I would say it helps a great deal with pronunciation to just go around making funny noises. Experiment with what sounds you can make orally, it really helps. Then learn some IPA. I have done so, and I have yet to encounter a language with a sound I cannot pronounce.
Well, making weird sounds on command is one thing, making them in the right place in the middle of a word in a normal sentence speaking at a normal rate is another, at least for me. (The extreme example is tongue-twisters, which can be very hard even if each single sound individually isn’t.)
I concur. For instance, as a speaker of Australian English I not only don’t pronounce the ‘r’ at the ends of syllables/words in English, I also speak a non-rhotic version of all my second languages. Living in the US and being constantly mocked and made aware of this difference for a full year has only made me marginally better at producing them on demand.
I’m relatively good with tongue-twisters too, but I still mix up sounds which I didn’t grow up using regularly if I’m not very careful, e.g. sometimes when speaking English quickly I accidentally use the Italian-style r (which sounds more or less like the English flapped t) instead of the English-style one, leading to misunderstandings like “what is” when I mean “where is” and the like.
I would say it helps a great deal with pronunciation to just go around making funny noises. Experiment with what sounds you can make orally, it really helps. Then learn some IPA. I have done so, and I have yet to encounter a language with a sound I cannot pronounce.
Well, making weird sounds on command is one thing, making them in the right place in the middle of a word in a normal sentence speaking at a normal rate is another, at least for me. (The extreme example is tongue-twisters, which can be very hard even if each single sound individually isn’t.)
I concur. For instance, as a speaker of Australian English I not only don’t pronounce the ‘r’ at the ends of syllables/words in English, I also speak a non-rhotic version of all my second languages. Living in the US and being constantly mocked and made aware of this difference for a full year has only made me marginally better at producing them on demand.
It so happens to be that I can do most tongue twisters with little effort, and that normal sentences are rarely tongue twisters.
I’m relatively good with tongue-twisters too, but I still mix up sounds which I didn’t grow up using regularly if I’m not very careful, e.g. sometimes when speaking English quickly I accidentally use the Italian-style r (which sounds more or less like the English flapped t) instead of the English-style one, leading to misunderstandings like “what is” when I mean “where is” and the like.