Some Random Thoughts on Language

by Madeleine Kando

My husband has difficulty pronouncing English words sometimes. He is originally from The Netherlands. When we visited a plant nursery a few days ago and my husband asked the salesman if he had any jews for sale, the poor man’s face showed total bewilderment. We wanted to create a natural fence in our yard and my husband prefers yews over other species of hedges.

He also likes to tell yokes. But his difficulty making the distinction between a ‘j’ and a ‘y’ often gets more laughs from his audience than the punch line. He likes to talk about the jellow birds that he saw in the yard and how he is going to wear his favorite yacket that day.

I don’t know why he makes those mistakes. It’s not like Dutch doesn’t possess the ‘y’ sound. Now, if he were French, he would have a legitimate excuse. French doesn’t have the ‘y’ unless it is in a word they stole from English or German.

Another favorite of the English language is the ‘w’. Germans are not very fond of this sound. They are known to say: ‘Vee had a vonderful veekend.’

I myself, have difficulty with the English ‘th’. I safely stay away from using words like ‘clothes’ or ‘sloths’. (I prefer to say ‘garments’ and ‘that slow monkey’ for fear of being ridiculed.) More than two consonants in a row is just not acceptable in any language, except maybe Welsh. My sister used to live in Wales, in a place near ‘Cwmbwrla’. Even though finding her derelict cottage was almost impossible, I refused to ask for directions.

Yes, the English ‘th’ is a real toughy for a lot of non-native speakers. The French are the worst offenders in that department: ‘Zis weekend we went to ze beach’, they’ll say. But it’s not easily mastered by many other foreigners. My mom, who is Hungarian, likes to talk about her past: ‘When I was dirty’ she’ll say, ‘I was very beautiful’.

The English ‘th’ must have been invented by someone with a heavy lisp. In Dutch at least the ‘th’ sound is usually represented by a decent, single consonant, the ‘d’. (Dutch for ‘the’ is ‘de’, ‘thin’ is ‘dun’ and ‘thanks’ is ‘dank’). To pronounce a ‘th’ your tongue has to protrude between your teeth and it makes you look like you are mentally challenged.

A mother called me today asking if there was a ‘pass’ that came to my dance studio. I told her I didn’t understand, so she said: ‘I live in Belmont, is there a ‘pass’ that goes to your studio?’ I finally realized that she meant ‘bus’. She was Korean and had trouble with the ‘b’ and the ‘u’.

In English, you have to be able to distinguish between ‘seat and sit’, ‘set and sat’, ‘sought and soot’ and ‘suit and sot’. Insert an ‘h’ in some of those words and you enter dangerous territory, as a non-native speaker. When my mom skyped me in a panic, telling me that there was a shit stuck in her printer I laughed so hard, I almost fell off my chair. I told her to pull on the shit gently and pull it out from between the rollers.

So you see, it’s almost impossible to become totally fluent in a language that you are not raised in. Even for speakers of other Germanic languages, like Dutch, German or Swedish, these subtle differences are hard to hear, let alone pronounce.

But I shouldn’t complain. We could have ended up living on Iceland. Try pronouncing the name of the volcano that spewed all that ash into the stratosphere. It’s called: ‘eyjafjallajokull’. leave comment here