Speakers For Soccer Practice

How do I pronounce ら,り, る,れ, ろ like a native Japanese speaker?

It's easy to say something like “it's a tongue movement somewhere between saying a D, an L and an R sound,” but it doesn't really do the question justice.The real, boring answer is practice. There are many videos on YouTube that allow you to hear how those kana are spoken. If you've spoken English your whole life, it will be hard at first; you're essentially asking your tongue, which is a muscle, to make unfamiliar movements. It's like asking yourself to do advanced soccer movements right off the bat. It will surely come with mindful practice.One of my favorite ways to practice is to repeatedly say words that contain these kana. Trust me, there are some real tricky ones out there. Choose the simple ones first and work up!One of my favorites is the passive form of “to appear,” 現れる, which is:現れられる (あらわれられる)

What is it like to be the native speaker whom non-native love to approach just to learn your language?

Everyday life. I live in Spain. I look like a non-native speaker because my whole body language screams American. My Spanish spouse could be wearing the exact same outfit and people might still look at me and peg me as an American based on body language alone.One of the biggest challenges for me is using Spanish every day. Outside of medical doctors, handling legal stuff and socializing with other native speakers, I’d like to practice my Spanish more. Why? Because, well, I live in Spainand have no plans to move.When I go out to certain places, I often get people who see me and want to practice their English with me. (Spouse gets stopped by everyone looking for directions. We all have our own burdens to bare.) It gets worse when the Cambridge exams get closer, as suddenly everyone wants to chat in English. Shop assistants, baristas, waiters, and occasionally people at bus stops. I can end up in conversations where I use Spanish and they use English. A few people I chat with at service jobs, like my local baristas, will ask me for translations of single words. This happens when their English is near non-existent but they deal with monolingual English speakers a lot.I can think of only one time ever where a native Spanish speaker stopped me to ask for something and then decided to chat with me more to make me practice my Spanish.On the whole, I don’t mind this. It is part of living in Madrid and makes life a bit more fun. I like helping people. Most of these interactions are short. I get a lot of amusing anecdotes to tell people out of them. The only major downside is that between people like that and people who try to speak to me in English to increase efficiency by getting me through a line faster, my Spanish improves much more slowly than I like. Overall though, when I have time, it can be fun. Loads and loads of anecdotes. :)

Is it easier for Portuguese speakers to learn Spanish than vice versa?

A native Spanish speaker who speaks Portuguese here. It’s way much easier for a Portuguese to learn Spanish than for a native Spanish speaker to learn Portuguese (from Portugal at least). The first part of the time that I lived in Portugal I had always the impression that Portuguese people understood what I said in Spanish but I couldn’t even grasp a word of what they were telling me in Portuguese; this of course changed with the time, and I have to say that I lived in Madeira Island, and Islanders are often not easy to understand. Portuguese language has more sounds than we have in Spanish, so at least, they can speak Spanish almost effortless; on the other hand all these nasal Portuguese sounds take us time to pronounce and to understand. Portuguese and Spanish grammar are almost the same.I have to say that for us is much much much easier to understand Brazilians than Portuguese people, and even when our soccer teams play against Brazil or Brazilian teams, and then Brazilians soccer players are interviewed, we don’t need subtitles; when it comes to soccer, Brazilian Portuguese is almost the same as Spanish. The other reason for Brazilians to be more understandable is that (no offence meant here) Brazilians speak louder and open more the mouth when they speak so they are easier to understand.

How does Brazilian Portuguese sound to native speakers of European Portuguese? I don't mean phonetics precisely, but the general structure, vocabulary, and the way differing expressions and constructions sound.

As a Brazilian I’d say that most Portuguese folks don’t even recognize our language as Portuguese, rather they use to say that, in fact, we speak “brasileiro”.Portuguese people often say that we speak a mix of Portuguese grammar with an uncountable influence of native Indians, Africans, middle eastern, European additions.Besides of an evolving set of completely different expressions, our Brazilian accent sounds very melodic and slow paced, in opposite to the Portuguese fast paced speech and monotonic nuance.European Portuguese is a straight forward language, with very little room for expressions with “double sense” meaning, whilst Brazilian Portuguese is full of multi sense expressions.Brazil itself is a large country and regional expressions along with a diversity of accents can lead to miscommunication, even among Brazilians.For example, I am a southeastern brasilian, married to a northeastern wife. Very often I have to ask my wife what does she really wants to say, because regional expressions can be very tricky. On the other hand I need to be careful not to offend her family with expressions that are common in my region but may sound offensive on her region. Likewise, sometimes I’m speaking really seriously and she may understand I’m joking.I remember a situation in where our pastor at the church (a southeastern gentleman) ask her to do something, for what she promptly responded “deixe de agonia, pastor” - which means in her vocabulary “no worries, I can handle it”.The pastor became visually uncomfortable with her answer, which means in my region “stop bothering”.Fortunately I was there to fix the problem.Well, there are many hilarious expressions to say, but I don’t want to make too long this answer.bestCD

Why do native Spanish speakers talk to my native Spanish speaking wife (Mexican) in English when she speaks Spanish to them? I even speak fluent Spanish, yet only we get responses in English.

Other people answering this question have made some interesting points.It would be important to know where does this happen. By your question’s context, I will assume in a country where Spanish is the national tongue. Also, that you usually meet people who are fluent or somewhat fluent in English (they are urban, have a university education, are well-traveled… In essence, folks who have some means).People all over the world have a sixth-sense to perceive “foreignness”, even if you look like them. Living abroad makes you foreign to a certain extent (in Mexico we poke fun at soccer players who spend some time in Spain and come back not so much with a Spanish accent, but with a Spanish singsong).So, Mexican as your wife is, people might “sense” a certain foreignness about her which could be highlighted by your being around (I am making another assumption, you are American and you don’t “look” Hispanic). And, even if you did, you’d be surprised by the number of Americans of Hispanic origin who don’t speak Spanish or speak it very poorly.Which takes me back to an answer I have already provided for a similar question. Native Spanish speakers who have a certain command of English will jump at any opportunity of practicing the language. They also feel that they might be helpful by signaling that they do speak English. Isn’t that what people from all over the world do in American films? They immediately come to the rescue of the American who is struggling to communicate with them. Remember that movies are instruments for ingraining behavior…My advice? Hold your ground and insist that they keep the conversation in Spanish. Tell them you want to practice too!