There's a thing that happens with the sounds of languages.
All infants (of normal faculties) are capable of distinguishing every sound of every language on earth.
But as the infant makes progress acquiring the language it's exposed to, the brain focuses on the phonemes of that language, and steadily loses the ability to perceive phonemes that don't occur in that language.
So the first sounds of "shoe" and "chew" are distinct phonemes in English but not in Spanish, and no matter how many times you demonstrate them the Spanish speaker isn't going to perceive any difference.
To experience this have a Hungarian speaker demonstrate that language's two different phonemes which more or less correspond to the single English phoneme we write as "ch". To the Hungarian they're as different as "shoe" and "chew" are to an English speaker, but because English doesn't differentiate between the two Hungarian phonemes we can't hear the difference no matter how many times the Hungarian repeats it.
I've experienced both these exact scenarios! Teaching English to Spanish speakers, and having a Hungarian demonstrate their two "ch" sounds.
Which is a long way to say that listening and repetition aren't necessarily going to help with phonemes that don't exist in English.
Ideal is to have a native Gaelic speaker who knows phonetics demonstrate the exact placement of tongue or whatever is involved in the particular sound. We can see lip-rounding and jaw openness from the outside, but not tongue placement.
You can hear American English speakers say "r" over and over but your ears probably won't tell you that the "r" is a retroflex "r" which is why foreigners have so much trouble with that sound.
With Scottish Gaelic the "slender r" is very tricky! And is different in medial and final position. It's all about tongue placement.
Originally Posted by Iain Ruaidh
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