One of my great frustrations with the way languages are taught in schools is that for all the focus on idiomatic exactitude (it is essential to say “je joue au foot” but “je jour du piano” because apparently otherwise no one will ever understand you), vocabulary lists and grammar exercises, very little is taught about phonology. Yet, as native English speakers, the one thing we have to try harder at than speakers of other languages is not to give away our own mother tongue – because if we do, there is a fair chance we will simply find the conversation drifting into English, depriving us of the chance to practise.
There are three key aspects of pronunciation which broadly separate Romance languages (those derived from Latin; among major languages I exclude Romanian here for the official reason that it is grammatically isolated but for the real reason that I do not speak it) from West Germanic languages – I have mentioned them in passing before, but it may be useful to put them all in one place.
Front versus back of mouth
Broadly, the farther south you go in Europe the farther forward in the mouth you pronounce things: this generally applies across the board (regardless of whether the language is Romance or Germanic), but for the most part it therefore distinguishes the broadly northern West Germanic languages from the more southern Romance languages.
Compare even a Dutch person versus an Italian person speaking English: typically, the Dutch person will pronounce words farther back in the mouth, giving them almost a robotic quality; the Italian on the other hand will be much nearer the front, almost as if with a higher pitch (no wonder Italian is good for music). This very notably affects /r/ and /s/, although each language has subtly different pronunciations of these -they are something to look out for.
If, as an English speaker, you can take account of this when learning another major Western European language, you will suddenly find your pronunciation just aligns much more closely to that of the target language.
Stress versus syllable timing
Romance languages (with the curious exception of European Portuguese) are “syllable timed”, meaning each syllable takes roughly the same length of time to pronounce; Germanic languages including English (with the curious addition of European Portuguese) are, conversely, “stress timed”, meaning that all unstressed syllables between stressed syllables take, collectively, the same length of time to pronounce as each stressed syllable does.
The example frequently given for English is “delicious tea” versus “tolerable tea”. Here, respectively, the syllables -lic- and tol- are stressed. This means that in the first example, there is only one syllable (-ious) between two stressed syllables, so it too takes the same length of time to pronounce as they do; however, in the second example, we have three syllables (-er-ab-le) in the gap between stressed syllables, meaning they all get packed in to the point of barely being pronounced at all (and, for this reason, vowels in unstressed syllables in spoken English are often indistinct from each other, typically pronounced as a neutral vowel sound known as “schwa”).
Conversely, in Spanish, Italian and Brazilian Portuguese (leaving French aside, as it has its own unique phonological structure), each syllable is the same length and this in turn means each vowel sound is clearly pronounced and distinguished.
Plosive pronunciation
In German and English most notably (and also Ancient Greek, which is of relevance because of the distinct sounds thus introduced to Latin and thus on to other languages from Greek usually marked with an extra H in writing to mark a more forceful plosive pronunciation: thus even modern Christ, philosophy and thyme display it in writing), unvoiced plosive consonants (most obviously /p/, /t/ and /k/) are quite forcefully pronounced with clear friction (so, if you hold your hand in front of your mouth while pronouncing them, you feel a clear breath of air).
In Latin and all the languages derived from it, however, these unvoiced plosive consonants are barely plosive at all: /p/, /t/ and /k/ thus move some of the way towards voiced /b/, /d/ and /g/ in those languages (indeed in medial positions they have sometimes moved all the way, particularly in Spanish: hence Latin petra, Spanish piedra ‘stone’). When you pronounce these sounds in Romance languages, therefore, they should be distinct from the voiced version but still much less forceful than in English or German; there should be barely any friction detectable and thus barely any air felt if you put your hand in front of your mouth.
Cappuccino
A word which exhibits all of this is cappuccino, which is useful also because it is easy to compare and contrast English versus the Italian original.
In English, this is pronounced with the tongue set farther back in the mouth, with the stress significantly on the syllable -cin- and plenty of friction detectable for both the /k/ and /p/ sound at the start. This is true to such an extent that if, instead, we said “keppochina” (well, “keppocheena”), we would barely hear any difference – the only clearly articulated vowel is the one in -cin- (“cheen”).
In Italian, however, this is pronounced forward in the mouth, with the stress in the same place as in English but less emphasised with each syllable taking up the same time period and each vowel clearly pronounced, alongside barely any detectable friction throughout the word; if we switched it to “keppochina” we would absolutely hear the difference (even though we would detect only a hint of air on the /p/ and probably none at all on the /k/ as we articulated them). As an aside, Italian also clearly pronounced double consonants – this is “kap-pooch-cheen-oh” – but even if we don’t manage those, provided we follow these other distinctions in phonology we will be clearly understood and, although it will be obvious we are not native, it will not be obvious we are English-speaking and thus the conversation (and the opportunity to practise) will continue in Italian.
Isn’t it strange that, unless we are lucky enough to have a teacher who thinks a little “outside the box”, we are taught none of this at school?
Ian James Parsley 