A Perfect Norwegian Stutter

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Re: Norwegian versus English Stutter

From: Paul Goldstein
Date: 17 Oct 2011
Time: 18:29:58 -0500
Remote Name: 88.88.238.25

Comments

Hi, Elyse. Thank you for your very interesting questions, and your nice remarks. To be honest I really have not noticed any major differences between my speech fluency in English and speech fluency in Norwegian. When I was first learning the language, I remember having major blocking on some Norwegian sounds - especially vowels - that have no English equivalent, but this passed as I became more familiar with the new language. But during that same period I was also having increased difficulties with disfluency in English, most probably due to the adjustments I was then making to a new country, culture, and society. So even during that period, there wasn't a major difference in my speech fluency between the two languages. In general, when I have a difficult day of speech, it affects both languages - and conversely, when my speech is flowing quite well, it will flow well in both languages. I also know Hebrew, and my experience with that language is that my speech fluency is about the same when speaking Hebrew as it is with English. (Of course, in all my comments here, I'm referring to speech fluency as opposed to linguistic fluency - these can be two entirely different things.) I realize that there are many bilingual people who stutter who different levels of speech fluency in the languages that they speak. But this has not been my own personal experience.


Last changed: 10/17/11