until it no longer sounds like “Larry.” There’s quite a range there, too, though you probably can’t move your tongue as far up and back as you could move it down.
The reality is that if you take the “Larry” from the furthest down you can say it and compare it to the “Larry” that is the furthest back you can say it, you accept both as “Larry,” but the sounds are actually radically different from each other.That’s the acceptable range of the /L/ sound in English. As long as someone says their /L/ within that range, we accept it as /L/ and don’t bat an eye.
But now say “rain” normally, and do the same exercise of moving your tongue up, back, or down. You’ll find that very quickly the /R/ of “rain” just sounds wrong to you and is no longer an /R/. Why? Because the acceptable pronunciation range of the /R/ sound is much narrower than the range of the /L/ sound.
Why this matters
As we learn a language, two of the challenges we face are that the sounds that matter in the language we’re learning are different from the language we already know. To make matters worse, the range of acceptable pronunciation for those sounds also differs between languages. Using the examples above, consider these situations:
- You’re used to saying /L/ with quite a wide range of acceptability, but the language you’re learning has a narrow range. That’s difficult.
- The acceptable /L/ sound is in a different place than you’re used to, so you have to re-learn tongue placement. That’s more difficult.
- The language not only has a narrow range for /L/ in a different spot, but it regards the “bottom of the teeth” sound that English accepts as /L/ as a different sound from the “top of the mouth” English /L/.
That’s even more difficult because not only is the sound in a different place and you have to hit it exactly, but if you’re a bit off in how precisely you pronounce it, it produces a different sound in the local language. The result is not only an accent or bad pronunciation, but that you are incomprehensible to native speakers. I don’t expect most people to speak without an accent—indeed, there are better ways to spend your time learning—but you must be comprehensible and understandable to locals.
Getting close enough based on your native language’s phonemes and tongue positions isn’t sufficient.
Getting close enough based on your native language’s phonemes and tongue positions isn’t sufficient. You have to get close enough based on what locals think is important (phonemes) and based on their range of acceptable pronunciation.
It matters immensely that you get this stuff right. The difference of “pat” v. “bat” is a single phoneme that is just a puff of air. That’s all. But “He patted her head” changes dramatically if we drop that puff of air and becomes “He batted her head.” The difference in those two sentences is a tiny puff of air, but it changes the situation from love to murder.
How to grow
So, now that we understand what phonemes are, how they differ between languages, and why they matter so much, what do we do about it? This isn’t just ivory-tower theory. It makes a big difference in how you learn a language.
You have to re-learn how to hear
The first implication is that you have to learn how to hear when you’re learning another language. Your ears are so attuned to the phonemes that matter in your native language that your brain literally discards other sounds as unimportant. Importantly, your brain discards those parts of the raw sound pre-cognitively, which means you never hear the sounds.
You have to learn how to hear again.
I wrote an entire article on this phenomenon, which is well worth your time: Sound Advice: Learning to Hear Again.
Listen ferociously
It’s not enough to just hear what native speakers are saying, especially at the start of your language-learning experience. You have to listen ferociously, with massive intentionality and focus, in order to hear what others are saying. Only when you hear correctly can you pronounce correctly.
You’ll never be able to pronounce what you cannot hear.
And just as babies get thousands of hours of listening before they start speaking, your language learning needs to start with massive quantities of listening that has enough context that it’s comprehensible to you. See previous articles on comprehensible input.
Learn from a live, in-person native speaker
You can learn a lot from a non-native speaker of your language, particularly grammar, but these minute differences in phonemic awareness and tongue placement are why it’s so superior to learn from a native speaker. Someone else who has learned the language, unless they are a very high-level speaker, will be speaking with their tongue in a millimeters-off position that is understandable but not exactly right. Or they may still speak without making the subtle distinctions between phonemes that the native language does.
A native speaker may not be able to explain all the intricacies of grammar to you as well as someone who has learned the language, but their pronunciation will almost always be better than a non-native speaker.
This is also why live, in-person instruction is superior to online instruction. Unless your teacher’s microphone is of the highest quality, the communication app you’re using has zero-loss fidelity of sound, the internet connection is perfect, and your speakers are of the highest caliber, there will be minute losses of raw sound that aren’t captured, aren’t transmitted, are lost in transmission, or aren’t accurately reproduced on your end. The result is high potential that the sounds you need to hear just aren’t there anymore. Nothing beats in-person learning.
Why live learning? So that teachers can give you immediate feedback and help you with your pronunciation. Keep in mind the ZPD and Learn Smart, Not Hard, but nothing beats immediate feedback as you learn to hear and speak again.
Use a good quality mic and speakers
This may sound obvious, but many people just use the microphone and speaker on their phone to record and listen to language. That may be ok, but there is definitely loss of raw sound when you do this. Instead, I recommend using a quality pair of headphones when you’re listening and a high-quality microphone when you’re recording.
Practice minimal pairs
I wrote extensively about minimal pairs in Sound Advice: Learning to Hear Again, but it’s so critical to this topic that I’ll quote a section at length here:
What linguists call “minimal pairs” are a “pair” of words or sounds that are different to a native speaker, but which you have trouble distinguishing. So, for example, if you want to practice minimal pairs with “L” and “R” sounds, then here are some examples: pray/play, grass/glass, crown/clown, right/light, etc
The way you want to do this exercise is to have your teacher/language helper randomly speak one of the minimal pair halves and you have to respond to indicate which pair it is (e.g. pointing to an “L” or “R” on table, putting it in a certain pile, etc.). For this exercise, you want your language helper to give you immediate and visual feedback on your responses. That feedback will help your brain learn to hear again. This video can help you get an idea of what this activity can look like.
A great technique to help you hear and reinforce that hearing, is to have your helper say every sound that you’ve already sorted in the pile, and then the new sound that you think belongs in the pile. That repetition reinforces the sounds and can help you identify if the new sound is a true fit or not.
Do this in your own private study by having a native speaker record a bunch of minimal pairs, mix them up randomly, and load them into a flashcard program with the audio on one side and the answer on the other.
See that same article for techniques to help you speak phonemes accurately.
Conclusion
Looking back at the moment I heard my son mispronouncing “cement truck,” it’s clear that what sounded “close enough” to me as a learner didn’t match the standard of native speakers. There are subtle, but crucial differences in phonemes and the range of acceptable pronunciation which can change the meaning of a sentence as dramatically as “He patted her head” v. “He batted her head.” Tiny differences, as small as a puff of air, can get in the way of accurately hearing or speaking another language.
To overcome this, we need to re-train first our ears and then our mouths, learning to hear again and then to speak again. By listening ferociously, practicing minimal pairs, and learning directly from native speakers, we can greatly improve our ability to communicate accurately. It’s rare that you’ll get rid of an accent or have perfect pronunciation, but you must have good enough pronunciation by local standards that you are comprehensible and understand to them. As you fine-tune your ability to hear and speak, your ability to form relationships, live life, and survive and thrive in general will only improve.
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Footnotes
- To name just a few: height (high, mid, low), backness (front, central, back), rounding (rounded or not), tension (the difference of seat and sit), and articulatory placement (tip, blade, body, root), and more. ↩︎