"Although language is a relatively subtle test, certain easily detectable
phonemes (音位) give the foreigner away. A classical historical episode concerns the massacre of French troops by Flemings in the city of Brugge (or Bruges as the French say) in 1302. The Flemings wanted to kill the French army of occupation in their beds without raising the alarm, so the problem was how to identify Frenchmen quickly and reliably, in the dark, in order to slaughter them without fuss. The solution was to make them repeat a short Flemish phrase, "schilde en de vriend," ("shield and friend") that contained phonemes unpronounceable to native speakers of French. History books tell us that the stratagem was devastatingly successful."
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Monday, July 23, 2007
Be careful about your pronunciation.
The follow excerpt is from The Ethnic Phenomenon, by Pierre L. Van Den Berghe. The context is the use of language as an ethnic marker.
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Language
Native Speaker of American English
Conversation practice. Chatting or in-depth discussion of news articles.
TOEFL-IELTS practice / CV, SOP, journal paper, essay revision
英語家教
彈性排課, 免通勤, 托福, 職場英文, 履歷/論文修改…等。
請看我的學生推薦信。
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