One of the things I love about learning is figuring out the why. I have a long list of words that I find consistently mispronounced across the board here in China.
Money is pronounced "marney."
Any word ending with an "us" sound is pronounced "rs". For example, "famous" is pronounced "famurse" "campus" as "campurse" etc.
I've figured out why! This month my tutor is from the Northeast, and has the kind of accent called "r hua" which means you add an "r" sound into a lot of your words. "ben" becomes "ber" "men" becomes "mer" and oddly enough words like "kong" and "ping" become "kongr" and "pingr". So today when we were working on English time at the end of tutoring, he said, I want to improve my pronunciation, how can I do that, I was able to tell him, don't use "r hua" when you speak English and you'll improve! Once I pointed his attention in that direction, his pronunciation immediately improved. I was so glad to figure out what was going on and be able to help him in just a few minutes. Learning Chinese is making me a better English teacher as I understand the structure of Chinese and where the mistakes come from!
Money is pronounced "marney."
Any word ending with an "us" sound is pronounced "rs". For example, "famous" is pronounced "famurse" "campus" as "campurse" etc.
I've figured out why! This month my tutor is from the Northeast, and has the kind of accent called "r hua" which means you add an "r" sound into a lot of your words. "ben" becomes "ber" "men" becomes "mer" and oddly enough words like "kong" and "ping" become "kongr" and "pingr". So today when we were working on English time at the end of tutoring, he said, I want to improve my pronunciation, how can I do that, I was able to tell him, don't use "r hua" when you speak English and you'll improve! Once I pointed his attention in that direction, his pronunciation immediately improved. I was so glad to figure out what was going on and be able to help him in just a few minutes. Learning Chinese is making me a better English teacher as I understand the structure of Chinese and where the mistakes come from!
