LANGUAGE
CHALLENGE
When it comes to learning a language, the most difficult thing is the pronunciation. Saying a word correctly is tough. Saying it with accent is even tougher.
4 year living in the UK can not help me speak English perfectly. There are words that I feel like I nearly have to break my tongue to say it. If you want to invite me to have a coffee at Shepherd's Bush, please do not ask me to say that name. I can not say it, literally, can not. Although I tried a thousand times, I can only say <Seperd's bush>.
One time when we drove pass a small village near the West coast, Stephen showed me some small houses that looked like big mushrooms and people call them "thatched houses". I tried to learn saying "There are thousand of thatched houses" and for some reason I could not say it properly, especially the 2 words "thatched houses".
Stephen has recently come across a hard Vietnamese pronunciation. It is said that speaking Vietnamese is like singing a song as there are a lot of tones and accents in it. So if you have a good voice, you would be good at Vietnamese. :)
And I bet you might change your mind after you watch this video:
The funny thing is, when your language sounds normal to you, it sounds very different to foreigners, especially when they are not used to it. Stephen said Vietnamese sounded like "dong, dong, dong, dong..." to him and the way he speaks it is like Combodian or Chinese.
Although we are having difficulties in speaking each other's languages, we are actually speaking the same language now. And that language helps us understand each other without verbally speaking a word.
23 September 2016