Impossible languages

Guest   Fri Jun 06, 2008 7:45 am GMT
Are there any languages which are impossible to pronounce for non-natives? The vocal chords are born with the ability to adjust to any language, but after some time the ability disappears. Are there any languages impossible to reach if the time is too late?
Guest   Fri Jun 06, 2008 8:16 am GMT
English, for some people.
Xie   Fri Jun 06, 2008 9:11 am GMT
I think none. What matters will only be how nice you sound like in a foreign lang. Since pitch gets lower when aging, and especially for males, you can't speak Mandarin as high-pitched as Chinese kids.

A "near" impossible, which proves to be a scam, is how you get over to a completely "alien" sound system. I was said to sound much more sophisticated after I knew how to reduce vowels in English. I had thought getting a native accent is almost like what only agents could do, but in fact it just depends on how much you work for it.

So far, though, I've seen only one famous Canadian who has got over to a Chinese system perfectly. Most others still sound foreign after several years (or even decades) of study and immersion in my country.
Guest   Fri Jun 06, 2008 9:14 am GMT
Ubykh and Vietnamese.
oleole   Fri Jun 06, 2008 7:56 pm GMT
"Are there any languages which are impossible to pronounce for non-natives? "

I think it is nearly impossible to pronounce some Arabic letters for non-natives, they have for ex three kinds of 'h' letter that should be written with 3 different letters and some other way of pronouncing of consonants that i have never heard before in other european languages. so i think, that is Arabic impossible for getting a native accent.
Skippy   Fri Jun 06, 2008 11:18 pm GMT
Ditto Josh Lalonde.
Guest   Sat Jun 07, 2008 12:07 am GMT
Thanks. By impossible I didn't mean literally impossible, but that is so hard it would be a monumental feat. Surely some languages are much harder relatively to pronounce too and some sounds.
Guest   Sat Jun 07, 2008 12:59 am GMT
So languages with clear distinctions among the different sounds are easier, for example Spanish. You don't need to be a baby to distinguish the sound of /a/,/e/,/i/, /u/,/o/.
Invitado   Sat Jun 07, 2008 1:03 am GMT
As I said before, among other things, Spanish has the easiest phonetics of all mayor languages.
P.D.   Sat Jun 07, 2008 4:30 am GMT
There is no such thing as an 'impossible language'. Some languages are harder to learn for some people, usually dependent on the learner's native language. Germans should have little trouble learning Dutch. Spanish speakers will learn Portuguese much faster than say, Farsi. Honestly I can see how English would be VERY tough to learn as a foreign language, due to the variation of spelling conventions. But orthography is just one aspect. Many people learn to speak languages without reading or writing (think, how do illiterate people still know how to speak coherent sentences). Spelling is meaningless in logographic or pictographic orthographies. As far as speech and phonology, English is probably about average. The vowels of languages like Spanish make it seem 'easy', but remember that Basque has almost the same sound inventory as Castillian Spanish, and I have yet to hear anyone claim that Basque is an 'easy' language to learn,
Hermano   Sat Jun 07, 2008 8:07 am GMT
Spanish is quite hard to pronounce for some people.
Guest   Sat Jun 07, 2008 8:12 am GMT
Anyone who has ever taken a Spanish class in the United States should know from experience that many Americans cannot speak Spanish without completely butchering the pronunciation.
Invitado   Sat Jun 07, 2008 3:44 pm GMT
That's cuz they're stupid, Spanish has by far the easiest pronunciation, if they can't pronounce Spanish then they won't be able to pronounce any other language.
Hermano   Sat Jun 07, 2008 9:07 pm GMT
<< That's cuz they're stupid, Spanish has by far the easiest pronunciation, if they can't pronounce Spanish then they won't be able to pronounce any other language. >>

It has nothing to do with stupidity.
Depending on which language you grow up with, Spanish could be hard as well.
Guest   Sat Jun 07, 2008 9:24 pm GMT
People who don't pronounce Spanish properly are just lazy. You can learn how to pronouce every possible Spanish word in just one hour.