Still Sounds

“It was Sunday and I was at home back in Brazil. The phone rang so my father picked it up. Immediately afterwards, he turned the phone to me, a little bit surprised. ‘Somebody’s speaking English’, he said. It was a professor from Virginia Richmond University who was visiting Curitiba with some students. He called to tell me he had just arrived – I would help his team during the city tour. (the very first time I worked as an interpreter!) It feels awesome to be able to speak two languages and then make connections between them, but I have to admit that I was scared of speaking English on a phone. That was the first time I had to do it. I was scared because, on the phone, there are no visual clues. It’s all about sounds. And sound-related skills were kind of troublesome for me. But, in the end, all went well.”

“Six months later, I’m standing at the office of Mr. Andrew Dimock, Branner’s academic director. We were working on a petition for me to change my assigned PWR quarter. I had a very good idea of how to justify my request, i.e., I knew what I would write. All I would have to do was to submit my petition online and wait for a response. But the PWR website was facing some technical problems. Mr. Dimock decided to call the PWR Office to learn how to proceed. The woman from the PWR office said she could deal with my request through phone and then asked to talk to me. Again, I’d have to speak English on the phone, and it still scares me to some extent. I hate it when I have to ask somebody to repeat a sentence because I didn’t understand it. If I had the sentence written, I’d be probably able to understand it. In other words, it’s a matter of being able to comprehend sounds rather than words. Anyway, I faced the challenge and talked to her. After three minutes, my assigned PWR quarter was changed (and I even received a compliment due to my good English. ‘You speak English very well, I can tell only by talking to you on the phone’, she said).”

What's the most important feature in language comprehension? Sounds, syntax or vocabulary? This was the question that opened our journey through the world of Linguistics here in this blog. Before drowning deep in the study of Linguistics, my answer was Sounds. Guess what? After almost two months, my answer is still SOUNDS!

After two months taking classes in English and surrounded by English speakers, now I feel much more comfortable with my listening skills. As I learned during our classes, the reason is that I got more accustomed to the environment where now I live, and to the (English) speakers that now I live with. That is to say that now I am used to the sounds they produce. It is natural that after some time I can understand them better. Accents do not bother me too much now, I can even notice then! I could also watch the electoral coverage on TV and understand clearly what was being said. The end of the Autumn Quarter is coming and now I understand almost everything that my professors say in class. The opportunity of living here broadened my capacity of adaptation to a variety of English speakers.

Before coming to Stanford, I had been studying English for almost nine years. I had a pretty good knowledge of the syntax and of the vocabulary of the English Language. However, my listening and speaking skills – the ones related to sounds – were only reasonable (in my personal evaluation). When I arrived here, it bothered me not to be able to understand everything people around me were saying. I didn’t like it either when people could not understand what I was trying to say. For example: last week, I went to FroSoCo to talk to a friend of mine, whose name is Caroline. As I didn’t know the number of her room, I had to ask for help. But nobody there knew the number of her room! The reason, I learned quickly, was that I was mispronouncing her name. I was pronouncing the third vowel as /i/ instead of /ai/. I knew her name (the vocabulary); the problem was lying on the sound. Eventually, I was able to find her – I could communicate well and solve the problem! I am realy happy to notice a fair amount of improvement in my “sound skills”, so to speak, during the last months – now I can even speak comfortably on the phone (so feel free to call me whenever you need)!

Best,
Nikolas