Another Pronunciation Metaphor
Originally uploaded by ramon_perez_terrassa
In my previous blog I indicated thinking of constructing an adequate second language speaker in terms of constructing a building. It was a misleading analogy in certain ways. I closed with the suggestion that music may be a more constructive analogy then the creation of buildings. I asked you to imagine Chopin playing a piece by Thelonius Monk. I used this analogy because I was struck by the following comment made by Monk over 40 years ago, “You know, anybody can play a composition and use far out-chords and make it sound wrong. It’s making it sound right that is not easy.”
In “Round Midnight” Monk combined an active right hand with an equally active left hand, using angular rhythms that utilized the entire key board. Monk was famous for his unique phrasing and economy of notes. Chopin’s most famous Nocturne (Opus 9) requires the left hand to trill lightly in simple arpeggios throughout (with contemporaries commenting on Chopin’s new ‘freedom’), while the right hand plays in patterns of eleven, twenty, and twenty two notes. And, of course, the nocturne concludes peacefully. How would I even begin to teach Chopin about Monk’s music? One thing is clear: teaching would have nothing to do or rather little to do with individual notes.
Each language has a different music to it. Spanish and English share many consonant sounds but the vowel systems and sentence stress differ greatly. Spanish has five pure vowels and five diphthongs. So typically it is a good guess that Spanish speakers have difficulty with English vowels where length is an issue. So ‘seat’ and ‘sit’ can be confused as well as sheep’ and ‘ship.’ And I learn this by listening to the ‘music’ each speaker makes when he speaks in discourse. A Spanish speaker can make the individual sounds in a language laboratory and in isolation easy enough, but the difference shows up in actual communication attempts.
Spanish is called a syllable timed language. All syllables take about the same length of time. So to an English speaker there appears mostly no difference between stress and unstressed syllables. In English stressed syllables tend to be pronounced more slowly and distinctly. Hence, there is a different music with “Llevo una falda verde y una blusa blanca” and “I am wearing a green skirt with a white blouse.” Imagine how many ways a young American teenager can say that to her parents, friends, etc. In working on the rhythm of the language, the phonemes seem to take care of themselves. In intonation Spanish tends to use a narrower pitch range than English. In Spanish if an element does require stress it often falls to the last syllable. (Actually this is allowed because there is a freer word order in Spanish than in English.) An example of the freer word order “Sentado en el suelo se calzaba…” Literally “Sat on the floor himself he was shoeing =(putting on).” As instructors we do not have to decide whether the narrower pitch range is due to word order freedom – who is to say? – but as with our music example we have to listen to the entire ‘communication’ to know if there is interference or not.
So the music analogy helps a little more than the building analogy in that we are not tempted to break every item of difference into the smallest units. But no matter how much training Chopin would have to have, I have difficulty imagining Chopin playing “Round Midnight” with the requisite amount of soul. One can only do so much with analogies.
– Dr. Paul Schneider, Director of Teacher Education Programs, WAL