Why shall Italiens pronounce like Americans?
They are asking because kids are kids no matter where you live. If we use the same word for the dish as Italians, it stands to reason that children who are still learning would have the same issue regardless of location.
It’s the same word on paper, but pronounced different. Italians tend to speak the vowels longer, with a slightly different sound (the “a” in American sounds like an “uh”, in Italian like a long “ah”). They also speak out both t’s separately.
So how do Italian kids tend to misprounce the word as they’re developing speech?
Exactly! I think one of the fun things about growing up is realizing that your personal experience isn’t completely unique, and that other people have shared similar experiences. I also don’t think it’s weird to have the idea that many of the things we enjoy and find funny (like puns and silly sounds) would cross language and cultural boundaries.
I was once an Italian kid. My parents would have beat me if I pronounced spaghetti wrong.
So no. They don’t.
Ah yes, threats of abuse, famous for always having the outcome they intend
[edit: especially when dealing with children who are still developing their ability to speak and comprehend speech]
It was a critique of being raised by Italian parents in the 80s/90s. Please be aware that I made a joke
Surely they must do? Like kids are not going to find certain sounds like ‘sp’ easier depending on what country they’re from but maybe the sounds they learn first with be different?
Kids do in fact have an easier time pronouncing syllables they hear about them. And from about age 3 it starts going downhill. At 9 it’s near impossible to learn to speak a new language without accent.
I’ve heard that it’s until 12~14, depending on exposure.
I know people who moved to Canada from countries with little exposure at or after the age of 9 who still speak their mother tongue at home, and yet have no accent at all when speaking English. A very linguistically different language from English, at that.
That’s true, but also, speech-motor control develops throughout childhood, and one of the last things children develop is consonant clusters. This means words like (sp)a(gh)etti are harder for most children to say than, for example, “banana”, regardless of their language. Children tend to replace difficult clusters with one of their sounds, and when there’s more than one difficult cluster in a word, sometimes the other sound of one gets transposed in place of the other.
No, they pronounce it correctly.
I think OP was asking about young kids who are still learning to pronounce words correctly.
You know there are sources for sound and moving pictures on the internet?
