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
It’s not all that different from muscle memory. The sounds we make can change dramatically with the tiniest change in the placement of our tongues, how wide open our mouths are, shape we make our lips…etc. Native language speakers intrinsically know how to make their mouths take the exact right shapes because they grew up speaking that language. But when you learn a new language with different sounds that don’t exist in the language you speak, you have to learn how to make your mouth take that exact shape, and that takes time. You’re basically rewiring your brain so it learns how to tell your mouth to move in a certain way.
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