I’m Japanese. When I was a high school student, I practiced English L and R sounds hard because I wanted to sing Carly Rae Jepsen’s ”I really like you.” I mastered them at last!
Most Americans are very lucky to know English as a first language, but we don't really have any use for a second language, English is enough to get by pretty much anywhere on earth.
@@bannanafruitsalad I think we have a hard time keeping these things in context. We're all so quick to discredit everything with new information and then retroactively apply it. Especially when we're calling it out almost 20 years after the production.
My tone work is not that great but most Chinese people can understand your meaning based on the context of the situation if you don't strike the correct tone. For example, if your ma (the word used to mean you're asking a question) comes at the end of your sentence, even if you say ma (horse) they will probably understand that you are asking for their name and not telling them that their name is horse. :-)
@@ahmadsheikhali6177 wanting a particular genre of content can be determined at the start, I too want more linguistics videos because I think they are great.
This was one of the best videos I've ever seen. Empowering accents, understanding language, the whole package without losing the entertainment of the video. Great job! We should embrace whenever someone is talking in our language, even more so if they are struggling to do that!
U rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr extremely RIGHT...ask me! Am from Cuba and this video is so identical of what I went through 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 I used to say 3 instead of three, Banessa instead of Vanessa and the list goes on and on and on,,😂😂😂😂😂
I started speaking English and Korean around the same time and learned both at the same pace. I always knew about this but the video took it to a whole new level. Good job.
So in conclusion,it is ironic that English speakers laugh at people who make a lot of effort to learn other languages while they themselves cant complete one Chinese phrase.
Many Americans probably can't say a single sentence in ANY other language. Much of the rest of the world speaks 2 languages or more. This is similar to the Americans interviewed in the street who can not identify a single country on a map of the world. Not even the United States.
I have the biggest trouble in English with s and z. My native dialect of German does not distinguish them, we only have s, and it's really difficult sometimes to pronounce the z for me.
I might look at you funny when, after you have petted my cat, you say in German accented English, "your cat is fussy!" Meanwhile, I'm thinking, no, he's quite calm! I think the French have the tick of sticking Zs in where Th should be. Of course, English speakers are fairly familiar with both German and French accented English, so it's not hard for us to understand.
I tried, I really did! So many sounds in Mandarin are unlike anything in English. Japanese was way simpler to speak so far as the phonetics are concerned.
except the fact that no english speaker would bother learning chinese so while you got only handful of people to laugh at there are flooding chinese immigrants that americans can make fun of
If you're unfamiliar with tonal languages, you really have to concentrate to hear the tone differences. Even those of us who speak a tonal language can get confused when listening to another tonal language.
I think it's a lot easier to understand tones when you know what they are, though. Tones are just a change in pitch. In Mandarin, tones either are high, go from low to high, go from high(ish) to low then to high again, or go from high to low. Listen for the pitch, and you might be able to distinguish them.
I already knew the different mas from university studying linguistics and so I encoutered first in written form, before actually hearing them. I'm a completely unmusical person and neither can I imagine what eg a "falling-rising" tone actually sounds like nor can say that a tone is falling-rising when I hear it. But there is a difference between the mas that usually Westerners unbeknownst of tonal languages will notice. It is a lot easier to dinguish the Mandarin sounds if you connect then not with abstract pitch changes, but with emotions or communicative intents. For me they are like normal 'ma' ma? (I guess that's the easiest) grumpy 'ma' shrugging/that's it 'ma'
@@randomco.9349 its the 3rd one that is the hardest imo. Because the second and fourth tones, (rising and falling) are both given the same large degree of pitch change
As a Japanese speaker, the hardest English word to pronounce is: parallel. French and German "R" is harder though. Edit: I am surprised that so many reactions there are! And it reminded me again that I should not be having fear of bad pronounciation, but should speak with courage. Thank you guys, and Vox!
@@QuantumEcho7 That is indeed difficult one that has an extra R, but has no "dark L" sounds, which I cannot manage even if I try to pronounce them so slowly :)
Mizuki Hagimoto You know, something I noticed in this video is how they refer to ‘fur’ pronouncing the R in particular - but the two people discussing that are American and Scottish, they would lol - as for an RP accent, the R is often glossed over in a dark sense, and is probably harder for you to pronounce in a similar way? “Fur” not “Ferrr” lol
@@QuantumEcho7 Ah, dialects make problem complicated and funny:) For me, "fur" isn't so hard to just pronounce because Japanese has no similar sound (I find it completely different from L or R). Of course I often don't get which sound I should pronounce though.
An easy trick with dark L's: pronounce them as W's. That's how they're pronounced across much of England, and if anyone protests you can just point out that they're claiming the English don't know how to pronounce English ;-)
Excellent video! It explains a question I've been asking for decades. I love foreign languages and accents. I want to know why it is so hard for me to pronounce words using other accents. The fact that it takes up to 5 years to understand the difference between W and R makes me wish I was exposed to more languages as a kid. I hope more videos like this one come up in my feed.
This was great, and I'd like more linguistics videos. Could you do one on tones? The Chinese tones here are presented without explanation, but I wish someone could break down exactly what Chinese speakers do with their voice the way you broke down how the different r and l sounds are made in the mouth.
As a person with Chinese parents and with Chinese as a second language, I'd say the tones are mainly about the voice box, not the mouth. There are four, technically five tones, which change how you say it. The first one, a straight line, makes you pronounce the character in a "flat" way. The second tone, the one that looks like a forward slash, makes you raise your pitch at the end like it's a question. The fourth tone, the one that looks like a backslash, makes you say the word with force and sort of fast. The third tone, a "V" shaped one, sort of combines the fourth and second ones. The fifth tone, is a lack of a tone on the pinyin, resembles the first tone, but it's slightly different in a way i can't really explain. Sometimes, the pronunciation of the vowels themselves change with the tone change.
FYI "Chinese" is not a singular language. The official language Mandarin are spoken very differently in different area in China. Southern Chinese languages have more tones than the Northern Language (eg. 9 tones in Cantonese vs just 4 in Mandarin). Many regional languages or dialect are even mutually unintelligible, even though they can all be written in the same word. The South languages have actually retained tones and vocabularies found in ancient writings, songs and poems that are otherwise not used in Mandarin.
@@anorexorcist4472 funnily enough, the Indonesian word 'Inggris' (meaning England) was a loanword from Japanese, which is why there is an 'r' where 'L' should be. This happened during the japanese occupation of Indonesia during 1942-1945. Before the occupation, some Indonesian texts used the word 'Inglandia' instead of 'Inggris' to call the English/British (yes, indonesian does not make a distinction between those two things). That's why Indonesians call england 'Inggris' despite the fact that Indonesian distinguishes between L and R quite easily.
There's a Chinese man who works near my house with a perfect Dublin accent, a Dublin accent maybe isn't as cute as a more Hollywood 'Irish accent' - but with time anyone will develop the accent.
I believe the variety of English taught in Korean schools is American English, isn't it? That certainly doesn't make it any easier to pronounce 'world', because you actually have to pronounce both the R and the L, which non-Rhotic varieties like British or Australian English don't do; they only pronounce the L in 'world'.
When I was younger, I used to get really confused by the Ra Ra Ra jokes directed at Chinese. I speak Cantonese natively and we freaking put 'la' after every other sentence.
@@kurosujiomake Filipinos don't add "la" after ever sentence. Just "eh", and "ah". Also depends on the native language we're speaking and the locality.
THANK YOU for producing this video! I grew up as a Japanese immigrant in a small town in Midwest, and bullies and ignorant people alike “imitating” my family and me by speaking with l’s and r’s mixed up really got on my nerves. I’ve also been told by friends who would watch movies like “Lost in Translation” and tell me that it’s so hilarious, I HAVE to watch it. They don’t get how the bullying hurt me so badly when I was growing up as the only nonwhite kid in town.
I’m teaching English in Japan and this always throws me off. I can speak Spanish and English (the kids go wild when I speak in Spanish and roll my Rs), but I don’t see how R and L are similar, so I never know how to explain the difference to my students. It just came up recently too when we were teaching our third graders the English alphabet. I wrote my name (which has an L and an R) and the first question we got almost immediately was from a kid who asked why two different letters were being used to represent the same sound and why I wasn’t using an R in both places. It broke my brain because I don’t see how the sound is similar at all. Even his teacher didn’t know what to say (she’s fluent in English) and she just dismissed it and told him it was advanced English and he would learn about it later.
Here we roll the R letter and thinking L and R is same letter seems absurd lol ;) But it explains a lot why Japanese and similar is so bad at speaking English and specially the Japanese keep inserting R where there is non....
@@troys1426 ??? Do you mean that the joke was that Chinese people don't have difficulties pronouncing r's and l's? If it was, then it was a pretty bad joke.
Oh man! That new Observatory intro is sweet! Who knew that R's could be so interesting!? The whole idea with telling people what shape to make with their tongue is kind of like trying to describe a colour...kind of!
im taiwanese and the way those chinese pronounce is very inaccurate, they totally pronounce characters wrong some people from PRC dont really have good education and Vox put them into the video just because they're native speakers? what a joke ! for instance 7:38 靚 零 嶺 she pronounces those all wrong !
It's the tone like when you go upwards, higher if it's a question (/)and down when you end a sentence (\). For example No? No. you would say those same words differently. Only in Chinese or Vietnamese too (I'm Vietnamese) the tone would make another word even if it is spelt with the same letters but then again it still wouldn't be the same word because in Vietnamese you write the tone accents (è,é) and you must not forget them because they're essential for understanding
I learnt Chinese language when i was small, its hard to learn and distinguish that sound. As i communicate with my friend informally, they dont seem really care. As long as they understand the sentence and context.
@@NICHOLSON7777 my friends say I'm fine with ㄹ at this point but I'm still a bit iffy on the double consonants. It's been 2 years and the struggle continues!
For that English R, as a Hungarian, I can assure you, we all struggle with it even if our language has a distinction between L-R, since that specific R is not within our consonant inventory at all. In fact, most indo-european and some Asian langauges wither only have trilled or flapped R's, but that "slurred" English R is very rarely present. I have a friend who has a speech impediment in that he cannot roll his R's, but slurs them, this is why he was able to "learn " to pronounce this variant, and he always joked with "I didn't even have to learn the sound, I just spoke normally" XD
Let me put it simply as a Korean: 라면(ramen) and 레몬(lemon) have 'ㄹ' at the beginning. The 'l' or 'r' sound in English is automatically converted into 'ㄹ' in Korean. (Well there is no sound in Korean that is equivalent to 'r' in English. So 'r' is converted into 'ㄹ' which sounds almost the same to 'l.')
I speak Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and English, and I can tell you that once you know one or the other (besides English) it’s pretty easy to learn the languages because all of them has a similar pronunciation. They also use the same characters like 美, which means pretty in all three of them. What’s hard is learning those languages FROM English, especially Chinese because of Pin Yin.
what do you mean still care bout Cantonese? c'mon man, we mainland chinese needs it to survival in chinatown in canada and murica. also Cantonese songs are great!
@@JLee-xl4dt Im not going to start a fight here with you but here is a thing, do you really trust media information that comes from a .com? not saying the government wasnt forcing the mandarin but the first few search result are some of those sketchy web that trying to poke around for attention
@@JLee-xl4dt you see what your government wants you to see (vice versa). your media is filtered thru google.com.HK not saying HK media is bad, Im on neither side. I have a lot of HK friends here in US. most of them admit that people in HK are quite obnoxious about mainland chinese goverment. and thats one way to grafting your domestic depressions to a imaginary enemy. in this case, not imaginary, the evil guys in Beijing. I dont like chinese government as well. But hey, we dont have a choice, aint we? I never worried about the suppressing Cantonese thing at all and never will be. As a HongKong local, you should know that Cantonese is not just a language, its a big fat bag of culture that roots deep in hundreds of millions of people. you really think this class of government can take away your dim sum or washing your cup and bowls with fresh tea in front of surprised non-locals? or change everything you do as a cool Cantonese? you can read some history. the whole Chinese history is about some outside power came in tryna assimilate us but got bent around. they all became one of us.... I really hate talking about politics. and please forgive my trashy english. French is not my first language
I remember when my Japanese uncle wants to play games, he said "let's pray" he recently changed religion so I thought he wanted me to teach him how to pray I was walking to get the equipment but then he has this confused look and I realized he meant play because he was holding a controller
I have masters degrees in linguistics and speech-language pathology, and I thought this video was very well done! The visuals were excellent, and the examples were on point!! 👏👏👍👍💖💖
@@mandykillriff6854 misses degrees don't go on to get a master's too. Your median Speech Language Pathologist salary in the US is $80K, well above average. So nope sorry.
Haha, no surprise you had to find a Scottish Scientist to explain R's. Scots have a chance. The rest of the anglophones are pretty much hopeless with R
Scottish rolled Rs are just fairly uncommon R sound. Even in English received pronunciation, it more likely to be a soft R sound. My dad (who's from Glasgow) thought me and my brother has a speech impediment when we couldn't do it. It's just a very different phoneme.
@@DDD033 Anglophone: 1. Adjective: English speaking i.e. "The population is largely anglophile" 2. Noun: An english speaking person. Scottish people have the ability to make a specific spiky r sound much more commonly than native english people due to Scottish english having been influenced a fair bit by scottish gaelic (The language of scottish highlanders). This is why Tilman was saying a Scot was the best person to explain the 'r' sound, as they have a superior ability or proficiency in producing all the different 'r's.
The R in English is actually one of the most uncommon consonant sounds in the entire IPA. Your mouth does this weird thing that isn't even close to any other sound. That's why children and foreign speakers have the hardest time with that letter. It's interesting to note that this sound is even somewhat uncommon among English speakers. An American says "color" and someone from England pronounces it like "coluh." In the Harry Potter movies, the pronunciation of Harry's name is always open: "Ha-ree." But us Americans say "Hair-ee"- once again using that strong awkward R..... An R so awkward you don't realize how awkward it is until you notice that, despite it being a very English-y sound, most English speakers don't even pronounce it 👀
actually the korean draw the tounge position, like ㄱㅋㄴㅅㅈㅊ, or mouth shape like ㅂㅍㅁㅎ, so u might understand, why the 'r' is so complicated, because they draw it like this: ㄹ
Plus the types of accents Burmese people use when speaking in English are: 1. You stop at every one or two words (Mostly boys ig since the boys in my class are always like this) 2. You try really hard to sound fluent. But put emphasis at many words, mostly on r’s. 3. The good one. You don’t really sound fluent but you ain’t bad either. A+ for effort
I am late to the party but this was very well explained video. The visuals helped a lot. While I still don't fully comprehend, how languages evolved in different parts of the world is so fascinating. The first time I heard about the l/r swap, was that the lululemon founder intentionally named his brand with lot's of L's so it would be hard for folks from eastern asian to pronounce it. If you work or live in a space with a variety of accents somehow mind trains after a while to just understand without really crystallizing rules like mentioned here in the video.
I totally agree that you don't need to sound like a native speaker, but accent must not be too heavy, because at the end of the day you want to be understood. For example, if I learnt Mandarin, I want to make sure when I want to say mom, I don't say horse.
Actually many people do not speak with the right tones and are still understood by the context in which words are used. That is true for most non-native speakers of Chinese languages. What is more important to be comprehensible is the consistency of the deviation from the standard. If I say lice every time I mean rice, or if I say there are tree children in the playground, you should catch on to what I mean pretty soon.
as an east asian girl who struggles with diction on a daily basis + a linguistics nerd i LOVE this video sm omg my tuesday has been made *edit:* also these graphics are so good!! much appreciation 😍
When the listener has trouble understanding you, why do you automatically assume the problem is with your diction? If you speak English with a thick accent, then that's just how you speak English When an English/Russian man speaks with a thick Cockney/Russian accent, do you see them apologizing to the listener? Do you see any listener telling them they need to learn to speak better English? No, they just accept that's how they speak, because they are an English/Russian, and the listener just have to put in more effort if they want to understand what they are saying In fact some listener might even find their accent sexy or attractive So why is it OK when they speak with a thick accent, but when you, an East Asian girl, do the same, it becomes a problem? People who make fun of your accent or think that you need to learn to speak "better" English are just closeted racists, who are low-key hating on your origin If they can put in the effort to understand someone with a thick French/German/Italian/Russian/whatever accent, they can certainly put in the same effort to understand you Wake up girl
@@grubbybum3614 If someone cannot even string together a cohesive sentence that makes sense, for sure, I would say that person need to improve his or her command of the language But judging by the OP's post, you can tell that her command of the language is just fine, perhaps even better than most native English speakers What she seems to struggle with is the perception that her English does not "sound right" But Aussies, Brits, Americans, they all sound vastly different and easily distinguishable when speaking English - whose accent is "correct"? Obvious answer is none - they are all acceptable And you have other Europeans like the Italians, French, Germans, Russians, who often speak with heavy and very recognizable accents as well - and their accents are sometimes even portrayed as a desirable thing So why is it when an East Asian girl speaks with an East Asian accent, she needs to "LOL improve her English"? Like I said, it's just the closeted racists trying to use her accent in an attempt to degrade her and mock her for her origins
@@yuenhai. When we talk about Aussies, Kiwi's etc it's not that other nations perceive them as not speaking English correctly. IE. Accents aren't the issue. If somebody says "2 dollar" instead of "2 dollars", or "impossibru" instead of "impossible" - those are issues with control of the language. And they can be improved with professional help. I take it that you think somebody who stutters shouldn't see a speech pathologist, either? A speech therapist would also help a foreigner pronounce English words correctly.
And then there’s the dreaded “th”...it took me so long to actually get it. Even as I spoke English quite fluently (it was my second language) it took me time
There are two 'th' sounds and they are some of the very last sounds learned by English speaking children, at around age 5. Some children need the help of speech therapists to finally make them.
That's because the letter F and V doesn't exist in our original alphabet or especifically in Baybayin. that's why we switch to Roman Alphabet since the Spaniards are having a hard time using Baybayin to try to communicate with our ancestors.
At least Mexicans are culturally similar to other latinos, and can sometimes look the same. Japan and China are very different cultures, its like comparing an Iranian to a Greek, perhaps even more different.
To be honest, I have to say differences between Korean, Japanese, and (Han) Chinese is only an insider one, anybody of those three ethnicities can distinguish, but nobody else. It's like a difference between different European ethnic groups
According to phonetics/phonology, the English language also have a "flap R" sound, which is - a little - similar to the japanese R sound in some ways. It is really common in the American English Dialect and can be found in words such as "waTer", "naTive", "meTal", "meDal", "moDel", "coDing", "weirDest", "sturDy", etc. (Mostly, T and D between vowels or after a bunched/retroflex R sound.) Native speakers usually say it is a "D sound", if asked about it or when explaining it.
@@honka4ever Out of the CANZUK coutries, only the UK doesn't have that. Then again, we have been influenced by American media enough that we are beginning to.
As an Asian, I was scared to click on this video and see how badly they mix up the different Asian languages. Was very pleasantly surprised, this was super well done
Those (for me as a Dutch cheese head) VERY similar sounding Cantonese and mandarin words at the end put the entire video into perspective. Was hoping that'd go on for a few minutes straight! xD
Thanks for this explanation, it makes a lot of sense. I'm an Spanish native speaker and it's very difficult for me to differentiate the tones in different vowels from Japanese, Korean and Mandarin. I love those languages for how complex and poetic they can be.
Im Korean 16 yrs old and speak 4 languages. Im decent only in Korean and still learning the others(English,Japanese, and Spanish). This video was extremely helpful for me!! I thought English L sound, Korean ㄹ sound, Japanese ら、り、る、れ、ろ sound and Spanish R sound were almost the same and pronounced it same. But I cant still distinguish rrr and lll well and have no idea about how to distinguish Chinese tones... I know there is difference but I cant hear it and pronounce it accurately.
Ikr! I'm a Spanish (from my family) and English speaker (living in US) . And I'm teaching myself Korean. But the r and l in Korean is so hard to differentiate like it sounds the same to me especially other letters in the Korean alphabet. But I'm fully aware they're not! But I'm still interested in learning Korean and korean culture to give up :)
@@kendrithsuero9924 yup me too! Spanish is my mother tongue, but my brain works in Spanglish and I'm trying to learn korean by myself too. And yes.. It is hard. Lots of different sounds
Same with P,F all being pronounced by ㅍ so i hear many times koreans saying fizza and fineapple while say presh and plute. When i teach them how to use their tongues for the accents, usually it solves the problem. 3.5개국어 하는 사람으로서 4개국어 부럽네
많이 연습하면, 할 수 있을까요! 저 1년 동안 한국말 공부해요. ㄹ의 소리 가끔 어려웠지만, 많이 공부하면, 저 말할수 있어요 화이팅!! If you practice a lot, you can do it. I have studied Korean for 1 year. The sound of ㄹ is often hard, but if I practice, I can do it.
I like the comparison between tones and r-sounds. Tones are basically invisible to me, but speaking English, French, and Spanish I have exposure to a lot of varied Rs. So intimidated by trying to learn tones though, arghhhh
That must come from spanish, I presume. Ph and F are the same sound (Although Ph is almost never used now). B and V sound exactly the same. The difference only exist to piss off kids at school.
The lack of an "r" sound was probably the biggest thing I noticed when I started learning to speak 廣東話. I've always had trouble with that sound in English though, so no biggie dropping it in a new language.
@@somestuff7876 Chinese je as in Beijing, sounds like the Cyrillic letter "ж". Chinese zhe sounds like the Cyrillic digraph "дж", often Latinized as dzh, which is the English J. Compare J. R. R. Tolkein's name John, spelled as Dzhon (Джон), and Dr Zhivago's name "Живаго". They really should've switched J and ZH in Pinyin, but then it wouldn't fit the pattern of single letter representing a softer sound, as the diagraph represents a hard sound. Like Q and CH, as well as X and SH. CH and SH represent the strong version of these sounds as these letters represent in English, while Q and X respectively represent soft versions.
I’m Japanese. When I was a high school student, I practiced English L and R sounds hard because I wanted to sing Carly Rae Jepsen’s ”I really like you.” I mastered them at last!
Congratulations! それはすごいね！
Great effort, terrible motivation 😅
@@pedropereira5043 you mean terrific
That sounds like it must have been really fun. Good for you !
i learry rike you
And don't laugh at people with accents. Accents means that the person knows more than one language.
what no it doesnt. americans have american accents, english people have english accents.
Don’t laugh at anything.
@MJR well i just laughed at ur comment HA
Yes you can laugh at them...it means they are too lazy to study first week of pronunciation when learning a foreign language...Edited
Eugenio Vincenzo ok boomer
americans mocking asian's capability to learn other language is like laughing at themselves for knowing only one.
Ah yes, imagine being a monolingual
@@primodei Kann man sich kaum vorstellen
i died
Most Americans are very lucky to know English as a first language, but we don't really have any use for a second language, English is enough to get by pretty much anywhere on earth.
@@zackiechan2601 just shows you really know nothing about the world...
"Two Americans who are sad in japan" The best summery for a film I ever heard.
and cant talk to them
Most overrated movie ever
I much prefer springy films, myself
@@charliemilroy6497 hard disagree, it's very of the time and white-centric, but the characters are so well developed. Hits hard with that in mind imho
@@bannanafruitsalad I think we have a hard time keeping these things in context. We're all so quick to discredit everything with new information and then retroactively apply it. Especially when we're calling it out almost 20 years after the production.
Accent is just your language with the rules of their language. -Trevor Noah 2018
Boi
cool
Chuck Fina 🤣
I thought he said:
"accent is speaking a foreign language with the rules of your own language"
@@烏梨師斂 Same difference.
I was smugly cruising through the video until I got wrecked by the tones at the end
Riiight? My eyes were literally like ○.○
Haha me too.
I want to learn an Asain language. But it’s too difficult for us who speak Romance language. :(
Lol same
My tone work is not that great but most Chinese people can understand your meaning based on the context of the situation if you don't strike the correct tone. For example, if your ma (the word used to mean you're asking a question) comes at the end of your sentence, even if you say ma (horse) they will probably understand that you are asking for their name and not telling them that their name is horse. :-)
This is a great video Joss! It’d be cool to see more linguistic videos.
posted 40 mins ago; commented 35 mins ago; video 9 mins long. watch the video first then decide on whether it's a great video or not- VOX
This video is so racist
@@ahmadsheikhali6177 wanting a particular genre of content can be determined at the start, I too want more linguistics videos because I think they are great.
Now lets discuss why south asians mix up their Rs and Ds
As a graduating student in Linguistics, this video put me in such a good mood.
This was one of the best videos I've ever seen. Empowering accents, understanding language, the whole package without losing the entertainment of the video. Great job! We should embrace whenever someone is talking in our language, even more so if they are struggling to do that!
If anything, I find accents to be quite unique and charming.
As a Korean-American, those Chinese tones is like entering the fourth dimension.
But for every Asian, those gutteral German, Dutch tones for Rs. Maybe even Arabic.
Khrrrr. Completely nonexistent. That is fourth dimension for me.
@@DaigoParry those arent "tones"
12x12surface every Asian, speak for yourself. Thailand has lots of R’s, even rolling R’s
@@DaigoParry Not applicable to Indonesia or the Philippines, at least. Lots of rolling Rs in both languages.
@@eyes0nyu ok but the german/dutch/french r sounds like the letter g but trilled
What a progressive video. Not condescending, or judgmental- purely educational.
Ty Thomas Boxing Training what
Shes very condescending and shes judging the movie makers heavily.
who cares? herro ho arrre yooo u?
@Ty Thomas Boxing Training She's not condescending.
She judged and gave her political opinion on a racial situation within a movie, so yeah, she was condescending.
Finally a non-judgmental way of learning from other cultures, by not treating differences as weaknesses!
@IamMe Literally no one thinks that way though, so...
Tbh, Mike Tyson can't even pronounce English words correctly. He's a meme here too.
@IamMe lol you managed to make it about you. congratz. "they are not better than me!" okay. nobody said they were.
U rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr extremely RIGHT...ask me! Am from Cuba and this video is so identical of what I went through 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 I used to say 3 instead of three, Banessa instead of Vanessa and the list goes on and on and on,,😂😂😂😂😂
PePe Pepe How is 3 any different than three?
I started speaking English and Korean around the same time and learned both at the same pace.
I always knew about this but the video took it to a whole new level. Good job.
Please let her produce more videos. One of the best, if not the best producer at Vox.
What is her name?
@@miranx5735 Joss Fong
I dnt think she works there anymore 😣
Dylan Visser who cares doe
Nice 👌
So in conclusion,it is ironic that English speakers laugh at people who make a lot of effort to learn other languages while they themselves cant complete one Chinese phrase.
That part!!
They don't need too. While the rest of the world is forced to learn english
You know why some English speakers don't learn other languages? Cause apparently, Wi-fi *IS* breakable
Many Americans probably can't say a single sentence in ANY other language. Much of the rest of the world speaks 2 languages or more.
This is similar to the Americans interviewed in the street who can not identify a single country on a map of the world. Not even the United States.
Ah, 终于有人开口了哈哈。
can we please have more of this reporter ?! please
swegsweg yes yes yes
She's as pretty as maggie q
@@letbygonesbebygones4266 yes, you are right and Joss Fong is equally as stunning as Gemma Chan~
She has a subtle beauty
@Boxing Bro was that meant to be an insult?
I have the biggest trouble in English with s and z. My native dialect of German does not distinguish them, we only have s, and it's really difficult sometimes to pronounce the z for me.
What dialect do you speak I am more able to speak in Schwäbisch
One psychopathic German comm1e have been telling the world “You will eat ze bugs.”
I don't think anybody cares if you speak English with a few more z's than normal. At most they'll think it's funny but I think thats it.
I might look at you funny when, after you have petted my cat, you say in German accented English, "your cat is fussy!" Meanwhile, I'm thinking, no, he's quite calm!
I think the French have the tick of sticking Zs in where Th should be. Of course, English speakers are fairly familiar with both German and French accented English, so it's not hard for us to understand.
Indeed. I'm 36 now, German as well and only learned last year by coincidence that "price" and "prize" are supposed to be pronounced differently. 😅
As a person who speaks both english and mandarin, trust me it's way funnier hearing native english speakers speak madarin than the other way around
at least they try....
Oh absolutely
I tried, I really did! So many sounds in Mandarin are unlike anything in English. Japanese was way simpler to speak so far as the phonetics are concerned.
i am more comfortable hearing a chinese speaking english than an american trying to speak my language xDDDDD
except the fact that no english speaker would bother learning chinese
so while you got only handful of people to laugh at
there are flooding chinese immigrants that americans can make fun of
I've never been more confused with the sound 'Ma' in my life.
If you're unfamiliar with tonal languages, you really have to concentrate to hear the tone differences. Even those of us who speak a tonal language can get confused when listening to another tonal language.
I think it's a lot easier to understand tones when you know what they are, though. Tones are just a change in pitch. In Mandarin, tones either are high, go from low to high, go from high(ish) to low then to high again, or go from high to low. Listen for the pitch, and you might be able to distinguish them.
I already knew the different mas from university studying linguistics and so I encoutered first in written form, before actually hearing them. I'm a completely unmusical person and neither can I imagine what eg a "falling-rising" tone actually sounds like nor can say that a tone is falling-rising when I hear it. But there is a difference between the mas that usually Westerners unbeknownst of tonal languages will notice. It is a lot easier to dinguish the Mandarin sounds if you connect then not with abstract pitch changes, but with emotions or communicative intents. For me they are like
normal 'ma'
ma? (I guess that's the easiest)
grumpy 'ma'
shrugging/that's it 'ma'
@@randomco.9349 its the 3rd one that is the hardest imo. Because the second and fourth tones, (rising and falling) are both given the same large degree of pitch change
@@randomco.9349 Have to wonder how many Chinese people are tone deaf....
As a Japanese speaker, the hardest English word to pronounce is: parallel.
French and German "R" is harder though.
Edit: I am surprised that so many reactions there are! And it reminded me again that I should not be having fear of bad pronounciation, but should speak with courage. Thank you guys, and Vox!
But have you tried to say ‘Parallelogram”?
@@QuantumEcho7 That is indeed difficult one that has an extra R, but has no "dark L" sounds, which I cannot manage even if I try to pronounce them so slowly :)
Mizuki Hagimoto You know, something I noticed in this video is how they refer to ‘fur’ pronouncing the R in particular - but the two people discussing that are American and Scottish, they would lol - as for an RP accent, the R is often glossed over in a dark sense, and is probably harder for you to pronounce in a similar way? “Fur” not “Ferrr” lol
@@QuantumEcho7 Ah, dialects make problem complicated and funny:) For me, "fur" isn't so hard to just pronounce because Japanese has no similar sound (I find it completely different from L or R). Of course I often don't get which sound I should pronounce though.
An easy trick with dark L's: pronounce them as W's. That's how they're pronounced across much of England, and if anyone protests you can just point out that they're claiming the English don't know how to pronounce English ;-)
Excellent video! It explains a question I've been asking for decades. I love foreign languages and accents. I want to know why it is so hard for me to pronounce words using other accents. The fact that it takes up to 5 years to understand the difference between W and R makes me wish I was exposed to more languages as a kid. I hope more videos like this one come up in my feed.
This was great, and I'd like more linguistics videos. Could you do one on tones? The Chinese tones here are presented without explanation, but I wish someone could break down exactly what Chinese speakers do with their voice the way you broke down how the different r and l sounds are made in the mouth.
m YESSS!
@@LoserBroProductions They are tones, the changes are made in your voice box not your mouth.... I think.
As a person with Chinese parents and with Chinese as a second language, I'd say the tones are mainly about the voice box, not the mouth. There are four, technically five tones, which change how you say it. The first one, a straight line, makes you pronounce the character in a "flat" way. The second tone, the one that looks like a forward slash, makes you raise your pitch at the end like it's a question. The fourth tone, the one that looks like a backslash, makes you say the word with force and sort of fast. The third tone, a "V" shaped one, sort of combines the fourth and second ones. The fifth tone, is a lack of a tone on the pinyin, resembles the first tone, but it's slightly different in a way i can't really explain. Sometimes, the pronunciation of the vowels themselves change with the tone change.
Ravie i know what tones are
FYI "Chinese" is not a singular language. The official language Mandarin are spoken very differently in different area in China. Southern Chinese languages have more tones than the Northern Language (eg. 9 tones in Cantonese vs just 4 in Mandarin). Many regional languages or dialect are even mutually unintelligible, even though they can all be written in the same word. The South languages have actually retained tones and vocabularies found in ancient writings, songs and poems that are otherwise not used in Mandarin.
I want to see more of Joss Fong!
oh and great ear rings!
Hardest American English phrase to pronounce is affordable healthcare.
No it ain't.
"Obamacare"
Easy 😁
Lol I really like the poem Kubla Khan but I couldn't pronounce "ceaseless turmoil seething" correctly for my life
That joke is funnier than aids
lmao
Wait I actually read it out loud in front of computer, then I realize what you did there... haha
Replacing "r" with "l" is actually most common in the southern part of China.
But replacing "th" with "s", that's the most common mistake we make
oh we also replace the th with an s in German.
@@samplesample7178 haha, I think us norwegians tend to replace them with T or D instead
no other country can pronounce th like the english. It's a sound that requires that you splutter
@@cmolodiets Even England itself…When I arrived at London,someone said Fank you to me 😂
They actually want to say thank you lol
Filipinos and Indonesians: **laughs in trilled R's**
@@senazumi3472 spanish in general.
English language in Indonesian: Bahasa InggRis
@@anorexorcist4472 funnily enough, the Indonesian word 'Inggris' (meaning England) was a loanword from Japanese, which is why there is an 'r' where 'L' should be. This happened during the japanese occupation of Indonesia during 1942-1945. Before the occupation, some Indonesian texts used the word 'Inglandia' instead of 'Inggris' to call the English/British (yes, indonesian does not make a distinction between those two things). That's why Indonesians call england 'Inggris' despite the fact that Indonesian distinguishes between L and R quite easily.
Northern Malaysia Malays: spit out all standard r, Rolled r & Guttural R
@@iqbalmuhammad2920 Well most Austronesian languages do have trilled R's
I am a Chinese in obsession with Irish accent, talk about hopeless love.
ngflycloud have fun! I’m Canadian and I have no idea what they say sometimes with out subtitles
obsessed with* not in obsession
I am a Malay in obsession with a British accent, talk about hopeless love.
ngflycloud hhhhhhjhhhj made my day
There's a Chinese man who works near my house with a perfect Dublin accent, a Dublin accent maybe isn't as cute as a more Hollywood 'Irish accent' - but with time anyone will develop the accent.
When you're English and don't even pronounce the r at the end of words
-_-
Let's say the word smart. English is just smart. American is you have to roll the r. Try it now.
Bacon on the BaAbie.
@@YokoshimaOfficial *_C R I K E Y_*
But add an invisible R at the end of a word with a vowel with a following word beginning with a vowel.
Most people in US choose to pronounce 'd' over 't' just for the sake of flow. Its usually the Brits that bite their "t's" sharply.
Me, Korean, having difficulty in distinguishing L at last.
Furry Tail vs Fairy Tale
Word vs World
It sounds kinda hilarious, but im sooo serious...
I believe the variety of English taught in Korean schools is American English, isn't it? That certainly doesn't make it any easier to pronounce 'world', because you actually have to pronounce both the R and the L, which non-Rhotic varieties like British or Australian English don't do; they only pronounce the L in 'world'.
6:05 저, 중국인, 받침 'ㄹ' sounds more like English 'r' to me while ㄹ in the beginning of a word sounds closer to English 'l'
banana
and me: fairy tail !
When I was younger, I used to get really confused by the Ra Ra Ra jokes directed at Chinese. I speak Cantonese natively and we freaking put 'la' after every other sentence.
Huh and I thought it was only Singaporeans and filipinos that keep adding la after everything. Guess it was a canto trait
@@kurosujiomake Filipinos don't add "la" after ever sentence. Just "eh", and "ah". Also depends on the native language we're speaking and the locality.
@@jlhabitan50@kurosuijomake we also use 'na' but unlike eh and ah, it gives meaning, depending on context. It may mean time, emotion, etc
Exactly! We MERE more than LA! (Just joking:-D)
Because it came from the Japanese. The Chinese meme is "it cost 2 dollar!!!".
THANK YOU for producing this video!
I grew up as a Japanese immigrant in a small town in Midwest, and bullies and ignorant people alike “imitating” my family and me by speaking with l’s and r’s mixed up really got on my nerves.
I’ve also been told by friends who would watch movies like “Lost in Translation” and tell me that it’s so hilarious, I HAVE to watch it. They don’t get how the bullying hurt me so badly when I was growing up as the only nonwhite kid in town.
Sorry to hear :(
Thank you for sharing
@agg kos what were the facts here??
Same, dude. It's a struggle but you're not alone!
@Bexx Chin Thanks, man! That means a lot to me.
@k a What does this have anything to do with what they said?
When American try to learn chinese, it s even worse
xiaoma nyc is pretty good
Hey, at least they tried which is better than nothing :)
@@mrnoggg lol
oof yea
Chinese:shí shí shï shį
Americans:shi shi shi shi
I’m teaching English in Japan and this always throws me off. I can speak Spanish and English (the kids go wild when I speak in Spanish and roll my Rs), but I don’t see how R and L are similar, so I never know how to explain the difference to my students. It just came up recently too when we were teaching our third graders the English alphabet. I wrote my name (which has an L and an R) and the first question we got almost immediately was from a kid who asked why two different letters were being used to represent the same sound and why I wasn’t using an R in both places. It broke my brain because I don’t see how the sound is similar at all. Even his teacher didn’t know what to say (she’s fluent in English) and she just dismissed it and told him it was advanced English and he would learn about it later.
Here we roll the R letter and thinking L and R is same letter seems absurd lol ;) But it explains a lot why Japanese and similar is so bad at speaking English and specially the Japanese keep inserting R where there is non....
After taking a year of linguistics courses, a vox video explains laterals and flaps better than my professors 😂😂😂
Joss is good, she's real good; even with the science and engineering topics. What isn't she good at?
same here, there are great YT videos on linguistics (e.g. on variants of English, the linking /r/ etc.)
Joss is good but you must have had some seriously bad professors or you were in the wrong class.
Thelonious M it’s more due to the fact that I seriously hate phonetics (no shade to anyone that enjoys phonetics but it’s just not for me)
So true!
Americans: *Makes fun of Chinese for their Ls and Rs*
Also Americans: *Mess up all the sounds supposed to be produced when saying certain pinyin*
Egh, actually Chinese people have no difficulties to pronounce r's and l's, ur talking about Japanese people 😅
@@adamhau9336 Don't you get it? It has a meaning. I will let you think about it.
@@troys1426 ??? Do you mean that the joke was that Chinese people don't have difficulties pronouncing r's and l's? If it was, then it was a pretty bad joke.
I love watching people mispronounce names of characters in genshin impact with names spelled out in pinyin (no romanization) - they fail miserably
Not only Americans but also British
Lost in Translation (2003): Two Americans are sad in Japan.
So succinct and so accurate xD
Lmao
look me a famous movie star who should be doing theater but im doing whiskey commercials for millions of dollars I'm sad
“sad in japan” sounds like a lofi hip hop mix
And yet i loved watching that movie
this video is really educating me!
Plz make more videos about languages because this one was amazing
This video needs to go to the top so Hollywood stop misconstruing Asian Accents
But... that's okay because my wifi is unbreakable.
SUUUUUUUUUCKKKERRRRR
haha
WiFi Butt Poe
Your wifi may be unbreakable but how easy is it to break the freeman's mind?
They do speak that way tho.
@@grubbybum3614
have you not watch this video dawg
Omg the “WIFI IS UNBREAKABLE” meme is hilarious.
Rai Butera Secret sequel to Diamond is Unbreakable
BREAKDOWN BREAKDOWN
First time i heard that its hilarious now that i knew the error.
@@samuelvavia8920 「KILLER QUEEN」 DAISAN NO BAKUDAN「BITES ZA DUSTO」
It’s so hilarious that I’ve adopted it as an in-joke
I'm in love with Joss Fong
Oh man! That new Observatory intro is sweet! Who knew that R's could be so interesting!? The whole idea with telling people what shape to make with their tongue is kind of like trying to describe a colour...kind of!
@Ahmad Ali I'll tell you what, I'll give you a _like_ now go bounce a ball somewhere. (34 minutes in and you're trolling smh).
yesss! The new Observatory intro was made by our team's wonderful art director Dion Lee (also featured in this video!). She's the best 🤘
@@Vox That Dion can't be stopped! Sooo good! (plus she was great within the episode too!) 🙌
@Justin O'Brien more fun than a pub crawl? That's some pretty bold claims right there Justin! I'll check them out! Thanks a lot bud :)
Joss Fong's videos are literally some of the best, informative and interesting ones on this channel !
And she's gorgeous 😁😊
When I see her face as I scroll my feed.
"Yes, you(video)"
Now lets discuss why south asians mix up their Rs and Ds
i've never learned anyway
that's big bs.....
The part at 7:36 just blows my mind. I can't even begin to hear the difference.
I can. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
im taiwanese and the way those chinese pronounce is very inaccurate, they totally pronounce characters wrong
some people from PRC dont really have good education and Vox put them into the video just because they're native speakers? what a joke !
for instance 7:38 靚 零 嶺 she pronounces those all wrong !
It's the tone like when you go upwards, higher if it's a question (/)and down when you end a sentence (\). For example No? No. you would say those same words differently. Only in Chinese or Vietnamese too (I'm Vietnamese) the tone would make another word even if it is spelt with the same letters but then again it still wouldn't be the same word because in Vietnamese you write the tone accents (è,é) and you must not forget them because they're essential for understanding
I learnt Chinese language when i was small, its hard to learn and distinguish that sound. As i communicate with my friend informally, they dont seem really care. As long as they understand the sentence and context.
@@Jason06245 I'm admittedly not an expert, but it sounds like you're expecting Mandarin when she's giving Cantonese examples.
This video was so interesting, very well done, and I learned so much - Thank you! Plus Joss is so beautiful & sweet!
1:08
This movie might be a bit...
rrrrrr... -racist- *rude*
I guess you missed the whole point of the movie...
Lacist .
Wow, man, that's lude
Rohit yo wacist*
baguette
Wow! As a phonetician, I was really impressed with this video! Very well made and well researched
What kind of job is that? :)
PuzzleMessage a doctor or a congressman?
"People from Phoenix are called Phoenicians" ~Louis C.K.
Happy to see ㄹ getting the attention it deserves!
I've been learning Korean for a couple years now. I still mangle it.
@@NICHOLSON7777 my friends say I'm fine with ㄹ at this point but I'm still a bit iffy on the double consonants. It's been 2 years and the struggle continues!
i found Korean pronunciation to not be that difficult, I just do a lot of listening and practice.
Ohh wowww it is so great to see people around the world learning Korean..I’m Korean and I’m proud of it thanks to you💜 Lov y’all 🎉🎉
I feel as if the reason she messed up on Rieul is the "eu" (으) part.
For that English R, as a Hungarian, I can assure you, we all struggle with it even if our language has a distinction between L-R, since that specific R is not within our consonant inventory at all. In fact, most indo-european and some Asian langauges wither only have trilled or flapped R's, but that "slurred" English R is very rarely present. I have a friend who has a speech impediment in that he cannot roll his R's, but slurs them, this is why he was able to "learn " to pronounce this variant, and he always joked with "I didn't even have to learn the sound, I just spoke normally" XD
When a New Zealand person calls Eminem "iminim" it just makes my day.
Not related to this video but still... wanted to get my point across somehow
Get them to follow Eminem by Manama.
Can confirm: Am kiwi and tried saying this about twenty times and always said it as emenem or iminim.
Edit!: I’ve made a breakthrough! Emmernim
I've known Iminim since we were sivin.
@@sovietmarshmallow1283 as a Yank, I can spot Kiwis from Ozzies, by "E-heavy" words.
Slim Shidy
You see joss fong in thumbnail you click
But you can have a good face and make people forget about your good face with with you do. That's Joss.
Too bad she works for the vox
Now lets discuss why south asians mix up their Rs and Ds
we need a vox video on what makes joss fong attractive
She is the best !
Let me put it simply as a Korean:
라면(ramen) and 레몬(lemon) have 'ㄹ' at the beginning. The 'l' or 'r' sound in English is automatically converted into 'ㄹ' in Korean. (Well there is no sound in Korean that is equivalent to 'r' in English. So 'r' is converted into 'ㄹ' which sounds almost the same to 'l.')
As an American with Korean immigrant parents, I can say with confidence Korean is a hard language.
Is it "ramyun" or "lamyun" in Korean? I used to have a Korean friend who said "lamyun", which goes against the language rules of Korean.
@@lelechim depends, id say its a free variation (both r and l are valid) since words that begin with ㄹs are relatively rare.
reminds me of twice song "candy pop" where theres an english line saying "lemon mint chocolate" but they say "remon" for lemon when singing
Ur English is quite good
This was so fascinating, especially trying to mimic all the vocalisations; thank you so much!
happy to see our beloved asian actress Scarlett Johansson being featured here in Vox 😆
herro to you too!
Yoooooooo LMAO
Yunho Nam girl speak for yourself, I love my prius.
Damn! 🤣
she’s an inspiration to asian children everywhere 😔🤧🤧
I didnt even know the dark L existed. Just upgraded my English!
Maybe because I don't pronounce it at all
she also just barely forgot to mention that not all english speakers have dark L, and that some speakers have NO light L, just dark L's
@@Matty002 Light and L, why does this sound like a Death Note joke?
The dark L is really hard to notice for me
Happy to see Joss is doing videos again, she usually does some of the best content on this channel
Presentation is excellent!! Very informative. Thank you.
This is the ultimate guide to this age old misunderstanding! Saved for future smartassery.
Sadly, too many people will continue to be smartasses because it's simply easier to mock someone than understand them
next video: why putting Joss Fong in the thumbnail increases views count
I know! she is so pretty
joss fong is the solution destroying every white supremacists arguments against mix racing
@@davidaIano damn
@@davidaIano I both love and detest this comment
@@davidaIano your imagination is not strong enough?
To a non-native speaker, learning mandarin looks like learning to play the harp,
backwards
only through sign language
in the dark
with ear plugs in.
Alex funny. But once you start to learn, you realize mandarin is easier than it seems
clicking 'show more' for the "with ear plugs in" of your comment was totally worth it.
It gets a whole easier if you also learn the Mandarin phonetics system AKA hanyin pinying.
I speak Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and English, and I can tell you that once you know one or the other (besides English) it’s pretty easy to learn the languages because all of them has a similar pronunciation. They also use the same characters like 美, which means pretty in all three of them. What’s hard is learning those languages FROM English, especially Chinese because of Pin Yin.
I am so happy that people are still care about Cantonese.
what do you mean still care bout Cantonese? c'mon man, we mainland chinese needs it to survival in chinatown in canada and murica. also Cantonese songs are great!
@@wangruochuan because the Chinese government keep suppressing Cantonese in China… 😥 you can search it in Google, it's a real thing.
@@JLee-xl4dt Im not going to start a fight here with you but here is a thing, do you really trust media information that comes from a .com?
not saying the government wasnt forcing the mandarin but the first few search result are some of those sketchy web that trying to poke around for attention
well I am living in Hong Kong, I trust what I see.
@@JLee-xl4dt you see what your government wants you to see (vice versa). your media is filtered thru google.com.HK
not saying HK media is bad, Im on neither side. I have a lot of HK friends here in US. most of them admit that people in HK are quite obnoxious about mainland chinese goverment. and thats one way to grafting your domestic depressions to a imaginary enemy. in this case, not imaginary, the evil guys in Beijing. I dont like chinese government as well. But hey, we dont have a choice, aint we?
I never worried about the suppressing Cantonese thing at all and never will be. As a HongKong local, you should know that Cantonese is not just a language, its a big fat bag of culture that roots deep in hundreds of millions of people. you really think this class of government can take away your dim sum or washing your cup and bowls with fresh tea in front of surprised non-locals? or change everything you do as a cool Cantonese? you can read some history. the whole Chinese history is about some outside power came in tryna assimilate us but got bent around. they all became one of us....
I really hate talking about politics. and please forgive my trashy english. French is not my first language
I remember when my Japanese uncle wants to play games, he said "let's pray" he recently changed religion so I thought he wanted me to teach him how to pray I was walking to get the equipment but then he has this confused look and I realized he meant play because he was holding a controller
What equipment do you need for prayer?
@@ghettomarc50 maybe he's Muslim
beaniebabie there are many religions that use equipment for ritual prayer
@@matiaq2629 but we don't use equipments to pray either :/
@@SpectraVV I'd say the prayer rug counts as equipment
I have masters degrees in linguistics and speech-language pathology, and I thought this video was very well done! The visuals were excellent, and the examples were on point!! 👏👏👍👍💖💖
Shelbot S. Thats a misses degree.
@@mandykillriff6854 misses degrees don't go on to get a master's too. Your median Speech Language Pathologist salary in the US is $80K, well above average. So nope sorry.
Great content. I'd wondered about this before, glad I'm informed now
Haha, no surprise you had to find a Scottish Scientist to explain R's. Scots have a chance. The rest of the anglophones are pretty much hopeless with R
Scottish rolled Rs are just fairly uncommon R sound. Even in English received pronunciation, it more likely to be a soft R sound.
My dad (who's from Glasgow) thought me and my brother has a speech impediment when we couldn't do it. It's just a very different phoneme.
This conversation is to smart for my tiny brain. Whats an anglophone? How do the scottish understand?
@@DDD033 Anglophone:
1. Adjective:
English speaking i.e. "The population is largely anglophile"
2. Noun:
An english speaking person.
Scottish people have the ability to make a specific spiky r sound much more commonly than native english people due to Scottish english having been influenced a fair bit by scottish gaelic (The language of scottish highlanders). This is why Tilman was saying a Scot was the best person to explain the 'r' sound, as they have a superior ability or proficiency in producing all the different 'r's.
The R in English is actually one of the most uncommon consonant sounds in the entire IPA. Your mouth does this weird thing that isn't even close to any other sound. That's why children and foreign speakers have the hardest time with that letter. It's interesting to note that this sound is even somewhat uncommon among English speakers. An American says "color" and someone from England pronounces it like "coluh." In the Harry Potter movies, the pronunciation of Harry's name is always open: "Ha-ree." But us Americans say "Hair-ee"- once again using that strong awkward R..... An R so awkward you don't realize how awkward it is until you notice that, despite it being a very English-y sound, most English speakers don't even pronounce it 👀
@@keller109 how did rhoticism become such a staple throughout America? Even colonists had it.
actually the korean draw the tounge position,
like ㄱㅋㄴㅅㅈㅊ, or mouth shape like ㅂㅍㅁㅎ,
so u might understand, why the 'r' is so complicated, because they draw it like this: ㄹ
That’s so cool!! I’ve been learning korean for a while and I had no idea, that is such a clever idea for an alphabet omg
Sparkriel the Korean alphabet is incredibly intuitive, it’s really smart
@@iain3713 - If you don't know the origin of the Korean alphabet, look it up! It's quite fascinating.
what mouth shape is this -ㅎ
@@moresoulthanasockwithahole3493 its the extra "breath" to the sound ㅇ which is the empty consonant. So basically h
I Burmese but when I speak English I sound like a British grandma who having a tea with her mate back in 80s centuries 🤣
YOOO BURMESE GANG
I mean-we were once conquered by the Brits...
I really don't think so lol
Plus the types of accents Burmese people use when speaking in English are:
1. You stop at every one or two words (Mostly boys ig since the boys in my class are always like this)
2. You try really hard to sound fluent. But put emphasis at many words, mostly on r’s.
3. The good one. You don’t really sound fluent but you ain’t bad either. A+ for effort
you are genuinely the first person ive seen on the internet from myanmar
I am late to the party but this was very well explained video. The visuals helped a lot. While I still don't fully comprehend, how languages evolved in different parts of the world is so fascinating. The first time I heard about the l/r swap, was that the lululemon founder intentionally named his brand with lot's of L's so it would be hard for folks from eastern asian to pronounce it. If you work or live in a space with a variety of accents somehow mind trains after a while to just understand without really crystallizing rules like mentioned here in the video.
I totally agree that you don't need to sound like a native speaker, but accent must not be too heavy, because at the end of the day you want to be understood. For example, if I learnt Mandarin, I want to make sure when I want to say mom, I don't say horse.
Me: Hey horse? I need some money ... horse? Horse!? Why are you throwing a shoe at me?!
Actually many people do not speak with the right tones and are still understood by the context in which words are used. That is true for most non-native speakers of Chinese languages. What is more important to be comprehensible is the consistency of the deviation from the standard. If I say lice every time I mean rice, or if I say there are tree children in the playground, you should catch on to what I mean pretty soon.
@@talkingkangaroo4934 that makes sense
In my experience, Chinese people try their best to understand because they know tones are hard! Though they may giggle at you
Never mind,my friend. practice makes perfect. we can distingwish them from the context.
as an east asian girl who struggles with diction on a daily basis + a linguistics nerd i LOVE this video sm omg my tuesday has been made
*edit:* also these graphics are so good!! much appreciation 😍
When the listener has trouble understanding you, why do you automatically assume the problem is with your diction?
If you speak English with a thick accent, then that's just how you speak English
When an English/Russian man speaks with a thick Cockney/Russian accent, do you see them apologizing to the listener?
Do you see any listener telling them they need to learn to speak better English?
No, they just accept that's how they speak, because they are an English/Russian, and the listener just have to put in more effort if they want to understand what they are saying
In fact some listener might even find their accent sexy or attractive
So why is it OK when they speak with a thick accent, but when you, an East Asian girl, do the same, it becomes a problem?
People who make fun of your accent or think that you need to learn to speak "better" English are just closeted racists, who are low-key hating on your origin
If they can put in the effort to understand someone with a thick French/German/Italian/Russian/whatever accent, they can certainly put in the same effort to understand you
Wake up girl
@@yuenhai. Lol, shut up. That's how you improve linguistics.
@@grubbybum3614 no shut up u
@@grubbybum3614
If someone cannot even string together a cohesive sentence that makes sense, for sure, I would say that person need to improve his or her command of the language
But judging by the OP's post, you can tell that her command of the language is just fine, perhaps even better than most native English speakers
What she seems to struggle with is the perception that her English does not "sound right"
But Aussies, Brits, Americans, they all sound vastly different and easily distinguishable when speaking English - whose accent is "correct"?
Obvious answer is none - they are all acceptable
And you have other Europeans like the Italians, French, Germans, Russians, who often speak with heavy and very recognizable accents as well - and their accents are sometimes even portrayed as a desirable thing
So why is it when an East Asian girl speaks with an East Asian accent, she needs to "LOL improve her English"?
Like I said, it's just the closeted racists trying to use her accent in an attempt to degrade her and mock her for her origins
@@yuenhai. When we talk about Aussies, Kiwi's etc it's not that other nations perceive them as not speaking English correctly. IE. Accents aren't the issue.
If somebody says "2 dollar" instead of "2 dollars", or "impossibru" instead of "impossible" - those are issues with control of the language. And they can be improved with professional help.
I take it that you think somebody who stutters shouldn't see a speech pathologist, either? A speech therapist would also help a foreigner pronounce English words correctly.
And then there’s the dreaded “th”...it took me so long to actually get it. Even as I spoke English quite fluently (it was my second language) it took me time
whats your native language?
There are two 'th' sounds and they are some of the very last sounds learned by English speaking children, at around age 5. Some children need the help of speech therapists to finally make them.
Some of us are lucky to have a native language with both the th sounds in it. Unfortunately, we also have only 5 vowel sounds and that's it.
@@yllejord which language is that?
@@ilikedota5 Greek.
Would love more about languages!! This was wonderful.
Filipinos switch "f" and p, "v" and "b"
i feel you, hahaha
Vavae or Fafa
@@thefarceurone392 no, like Pamily instead of Family, Binegar instead of Vinegar, Pace instead of Face and so on
Europeans do to.
That's because the letter F and V doesn't exist in our original alphabet or especifically in Baybayin. that's why we switch to Roman Alphabet since the Spaniards are having a hard time using Baybayin to try to communicate with our ancestors.
AYYYY, it's my boy Yuta! :D
heychrisfox my name is Yuta....
Yuta bruh
Aesthetic _Remi lol
Read this comment right when he appeared
Is that actually Yuta?? I thought it looked like him lol
white friend: so what are you?
me: I’m half Japanese.
(30 minutes later)
white friend: this is my Chinese friend!
me: -_-
To be fair, wouldn't it be worse if they said, "this is my mexican friend".
s a m e
Every country outside of america is mexico
At least Mexicans are culturally similar to other latinos, and can sometimes look the same. Japan and China are very different cultures, its like comparing an Iranian to a Greek, perhaps even more different.
To be honest, I have to say differences between Korean, Japanese, and (Han) Chinese is only an insider one, anybody of those three ethnicities can distinguish, but nobody else. It's like a difference between different European ethnic groups
this always shows up in my recommendations and i’ve never failed to ignore it. this video’s just too good
According to phonetics/phonology, the English language also have a "flap R" sound, which is - a little - similar to the japanese R sound in some ways. It is really common in the American English Dialect and can be found in words such as "waTer", "naTive", "meTal", "meDal", "moDel", "coDing", "weirDest", "sturDy", etc. (Mostly, T and D between vowels or after a bunched/retroflex R sound.) Native speakers usually say it is a "D sound", if asked about it or when explaining it.
Is that just dialect? Because when I watch American movie they almost all speak that way
@@honka4ever Out of the CANZUK coutries, only the UK doesn't have that. Then again, we have been influenced by American media enough that we are beginning to.
Amazing video . please try and venture into more linguistic topics. Its so interesting.
As an Asian, I was scared to click on this video and see how badly they mix up the different Asian languages. Was very pleasantly surprised, this was super well done
Vox is pretty high quality, the moment I see they put the word “some” in title I know this video is going to be a well researched and factual one.
This is so interesting and informational!! I grinned when Kong Yu showed up speaking English hahaha
As a mandarin speaker, I can't distinguish the tones in Cantonese really well either.
sup, cantonese here. Yea we got really similar tones, i believe we have 9 tones in total
Merkymurk 理論上，係六聲加三個入聲
7，8，9 係 1，3，6 加 p/t/k 尾
@@henrywong2725 哦⊙∀⊙原来每个入声也算一个音调 谢谢！
But you can do the tones in madrarin right
theres like 9 so good luck lol
Those (for me as a Dutch cheese head) VERY similar sounding Cantonese and mandarin words at the end put the entire video into perspective. Was hoping that'd go on for a few minutes straight! xD
There are thousands of videos on RUclips about introductions to Chinese tones.
Joss Fong is beautiful
Michael McNamara no, she’s stunning!
Not more beautiful than Dion Lee.
Yep.
Yes, insanely gorgeous
She is so beautiful, that it is distracting. I had to pause the video to agree with you, or else I was to make my own comment. God bless her
When I studied Cantonese, I learned tones as how much air you breathe out.
Heah in Massachusetts we just do away with the R altogethah.
Taking ya cah ta get some wata.
Only at the end or middle of words, otherwise you couldn't ROOT FOR THE RED SOX AT REVEAH BEACH!
ahs a fah losahs!
I read it in Bernie Sanders' voice.
Kind of like in British RP
Thanks for this explanation, it makes a lot of sense. I'm an Spanish native speaker and it's very difficult for me to differentiate the tones in different vowels from Japanese, Korean and Mandarin. I love those languages for how complex and poetic they can be.
Me too ...pretty hard..but they sound very different
Im Korean 16 yrs old and speak 4 languages. Im decent only in Korean and still learning the others(English,Japanese, and Spanish). This video was extremely helpful for me!! I thought English L sound, Korean ㄹ sound, Japanese ら、り、る、れ、ろ sound and Spanish R sound were almost the same and pronounced it same. But I cant still distinguish rrr and lll well and have no idea about how to distinguish Chinese tones... I know there is difference but I cant hear it and pronounce it accurately.
Ikr! I'm a Spanish (from my family) and English speaker (living in US) . And I'm teaching myself Korean. But the r and l in Korean is so hard to differentiate like it sounds the same to me especially other letters in the Korean alphabet. But I'm fully aware they're not! But I'm still interested in learning Korean and korean culture to give up :)
@@kendrithsuero9924 yup me too! Spanish is my mother tongue, but my brain works in Spanglish and I'm trying to learn korean by myself too. And yes.. It is hard. Lots of different sounds
Same with P,F all being pronounced by ㅍ so i hear many times koreans saying fizza and fineapple while say presh and plute. When i teach them how to use their tongues for the accents, usually it solves the problem. 3.5개국어 하는 사람으로서 4개국어 부럽네
많이 연습하면, 할 수 있을까요! 저 1년 동안 한국말 공부해요. ㄹ의 소리 가끔 어려웠지만, 많이 공부하면, 저 말할수 있어요
화이팅!!
If you practice a lot, you can do it. I have studied Korean for 1 year. The sound of ㄹ is often hard, but if I practice, I can do it.
@@ryanw8509 이미 잘하고 있어요. ㄹ 소리가 어떻게 어려운지 설명해 주실 수 있나요?
I like the comparison between tones and r-sounds. Tones are basically invisible to me, but speaking English, French, and Spanish I have exposure to a lot of varied Rs. So intimidated by trying to learn tones though, arghhhh
Omg Joss you're brilliant at teaching us linguistics! We need more of these!
I just love the intro - Wifi is unbreakable... don't we all want that?
Filipinos sometimes switch letters 'P' and 'F' when speaking. Also letters 'B' and 'V'. 👍👍👍
That must come from spanish, I presume. Ph and F are the same sound (Although Ph is almost never used now). B and V sound exactly the same. The difference only exist to piss off kids at school.
So, wait... Are they really Pilifinos?!
@@framegrace1 you are probably correct since the Philippines did get colonized by the Spanish for a while
Ivy Yee Oh yeah! I noticed that 😁
@@nexus1g No, they're PILIPINOS.
Very interesting video! Learning a new language definitely makes you more humble
Old Chinese proverb - my wifi is unbreakable.
As a British person , using the American "r" is so difficult for me 😫
junguwu • As an American using the American “r” is difficult for me.
I can actually get some flashbacks of americans saying "Literally " and "refrigerator". Even Jesus can't fix the "Literally ".😂
@@AmongUs-mn6gu innittt 😂😂😂
I remember hearing some English speakers pronouncing mirror as "mirr"
@Elle Choi thank you :)
Ahhh yess a new Joss Fong wideo! That's what matters!
I missed her!
I dont understand any, only her eyes
Languages and accents are so beautiful!!! This video was so cool
The lack of an "r" sound was probably the biggest thing I noticed when I started learning to speak 廣東話. I've always had trouble with that sound in English though, so no biggie dropping it in a new language.
"A lo" gang where u at😂
I read the title: “Why some asians Ls swap their cars”.
Idk how i did it.
I mean some do do that
k
The same reason french people pronounced 'the' as 'zhe'
The English th is a really rare sound, almost every learner gets it wrong for a long time.
French zhe sounds exactly as Chinese zhe.
@@danielx40 chinese zhe sounded exactly like letter "ж".
We just pronounce it as a D sound in my country.
@@somestuff7876 Chinese je as in Beijing, sounds like the Cyrillic letter "ж". Chinese zhe sounds like the Cyrillic digraph "дж", often Latinized as dzh, which is the English J. Compare J. R. R. Tolkein's name John, spelled as Dzhon (Джон), and Dr Zhivago's name "Живаго".
They really should've switched J and ZH in Pinyin, but then it wouldn't fit the pattern of single letter representing a softer sound, as the diagraph represents a hard sound. Like Q and CH, as well as X and SH. CH and SH represent the strong version of these sounds as these letters represent in English, while Q and X respectively represent soft versions.