Vale wrote:
> For example, I'm Italian: my teacher make me vocalize on five of the
italian vowels: /a/, /e/, /i/, /O/,/u/.
> I sing also in English, but it's another matter. Let's suppose that I need
to learn Italian vowels.
>
> As you notice, there are not /E/ and /o/. Why, I ask myself?
> I've asked my teacher, but he hadn't any answer. He said that "He's been
taught so... perhaps because when we Italians read alphabet, we pronounce
them so...".
> I think it's not a valid reason.
I think it is! I speak Portuguese and we practically have the same vowels
that you have ( if we don't count their nasal variations ), but it's a
popular assumption that we have only 5 vowels. Even teachers in junior high
say that.
It's hard for most people to understand the difference between the alphabet,
the sounds AND the phonetic symbols. And 'semi-vowels' are Greek philosophy
to most people.
In some regions in Brazil, children are not taught the names of the letters
of the alphabet ( /ei/, /bee/, etc ), but their sounds ( /a/. /b/, etc ),
but they ended up introducing a vowel in the end of consonants and use it to
say the names of the letters ( so, the IMF would be pronounced /IMEFE/, not
/ai-em-ef/ ). It seems to prove that it's really hard for most people to
make sense out of that.
That must not be as strong in English-speaking countries, since they're
necessarily aware of the difference between pronunciation and spelling. It's
not the same in our languages: as the spelling of a word is much closer to
its pronunciation ( much more in Italian than in Portuguese, and, due to our
Italian colonization, much more in São Paulo than in the rest of Brazil or
in Portugal ), we can learn to read without caring so much about spellling.
We have nothing similar to those Spelling Bee contests Americans have, and I
guess Italy doesn't either ( you must have "Guess that Dialect", hehehe ).
Our problems here are graphic signs, something that Italians have basically
gotten rid of, but must have given you a problem to determine where the
stressed syllable of an rarely-spoken word lies. Am I right?
bye,
Caio Rossi
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