Question for Second Language Learners

Azren the Language Nerd

Azren the Language Nerd

I Love YTtalk
I was wondering: is anyone here learning a second language? If yes, what are some sounds that you struggle with in the language? For example, some people learning Spanish find it difficult to roll their Rs.

Since I have a language learning YouTube channel, I am looking for some video ideas. I'm making videos about correct pronunciation right now, and that's why I was wondering! :)
 
I'm learning spanish in school and I have another cool video topic. It's relating words to english words (not cognates though). For example, la estufa is stove/oven and a way I remembered it was "I need to estufa this food in the oven." It's a weird study habit but it works.
 
When I learned Swedish as a 3rd, using their number 7 as an example, the "sj" in "sju" is difficult for me. Got made fun of a lot by the locals for that hahaha In Korean, the L R soft roll I'm struggling with. Growing up speaking Tagalog makes my R's roll hard but their L/R is somewhere literally between L and R as far as pronunciation goes.
 
Hi Azren the Language Nerd! So for me, English is actually my second language. I started learning it by the age of 5 or 6 and I didn't really know a lot back then. YouTube helped me a lot. Just watching other peoples videos helped me a lot. Sometimes I tend to mix English and American words so it might be fun to do something with that. (Like color / colour and favourite / favorite). My first language is Dutch (unfortunately haha) and I realised (or realized lol) that a lot of people learning Dutch have difficulties pronounching the 'ch' part.

I don't know if I was useful but hey, I kinda wanted to say what I wanted to say because today has been a s****y day haha.

Goodluck Azren!

PS. I actually talk English in all my videos and I'm not going to change that since I like doing it. However... I don't speak it perfectly. Since you're THE Language Nerd, do you mind grading my English pronunciation? That would be greatly appreciated but of course, you don't have to.
 
notjamie said:
I'm learning spanish in school and I have another cool video topic. It's relating words to english words (not cognates though). For example, la estufa is stove/oven and a way I remembered it was "I need to estufa this food in the oven." It's a weird study habit but it works.
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I've heard of people doing that actually haha, it works well!!! Thanks for the suggestion :)[DOUBLEPOST=1472953852,1472953765][/DOUBLEPOST]
Xaenca said:
When I learned Swedish as a 3rd, using their number 7 as an example, the "sj" in "sju" is difficult for me. Got made fun of a lot by the locals for that hahaha In Korean, the L R soft roll I'm struggling with. Growing up speaking Tagalog makes my R's roll hard but their L/R is somewhere literally between L and R as far as pronunciation goes.
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Interesting, I'll need to look up those sounds, I'm not familiar with what they sound like! How many languages do you speak by the way?
 
Azren the Language Nerd said:
I've heard of people doing that actually haha, it works well!!! Thanks for the suggestion :)[DOUBLEPOST=1472953852,1472953765][/DOUBLEPOST]

Interesting, I'll need to look up those sounds, I'm not familiar with what they sound like! How many languages do you speak by the way?
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Korean would be the 4th I'm trying to learn :)
 
DuncanT said:
Hi Azren the Language Nerd! So for me, English is actually my second language. I started learning it by the age of 5 or 6 and I didn't really know a lot back then. YouTube helped me a lot. Just watching other peoples videos helped me a lot. Sometimes I tend to mix English and American words so it might be fun to do something with that. (Like color / colour and favourite / favorite). My first language is Dutch (unfortunately haha) and I realised (or realized lol) that a lot of people learning Dutch have difficulties pronounching the 'ch' part.

I don't know if I was useful but hey, I kinda wanted to say what I wanted to say because today has been a s****y day haha.

Goodluck Azren!

PS. I actually talk English in all my videos and I'm not going to change that since I like doing it. However... I don't speak it perfectly. Since you're THE Language Nerd, do you mind grading my English pronunciation? That would be greatly appreciated but of course, you don't have to.
Click to expand...

Duncan, thank you very much for this comment! That's interesting that Dutch speaked struggle with the ch sound. Is there a reason for that? I.e does the sound not exist at all in Dutch or something? What do Dutch people tend to say instead of ch?

I watched your "Dumb People on the Internet video" about 3 times now to see what pronunciation tips I could give you. Generally, your pronunciation is very good! You sound more British than American I would say. 1 piece of advice to help you sound more native: be mindful of how you pronounce the letter "p". Often you are either:

1. Pronouncing the p as a "b" sound.
2. Pronouuncing the p without any "aspiration". In other words, if you were go put your hand directly in front of your mouth as you say a "p", you wouldn't feel any air hit your hand. In English, a "p" should have aspiration. In other words, it''s almost like a "p" with a small "h" sound right after.

If you have snapchat, I can snap you a video outlining the differences between what you're doing, and what a native speaker would do, if you want :)[DOUBLEPOST=1472954815,1472954770][/DOUBLEPOST]
Xaenca said:
Korean would be the 4th I'm trying to learn :)
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Wow you're talented!
 
Toast Gaming said:
My wife is learning French and has difficulty pronouncing the r in the back of the throat as well as getting used to dropping the last constants on most words.
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Ah the "French R" is a classic one that people struggle with. A tip that may help her: have her gargle some water. You use the exact same muscles to gargle water as making a French R. As a matter of fact, a French R is essentially gargling without any water in your mouth, haha.

I've made a video about it, if your wife ever wants more details on that.
 
Man, there are so many friggin' languages I wanna learn. Honestly just language and the origins of words are SUPER interesting to me, but especially so with non-latin-based languages. Cyrillic alphabets are amazing and I want to learn Russian so bad, I just always get distracted!
 
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