Most of the world’s population has the same oral anatomy. Why is it so difficult for many speakers to roll their r, add a glottal stop, pronounce the “q” in Farsi etc, when it seems like all the tools are right there in our mouths and throats?
I’m mainly referring to borrowed words or attempts at learning new languages. Overcome rhotacism (replacing r with w) . Lisps might be a bit harder due to tongue sizes and disabilities there but lisps are the only impediment I can kind of see how a predisposed mouth structure could affect pronunciation.
I’m fascinated by accents and linguistics and these minor obstacles in others’ speech often stick out louder than the message they’re orating and I get fixated (tiktok content, for reference).
In: Biology
Linguistics is something I’m passionate about – in short; muscle memory. Young kids are terrific at learning to make these sounds, but around the time of puberty, the brain has become zeroed in on whatever your native language is, and the language acquisition circuits get pruned down. When your mouth has become fine tuned by your brain to produce the sounds of your native language, it takes great effort to make unfamiliar ones.
Imagine trying to unlearn how to ride a bike and then relearn a different style of riding from scratch, and you start to approach what it’s like to learn a second language, as an adult, to a native-like level.
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