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Is it normal to be basically incapable of perceiving nasalization in speech? And can that be solved? (hub.azkware.net)
submitted 6 days ago by to c/languagelearning@sopuli.xyz
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I've been dabbling recreationally in a few languages, checking their phonetic repertoire, and one thing that's making me very confused is my apparent inability to tell nasalized sounds apart from the non-nasalized ones. For instance, Portuguese with its nasalized vowels is giving me major problems, since it's often the case that nasalization is a minimal pair (for example, to me "avó" sounds exactly the same as "avõ"). And Mandarin Chinese has the distinction between final "n" and "ng", again, often a minimal pair, so to me "mēn" sounds exactly like "mēng". At least in English there's not such a reliance in minimal pairs between "n" and "ng", and you can make do pronouncing /ŋ/ as a separate /ng/, or even a plain /n/ for -ing verb endings. Is my problem too unusual? (Couldn't find any data online on difficulties hearing them apart, only on difficulties pronouncing them correctly.) And can I do anything to help me tell them apart more reliably?

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[–] [S] 3 points 6 days ago (1 child)

I'm a Spanish speaker, and in that language nasals don't get used much besides of the obvious m/n contrast. I don't have access to native speakers, and in the minimal pair listening tests (for Chinese endings at least) it's basically a coin flip to me. I read somewhere that it's also becoming a problem for Beijing speakers, that sometimes can no longer can tell "n" and "ng" apart: jstor.org/stable/23756149

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  • [–] 4 points 6 days ago

    In most (in all, afaik, but there are a lot, so I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush) dialects of Spanish, /n/ and /ŋ/ are allophones, with /ŋ/ occurring preceding another velar sound, like the n in cinco, conga or conquistador (I’m sorry for the examples, they’re just the first ones that come to mind).

    Maybe try contrasting cinco:cinto and conga:conta at first (or other minimal pairs with an n preceding a velar consonant vs an n preceding any other phone). It should be easier to distinguish in your native language first, then to apply it to languages you’re learning.

    Even if you’re 50:50 on minimal pairs in Spanish, if you practice it for a few minutes most days, you should see some improvement.

    If you don’t after several weeks, there might be an auditory issue or something similar (or you might just need a different approach, though this is generally the fastest way to sensitize yourself afaik), but that still won’t prevent you from being able to become fluent if that’s your goal- you just might have an accent and need to clarify some things. But given that Beijingers are beginning to blend the sounds, you might also encounter few issues related to this that get in the way of fluency.

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