Pulborough & Phonetics Foundations

Sun 20th- Mon 27th March
At the moment I’m in a sleepy English hamlet called Pulborough (an unlikely place to prepare for Spain) with a phonetics teacher called Joanna Benson. She runs a course called ‘Sound Foundations’ for those who want to get a firm grounding in how to say and hear the sounds that are made in a language which is not their mother tongue.

Sound Foundation Course

Phonetics is the study of sounds. Its importance, in the training of missionaries who will learn a language which is not their native tongue, should not be underestimated. We have all heard the Asian tongue trying to pronounce the /r’s/ in ‘fried rice’. It is often parodied and mocked in a cruel way. All of us find it hard to get our mouths around sounds that are not native. But it can be done. Listen to the SBS news reader Lee Lin Chin who has worked so hard on how she pronounces the sounds of English that it is almost impossible to tell that she is not Australian born Chinese.

For me it is the Spanish language which I’m trying to get my mouth around.
There are many sounds in the Spanish language that we as English speakers, more precisely Australian English speakers, don’t normally make. For example, the vowels /a/; /e/; /i/; /o/; /u/ are all formed in the mouth differently than in English. To say the /a/ sound in Spanish, requires the Australian to make a ‘quack’, by drawing the lips back, exposing the teeth and sounding an /a/ similar to the /a/ in ‘quack’. This is just one of many examples. Try that a few times and you’ll get a feel for what I’m doing. My lips are cracked, my cheeks and tongue are sore.


Another is the Spanish /r/. It is formed by taking the tongue up to the roof of the mouth and sounding an English /d/. When I say a word using this type of /d/ sound the Spanish speaker hears an /r/. The /d/ in Spanish sometimes becomes a /th/ sound, formed by the tongue vibrating in through the teeth. In phonetics this is called a ‘fricative’. I think you’re allowed to say this word in mixed company.

Anyone guess what a bilabial fricative might be?

The importance? One small sound can change the whole meaning of a word and therefore a sentence. Often missionaries are taught by very good native speakers, but with out the phonetics training as a foundation they may build on sounds which mean they never quite get the pronunciation right.


It has been a hard week, trying to learn to speak again. Getting tongue-tied and looking in a mirror to see exactly where the lips, tongue and teeth should be. But already there is an improvement in pronunciation. I am hoping and praying that the Sound Foundations course will put me in good stead when I leave next week for Spain, and further language learning with a native Spanish speaker.

G.K. Chesterton Quote 'Though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.' From Orthodoxy.