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From: Kevin O'Neill
Date: 17 Oct 2012
Time: 12:11:19 -0500
Remote Name: 24.18.229.12
I've found it similarly hard to speak French and Italian in a "real-world" setting (traveling in Quebec and Italy). Partly it's just the different sounds, partly it's performance anxiety in a new language. In English I'm familiar with my "difficult sounds" and have practice with what needs to be done not to block. (Ultimately all speech is just breathing, vocalization, and moving my mouth and tongue.) Speaking in a foreign language there's lots going on cognitively that makes it hard to relax and pay exclusive attention to speech production. This causes "natural disfluency," and then my usual conditioned responses kick in with tension and avoidance and more severe stuttering.