What are some sounds that are found in other languages that are not found in English?

Question

one example:
Spanish "rr" = trill; vibration of tongue against alveolar ridge

how would you teach an English-speaker how to say them?

actually, the "ng" sound is in english....

Answer 1

There is an "r" in Chinese that I cannot make. And apparently, there is an Alaskan language that has an additional "k" sound that we can't hear. I remember seeing a documentary about Alaskan babies being conditioned to look for their mothers when they heard that "k" sound. The babies who didn't come from that language group never looked for their mothers when the sound was made, but the ones who did looked for their mothers when they heard the special "k", but not the regular English "k". It was interesting.

I have no idea how to make those sounds, so I can't use any knowledge of phonetics to teach them. Sorry. A lot of English speakers or French speakers, etc., make the y sound instead of the r sound when they are speaking Chinese. I can hear that that is not right, but I cannot figure out how to make it the correct way, and no one has explained it to me in any way that makes sense to me.

In Czech, there is a very difficult r sound to make. It's the r with the hacek (upside down circumflex) over it. As in Dvorak. You have to roll the r and make a soft j sound at the same time. A lot of Czech people can't even make the sound, but that's because they can't roll their r's. The sounds actually exist in English. However, in Czech and a lot of other European languages the p's and t's are not as aspirated as they are in English. It is very difficult for English speakers to even hear the difference between a t and a d or a p and a b, but it's there. I used to have my students practice with a small fleck of tissue on their hands. A Czech student making the T or the P sounds would not move the fleck of tissue, but when I made those sounds for them, the fleck would go flying through the air.

Answer 2

There are so many! Most students in introduction to linguistics classes learn to analyze sounds by the place in the vocal tract where they are made and the manner of articulation. Once you discover what the different places and manners are, you can often make many non-English sounds just by thinking about it and trying.

See this site, which has a chart that describes the sounds of all the world's languages. This chart is used to describe the IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet. It's an alphabet that has a symbol for every known sound in the world's languages. You can click on the chart and listen to examples of the sounds.
http://phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter1/chapter1.html

Answer 3

Bush men in Africa speak like birds with a lot of clucking sounds in the back of the throat,like they do with the zulu and matabele language ,very difficult to imitate

and the mazateca Indians in Oaxaca in guerrero Mexico ,where i lived for a while ,have a second language that is just by whistling ,and they have whole conversations by doing that whilst they are hundreds of metres away from each other ,like the yodeling in the Alps

all of these are languages , are alien to English as far as similar sounds are concerned
the Orient and Asia must also have strange sounds ,and the Papua ,or Aboriginese

Answer 4

The "sounds" of languages are called "phonemes" and we are masters of the phonemes of our native languages.
I studied arabic and it has several phonemes not present in the English language such as the "ayn" "khaa" and "ghayn," just to name a few. I think that the best way to learn how to pronounce unfamiliar phonemes is with a lot of practice both listening to native speakers and maniuplating your mouth, toungue,lungs, and vocal cords to produce the sound. Some people can master these sounds from practice, others never will...it all depends on the individual. I would imagine, though, that when it comes to tonal languages such as Chinese, it is much harder for English speakers to recognize the differences in tones because Engilsh is not a tonal language and English speakers therefore, are not accustomed to distinuguishing between tones of the same vowel/consonant. So it would probably take them a lot longer to learn to speak these types of languages.

Answer 5

Well, this doesn't really count because it IS in the english language, but in german the "ts" sound (like at the end of cats) can come at the beginning of the word. It's possible, and easy if you practice it, but if you're a native english speaker it's very akward at first.... But another answer... i guess there's that weird clicking sound that the african tribes make. Just watch an episode of South Park with Starvin' Marvin and you'll see it.

Answer 6

There are a number of sounds in Mandarin Chinese that are not in english. For example:
-日ri (kind of like a long er sound)
-the u with the accent above it (as in 旅) think of the sound of a light saber... sorry, that is kind of hte best way that I can explain it...

Answer 7

The French u, which also exists in German and Mandarin.

Mandarin has two sh sounds, two ch sounds, and two j sounds. In each case neither correspond well with the English sound.

The 'r' sound in Mandarin, which may correspond to that difficult r sound in Czech.

Answer 8

In my second language of spanish you roll the R's.

This is How its written RR

Thinkof trying to imitate a purring cat. remember to keep your toung close to your teeth in order to make the rolling rr's sound sharp.

Answer 9

Add to spanish the ´´ñ´´, i would teach this by adding the letter i (which sounds ih in spanish) before every vowel followed by the ñ. Also pronunce it like you would be using an n. Like the word: ñú, just say it like niu.

Answer 10

Oh yeah the way those bushman talk with the clicking that would be hard. I can't tell you exact sounds but other languages like french make noises thru their noses that we don't do.