Comment on Are some people just unable to become fluent in a foreign language?
phdepressed@sh.itjust.works 1 day agoPerfectly? In a language system different than your own. English to French/Spanish doesn’t require these sounds. English to like Thai or Chinese has a lot.
People learn new languages because you can get the ability back with training (hooray neurplasticity) but it is more difficult and takes longer.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
that’s moving the goalposts, the previous poster claims that you simply cannot tell the difference between sounds that don’t exist in your native language, which is fucking obviously false and they should be ashamed of posting something like that
TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 hours ago
oh my god… relax. they’re called allophones, it’s when two different sounds are treated as the same phoneme in a language. so like whether you make a click sound with your K or not, it’s still a K right? well in some languages it would be a totally different phoneme. but to you, whether you can hear the difference or not is irrelevant to you because it either way it just means K. that’s what they’re talking about. can you chill with the “you should be ashamed” and try more of “i should generously try to understand what they mean and ask questions to get there instead of raging at any perceived weakness”