Although I am still amazed that students cannot distinguish between the different tones in Mandarin, I am equally guilty when it comes to American English.
There are sounds which, even after half a century of exposure to it (although admittedly only intermittent exposure), I still cannot differentiate certain vowel sounds, e.g., can vs can’t. I have to ask them for clarification by saying, “Do you mean ‘can’ or ‘cannot’?”
When I was working in Taipei for Conoco Taiwan in 1975–76, the three daughters — aged 10, 7 and 5, of the administrative manager (naturalised Aussie, originally Malaysian Chinese) and his white Australian wife — came home from school one day with a joke.
School was the American School in Taipei, so this joke was based on the American pronunciation(s): Your lips are like petals — bicycle pedals.
The joke works on “petals” and “pedals” sounding the same for the middle consonant, which is another of my problems with American English.
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