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To those with English as a second language: are people actively being taught that a short A should be pronounced as a short E?

Just wondering because I hear a lot of non-native speakers say things like “bend” instead of “band” and I find it a bit puzzling since native speakers don’t say it that way (except in New Zealand and maybe London I suppose? Not sure) and many languages have the usual A-sound that I and many others use (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_front_unrounded_vowel) so it’s not like it’s difficult to pronounce. I’ve also seen it mentioned on onzetaal.nl that a particular word with an A is pronounced with an E “like in English” (“Bovendien spreek je app in het Nederlands nog enigszins op z’n Engels uit: als ‘ep’.”: onzetaal.nl/…/appen-whatsappen-vervoeging). Actually I find myself quite often not understanding Dutch people speaking English if they do it.

The other explanations would be that people can’t get their mouths around the short A in standard American and learnèd English Englishes (en.wikipedia.org/…/Near-open_front_unrounded_vowe…) or that people have just sort of collectively, subconsciously decided to start saying it that way, or something else I haven’t thought of. Maybe because the name of the letter A in English is more or less the same as the letter E in others?

DosDude ,
@DosDude@retrolemmy.com avatar

It’s probably the comfortable mouth shape from their native tongue. If you ever try to speak a language fluently you’ll notice that your mouth is not used to these shapes and fatigue will set in eventually.

I’ve noticed this myself when I was in America. After using the language 24/7 my mouth would start to cramp up, and falling back to my native mouth shape made the cramps less. I pride myself on my English pronunciation, and cringe when I hear other people from my country speak English, but I understand where it comes from.

MadBob OP ,

That’s why I mention the way I pronounce it myself: I speak Dutch fluently and I know for certain that Hollandish dialects have the same A I have in my mother tongue, but Hollanders are always saying stuff like “epplication”, “bend”, “pen”, etc. etc. so it doesn’t strike me as likely. I do agree though that it’s fatiguing making mouth shapes you’re not used to!

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