Why you need to hear Indonesian, English, Scottish and any language when learning it

Problem
When you learn a language from a book or the internet without hearing it, you miss three things:

1 The sounds you don't have in your language and when to say them, such as a rolled r in Indonesian - and a gutteral ch in the Scottish word Loch

Scotland - where the word loch ends distinctively

2 Which suyllable should be emphasized. Some language have accents to tell you which syllable. But you have to take notice of the accents and reember how the word sound.


3 Silent letters. I have heard Singaporeans say the past tence of an English verb pronounced the ed and Ed as in Edward. He walke-ed. The effect is very strange.

England where the final e is not pronounced in drove or love.

I was using Duolingo and often forgot to click on the sound symbol to hear the word. The same applies to the use of online dicitonaries, and place names in Wikipedia. Take the trouble to click on the symbol and listen to the word.

When I clicked on the sounds for the first time when learning the first few lessons of Indonessian using Duolingo, the free internet language learning system, I was shocked to hear that the word for wter, spelled air, was not pronounced like the wrod air in English but with a rolled r at the end, The ri is a bit like drawing your tongue back to say three. The same appled to the Indonesian word for red, merah.

Useful Websites
duolingo.com
memrise.com

Duolingo is my favourite. It seems the easiest and gives me a sense of achievement. However, some people prefer Memrise which adds memory aids.  Some language teaching systems use videos of people speaking. 

I have tried them all. But when I have five minutes to spare and want a break from work, I go back to Duolingo.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of languages. I have many more posts on languages and destinations. Please share links to your favourite posts.