Do you guys know if there's any truth to the idea that if you don't hear a specific spoken sound before a certain age, you'll never really be able to recognize it? I have anecdotal evidence that it's true - I had a Cantonese-speaking friend trying to teach me a few words (my fave, by the way, is for avocado - it shows the building blocks @Mckk was talking about, because it's really "butter fruit" and then you can break "butter" down into something about cows, etc.). Anyway, this friend came across a sound I was saying wrong, and tried to correct me, and I just couldn't hear any difference between what she was saying and what I was saying, and then when she said the two sounds herself I couldn't hear any difference between her first and second sound, but apparently it was totally obvious to her... frustrating for both of us! I have normal hearing, so I don't think it was my ears that were the problem. But somehow the sounds just - I don't know. I just couldn't hear a difference at all, and to her the difference was crystal clear.
My Indian husband can't say certain words no matter how hard he tries, and like you he can't hear the difference when I do it. For example he can't say "crisps", he can only say "crips", and to him it's the same. I tell him not to talk about "disks" in public...
There is some anecdotal evidence, yes, that perhaps for some this may be the case, at least regarding subtle sound differences. My hubby cannot distinguish between fit and feet. He can hear the difference, sometimes, but he cannot reproduce it. It's also very common for people in my neck of Hispanophonia to believe that is, it's and its are all pronounced exactly the same. I've had small "exchanges of opinion" with my local friends who think it's bullshit when I tell them that the three words are not all pronounces ees.
It might be more a case of practice though, sensitivity to something you haven't developed because of a lack of exposure. For example, when I first emigrated (was 8 years old), I remember being baffled by how I'm supposed to avoid swearing when I wanna say something like "a sheet of paper" - because sheet and shit sounded exactly the same to me. Obviously that's no longer the case. (also had the same problem with lives and leaves.) It was also the first year in the UK when I learnt the phrase "you get on my nerves" - I missed the V sound and naturally identified the word as "nurse", the only word to my knowledge that had a close resemblence to what I was hearing. (didn't know of the word "nerves" back then). I can't tell you when I realised my mistake. Weirdly enough, I was also mixing accents. Words I'd learnt in Hong Kong, I spoke with a Chinese accent, and words I'd learnt in England, I spoke with an English accent. Most noticeable was the way I pronounced "th". I'd say something like, "I thought dat dis was a thick piece of wood." (dat = that and dis= this) There were also words and word endings I was pronouncing in a tonal way all the way up till I was a teenager and I actively corrected myself after I was laughed at by many people in school - because by that point the ability to pronounce something correctly was in me, but somehow that hadn't transferred to the way I spoke certain words I'd learnt previous to emigrating. The words I got laughed at for were: animal (said it like ani-mo), painting (said it like paint-teng), and six, because I was pronouncing it like the word 'sex'. I corrected myself by actively exaggerating the sounds I saw in the spelling of the word until it became natural to me. Anyway I think recognition of sounds that you'd never heard before takes time, that's all. It's probably more a case of a combination of exposure, active hard work, and perhaps just how sensitive you personally are to these things. For example, my husband is able to hear and replicate Cantonese tones in general - he does such a good job that Hong Kongers who have never met him before usually understand what he's saying (just a sentence or two, but still good going!). And he's Czech with no prior exposure to tonal languages. I think maybe he's good at it because he's very musical and was trained in singing and piano from a young age. Another Czech who could hear the tonal differences in Cantonese was my singing teacher - so another musical individual. The way my husband does it is, he identifies the tone in the first word, and then he says all the other words' tones relative to that first one, and the result is pretty good And usually if I'm trying to illustrate the tonal differences of things, I say them back to back repeatedly. It's not enough to say it just once, but if you say it for like 10 seconds, some people do hear it. Anyway with Cantonese, context is key - it's no good just saying one word because the same sound and tone can often mean different things when paired up with different words. And yeah avocada is: Butter fruit. And Butter is: Cow oil. So the breakdown would be: Cow, Oil, Fruit Oh and while I haven't verified this, I think perhaps we use a different physical part to speak tonally. My throat vibrates in a different place when I'm speaking Cantonese and my voice is deeper - it's not the same as my English voice. The same sound in English and Cantonese, but one spoken tonally, sounds different. Speaking of the inability to detect differences in subtle sounds, I still struggle with the Czech's S, Z, Ch, H etc. I know they're different and can hear and replicate them fine on their own, but once they're put into a sentence it's like whoosh over my head. It's the same as why the Czechs really struggle with English vowels actually - you wouldn't have thought they would considering it's almost the same alphabet and it's still a European language, but butter, batter, and better would be a nightmare for the Czechs to say. Their A sounds more like our U I think. And our E sounds like their A.
I would also add that I think there is a dynamic of how... traveled (?) one's language is, @BayView. Native speakers of Spanish are intolerant of unusual pronunciations. There are times when I may tweak a word mildly wrong because it's a cognate in English and my mouth and tongue already have an invested muscle memory of how to say it one way and that may cause me to hit an /a/ that should be an /e/ or vice versa. This often causes William to draw a blank. This tiny mispronunciation turns the word into a non-word to him. I get really frustrated at this and in my mind I'm yelling, "Really?? Really?? I get one vowel wrong and you have no clue what I'm saying? Shall we dissect what comes out of the other end of the meat grinder when you speak English?" And rude as that may sound, that's actually the issue. In the U.S., Canada, the U.K., we are accustomed to hearing English passed through a bewildering array of accents, both domestic and foreign. You can mangle it pretty badly, and we still grok what's being said because we're exposed to mangled English all the time. Speakers of Spanish, not so much. They'll be nice to you and smile and make you feel like yeah, you got it, but if you're not there the criticism of Spanish as spoken by speakers of English is scathing, dire and unforgiving. One of the worst offenses to the Spanish ear is the way most speakers of English close out the vowels in Spanish that should not be closed. It's natural because the majority of vowels in English are like that, but not in Spanish. The word qué should sound like keh, never like kay. And this is something Spanish speakers hear in almost every word when English speakers speak the language. In Spanish versions of The Voice and Idol, the judges are ruthless in this regard with Hispanic contestants who are from the U.S.
Depends on how you define 'recognize' here. I recognize the rolled r in Spanish, but I can't make the sound very well. Some of my Spanish speaking friends can't say words that sound like 'girl'. So many people do have a hard time with certain pronunciations when speaking a new language and it does have to do with that initial language learning time period when our brains are primed to learn language.
I gave an example in my initial post. But I couldn't hear what the different sounds were, so... I can't tell you what they were!
The different between a rhotic, non-rhotic, tapped, rolled and guttural R are pretty easy to hear for any ear, trained to the sounds or not. All of the aforementioned R's exist, btw, on the island of PR and two of them denote where one is from on the island. The rhotic "American" R is typical of the San Juan area and the guttural "French" R is heard in the North-West of the island. The example I gave of the difficulty latinos have with is vs its, I think fills the bill. Important to note that pretty much any sound can be made obvious when one slows down and/or exaggerates the pronunciation for purposes of example or teaching, but when spoken at a normal conversational clip the voiced S of is becomes indistinguishable for many latinos from the T+unvoiced S of its.
I think 'never' is a word that should be used sparingly, if at all. More likely it will be a harder, more intensive learning process than it would be for a child who was learning as part of natural development. For some people it may be de facto impossible because they will never invest the sweat and time it would take to overcome that deficiency. But human brains are marvelously plastic structures well into later life. I'm sure it wasn't your ears. The sound you are able to consciously hear and analyze is a highly pre-filtered and modulated version of the sound that is actually sensed by your ears. At every step there is neural processing of the data, first to filter out noise and identify signal patterns, then to apply labels and descriptors to recognized symbols, prioritize importance, activate associated memories and emotions to the sound, etc.--and that all happens underneath your conscious notice and mostly before you are even aware of noticing it. Language leans on those subconscious pathways HARD. So if your software is not primed with the right set of filters for hearing a certain vowel shift or tone rise or whatever, you simply won't be able, at first, to take conscious notice of the differences between those sounds. But I am quite confident that like any skill it can be practiced and improved. Ah, good old prescriptivist snobbery. I hear this about the French quite a lot. I think it's good to acknowledge that we Anglophones have our share of grammar nazis and punctuation police as well. But I think you may be right that most people in the US are ready to cut non-native speakers quite a lot of slack and actually will often go to some effort to make sure they understand and are understood. There are so many ESL speakers in the world, it would really make life more difficult for us if we didn't. EDIT: I also want to say that the few times I have been in a position to help interpret for someone who was having a hard time with communication have been really nice experiences for me. One time a Hispanic lady was in the office at my apartment complex when I came by to drop my rent, and she was having a horrendous time trying to get across to the manager that she couldn't get into her mailbox because the lock was broken. He spoke no Spanish and she little or no English, and she was obviously so frustrated because the problem was so simple, and yet she couldn't make herself understood... It was great to see the relief on both their faces when I was able to sort it out and he assured her that he would call the Post Office immediately to get it fixed. I felt like Superman. People who sneer and insult others for not knowing something they do are not only jerks, they're really depriving themselves of a nice human interaction and the chance to help someone out in a way that doesn't cost them a penny.
It's a bit of a long-winded video but the guy goes through the 9 tones of Cantonese in the first 4 minutes. See if you can hear all the differences This was the kinda thing @BayView referred to. In my experience most Westerners can't hear most of these differences.
