Non-native pronunciations of English
Non-native pronunciations of English result from the common linguistic phenomenon in which non-native users of any language tend to carry the intonation, phonological processes and pronunciation rules from their first language or first languages into their English speech. They may also create innovative pronunciations for English sounds not found in the speaker's first language.
Overview
The speech of non-native English speakers may exhibit pronunciation characteristics that result from their imperfectly learning the sound system of English, either by transferring the phonological rules from their mother tongue into their English speech or through implementing strategies similar to those used in primary language acquisition. They may also create innovative pronunciations for English sounds not found in the speaker's first language.The age at which speakers begin to immerse themselves into a language is linked to the degree to which native speakers are able to detect a non-native accent; the exact nature of the link is disputed amongst scholars and may be affected by "neurological plasticity, cognitive development, motivation, psychosocial states, formal instruction, language learning aptitude", and the usage of their first and second languages.
English is unusual in that speakers rarely produce an audible release between consonant clusters and often overlap constriction times. Speaking English with a timing pattern that is dramatically different may lead to speech that is difficult to understand.
More transparently, differing phonological distinctions between a speaker's first language and English create a tendency to neutralize such distinctions in English, and differences in the inventory or distribution of sounds may cause substitutions of native sounds in the place of difficult English sounds and/or simple deletion. This is more common when the distinction is subtle between English sounds or between a sound of English and of a speaker's primary language. While there is no evidence to suggest that a simple absence of a sound or sequence in one language's phonological inventory makes it difficult to learn, several theoretical models have presumed that non-native speech perceptions reflect both the abstract phonological properties and phonetic details of the native language.
Non-native pronunciations may be transmitted to the children of learners, who will then exhibit a number of the same characteristics despite being native speakers themselves. For example, this process has resulted in many of the distinctive qualities of Irish English and Highland English which were heavily influenced by a Goidelic substratum.
Examples
Arabic
General features among most or all Arabic speakers:- Confusion between as in sit and as in set, pronouncing both vowels as,, or.
- Difficulty distinguishing low sounds. as in bam and as in balm may both be realized as,, or depending on the speaker's dialect.
- according to there is a Confusion between caught and coat
- Confusion between as in called, as in cold, both being realized as or depending on the speaker's dialect.
- The vowel of bear may be pronounced as.
- The vowel of tour may be pronounced as.
- The vowel of peer may be pronounced as.
- The vowel of now may be pronounced as.
- Tendency to monophthongize as in saint into or.
- Speakers tend to speak with a rhotic accent and pronounce as or.
- Speakers may have difficulty distinguishing from, using the former for both.
- A number of Arabic speakers do not differentiate between and, nor do they differentiate and, pronouncing both as and, respectively.
- found Saudi speakers to have difficulty with consonant clusters, tending to break them up with epenthetic vowels.
- Difficulty with word-final, typically adding a or.
- Difficulty with the vowel of nurse, which may be prononounced as or.
Catalan
- Devoicing of final consonants: to .
- Vowel length confusions.
- Confusion of , usually realized as
- Confusion of , usually realized as.
- Confusion of , usually realized as.
- Confusion of , usually realized as or.
- Confusion of , usually realized as .
- Rhotic pronunciation, with pronounced as a trill or a flap.
- Difficulties with word-initial clusters involving, where an epenthetic e is usually added.
- Simplification of some word consonant clusters.
- Narrower pitch range, with emphasis marked with extra length instead of extra pitch variation.
- Problems with variable stress.
- Problems with contrastive stress.
Czech
- Final devoicing of voiced consonants, since non-sonorant consonants are always voiceless at the end of words in Czech. Some speakers may pronounce consonant-final English words with a strong vocalic offset, especially in isolated words.
- Czech is alveolar trill. There is a tendency to pronounce the trill in English and in all positions where is written.
- Final -er pronounced as syllabic alveolar trill . Stressed tends to be realized as .
- Tendency to realize as or, since does not exist in Czech.
- Tendency to substitute as or, since does not exist in Czech.
- Tendency to pronounce as voiced.
- Tendency not to aspirate the stops , since these stop consonants are not aspirated in Czech.
- is often realised as, so that "had" sounds like "head", homophonous with "hat".
- Schwa does not exist in Czech. Speakers tend to pronounce it as or .
- Tendency to realise as or , because Czech is an allophone of before velar stops.
- Tendency to isolate all words in speech, because the liaison is unusual in Czech. For instance, "see it" tends to be pronounced, rather than.
- The melody of the Czech language is not so strong as in English. Czech speakers may sound monotonous to an English ear.
Dutch
;Pronunciation of consonants
- Speakers have difficulty with dental fricatives, often pronouncing as or . Similarly, the dental fricative is replaced by or, though Belgian speakers may pronounce both and as in word-final position.
- The voiced stops and fricatives undergo terminal devoicing, especially in stressed syllables, causing feed and feet to be pronounced as the latter. Similarly, Dutch voicing assimilation patterns may be applied to English utterances so that, for example, iceberg is pronounced as, and if I as.
- Speakers have difficulty with the glottalization of, either not pronouncing it or applying it in the wrong contexts so that good morning is pronounced.
- The voiceless stops lack aspiration in stressed syllable-initial context.
- Medial /t/ is replaced by /d/ so that better is pronounced as.
- The postalveolar sibilants tend to be pronounced as their alveolo-palatal equivalents in Dutch: ; beginners may pronounce them as alveolar or in syllable-final positions, leading to wish being pronounced as.
- may be confused with and with in initial position.
- may be strongly pharyngealized, even in contexts where dark l doesn't normally appear in English. Beginners may insert an epenthetic schwa between and a following, leading to milk being pronounced as.
- could pose difficulties for certain regional dialects which lack /h/, such as in Zeelandic and West Flemish.
- is replaced by, which English listeners may perceive as.
- The alveolar consonants /t, d, n, s, z, l/ are articulated with the blade of the tongue, rather than the tip as in English.
- Speakers have difficulty distinguishing between and, so that man and men are both pronounced as the latter.
- Speakers have difficulty distinguishing between and, so that pool and pull are both pronounced with. Some advanced speakers may employ a glide .
- /iː/ is pronounced closer, tenser, and sometimes shorter than usual. Some advanced speakers might over-compensate for the length with a diphthong like .
- /ʌ/ is replaced by . Spelling might cause confusing with /ɒ/ in words like wonder, nothing and lovely.
- British English /ɒ/ is replaced by .
- British English /ɜː/ is replaced by the sequence in Dutch /ør/, with significant lip-rounding and r-insertion.
- /eɪ/ is replaced by .
- /əʊ/ is replaced by . More advanced speakers might use the Dutch diphthong .
- /aɪ/ tends to be overly long before fortis consonants, giving the impression of a following lenis consonants.
French
- Because of the phonetic differences between English and French rhotics, speakers may perceive English, allophonically labialized to, as -like and have trouble distinguishing between and.
- French speakers have difficulty with and many delete it, as most French dialects do not have this sound.
- French speakers have difficulty with dental fricatives and . In France they may be pronounced as and, while in Quebec, Canada, the usual substitution is and.
- Speakers tend not to make a contrast between and..
German
- Speakers may not velarize in coda positions as most native speakers do.
- German has a smaller pitch range, less consonant cluster reduction, and less vowel reduction.
- German features terminal devoicing, which is often carried over to English
- German features neither nor , and both are often realised as either /s/ or /f/
- German speakers tend to realise as when speaking English.
- The German /r/ is realised differently from the English /r/. Whereas in the former case the tongue touches the soft palate, in the latter case it does not.
Hebrew
- The lack of discrimination in Hebrew between tense and lax vowels makes correctly pronouncing English words such as hit/heat and cook/kook difficult.
- The dental fricatives and are often mispronounced.
- Hebrew speakers may confuse and.
- In Hebrew, word stress is usually on the last or penultimate syllable of a word; speakers may carry their stress system into English, which has a much more varied stress system. Hebrew speakers may also use Hebrew intonation patterns which mark them as foreign speakers of English.
Hungarian
- The dental fricatives and may be realised as and respectively.
- Since Hungarian lacks the phoneme, many Hungarian speakers substitute for when speaking in English. A less frequent practice is hypercorrection: substituting for in instances where the latter is actually correct.
Italian
- Tendency to realise as or as because Italian is an allophone of before velar stops.
- Difficulty with English vowels
- * and are pronounced ;
- * and are pronounced ;
- * and are pronounced ;
- * and are pronounced ;
- *Speakers tend to have little difficulty with, though some might pronounce it as or ).
- *The pronunciation of and are variable, pronounced as or.
- The sequence in words like bottle is realized as,, or.
- Tendency to realise word-initial with, e.g. small. This voicing also applies to and.
- Italian does not have dental fricatives:
- * Voiceless may be realised as or.
- * Voiced may be realised as.
- Since and are typically pronounced as dental stops anyway, words like there and dare can become homophones.
- Tendency to pronounce,, as unaspirated stops.
- Schwa does not exist in Italian; speakers tend to give the written vowel its full pronunciation, e.g. lemon, television, parrot, intelligent, water, sugar.
- Italian speakers may pronounce consonant-final English words with a strong vocalic offset, especially in isolated words, e.g. dog.
- Tendency to realise as ; a trill rather than the native approximant ~, even when the dialect of English they are learning is nonrhotic.
Japanese
- Speakers tend to confuse and both in perception and production, since the Japanese language has only one liquid phoneme /r/, whose possible realizations include central and lateral. Speakers may also hear English as similar to the Japanese.
Portuguese
Brazilian
Various pronunciation mistakes are bound to happen among Brazilian L2 speakers of English, among which:;Pronunciation of vowels
- Confusion of and, usually realized as, and of and, usually realized as.
- Especially in a British context, confusion of and. The Brazilian is equivalent to RP English, and English orthography rarely makes a clear demarcation between the phonemes, thus cold might be homophone with called. The North American equivalent of British,, may be easier to perceive as it closely resembles the Portuguese diphthong. Speakers may also have trouble distinguishing between schwa and.
- In a British context, the diphthong might also be pronounced as the Portuguese diphthong eu,.
- Persistent preference for over , and use of within the IPA space, so that can't, even in RP, might sound like an American pronunciation of Kent. Some might even go as far as having instead of for last
- Difficulty with dental fricatives and. These may be instead fronted, stopped or hissed.
- Speakers may pronounce word-initial r as a guttural ar pronunciations or a trill). These often sound to English speakers as, leading to confusion between ray and hay, red and head, height and right, etc.
- Neutralization of coda, giving preference to a multitude of nasal vowels originating from their deletion. Vowels are also often strongly nasalized when stressed and succeeded by a nasal consonant, even if said consonant starts a full syllable after it.
- Fluctuation of the levels of aspiration of voiceless stops, that might sound like.
- Loss of contrast between coronal stops and post-alveolar affricates due to palatalization of the earlier, before vowels such as,,, and.
- Epenthetic to break up consonant clusters.
- Palatalization due to epenthetic, so that night sounds slightly like nightch and light sounds like lightchie.
- Loss of unstressed, syllable-final to palatalization, so that city sounds slightly like sitch.
- Post-alveolar affricates are easily confused with their fricative counterparts, often merging chip and ship, cheap and sheep, and pledger and pleasure.
- Absence of contrast of voice for coda fricatives. He's, hiss and his are easily homophonous. Spelling pronunciations, with all words with historical schwas left in the orthography being pronounced even when the usual would be, are also possible.
- English is less prone to perfect liaison-style sandhi than Portuguese, Spanish and French might be. Often, two identical or very similar consonants follow each other within a row, each in a different word, and both should be pronounced. Brazilians might either perform epenthesis or delete one of them. As such, this stop is produced either or, instead of the native
- In Portuguese, the semivowels and may be vocalized to their corresponding vowels. so that I love you is pronounced. These semivowels may also be epenthetically inserted between vowels of very dissimilar qualities.
- To the exception of and, consonants tend to not elide corresponding to or assimilate to the next word's phoneme, even in connected speech. This means, for example, occasional epenthesis even if the following word starts in a vowel, as in their native language.
Russian
- There is no in Russian; speakers typically substitute.
- Native Russian speakers tend to produce an audible release for final consonants and in consonant clusters and are likely to transfer this to English speech, creating inappropriate releases of final bursts that sound overly careful and stilted and even causing native listeners to perceive extra unstressed syllables.
- Word-initial voiceless stops, , may not aspirated by Russian speakers, which may sound to native English speakers as , , instead. However, at least one study challenges this, with Russian-accented English speakers in the study aspirating the voiceless consonants just as much as General American English speakers, and even more than General American speakers.
- Word-final obstruents are pronounced voiceless in Russian even if spelled with letters otherwise denoting their voiced counterparts, and speakers may fail to pronounce word-final voiced obstruents in English correctly, substituting for etc.
- There are no dental fricatives in Russian, and native Russian speakers may pronounce them respectively as or or and as or.
- Difficulty with English vowels. Russian speakers may have difficulty distinguishing and, and, and and ; similarly, speakers' pronunciation of long vowels may sound more like their close counterpart
- Speakers typically realise English as a trilled, the native Russian rhotic.
- Likewise, may be pronounced like its closest Russian equivalent,.
- Since there is no in Russian, speakers typically produce or instead.
- The palato-alveolar affricate may be realised as a sequence of a stop and a fricative:.
- The "clear" alveolar may be realised as Russian, sounding closer to English "dark" velarised.
- Consonants written twice in English may be pronounced geminated by Russian speakers.
Spanish
- Vowel length confusions.
- Confusion of , usually realized as
- Confusion of , usually realized as.
- Confusion of , usually realized as.
- Confusion of , usually realized as.
- Since Spanish does not make voicing contrasts between its fricatives, speakers may neutralize contrasts between and ; likewise, fricatives may assimilate the voicing of a following consonant.
- Rhotic pronunciation, with /r/ pronounced as a trill or a flap .
- Cuban and other Central American speakers tend to merge with, and with.
- and often have a fluctuating degree of closure.
- For the most part, Spanish allows only five word-final consonants:,,, and ; speakers may omit word-final consonants other than these, or alter them.
- In Spanish, must immediately precede or follow a vowel; often a word beginning with + consonant will obtain an epenthetic vowel to make stomp pronounced rather than.
- In Spanish, the phoneme exists only in Spain; where this sound appears in English, speakers of other Spanish dialects replace with, or.
- Speakers tend to merge and, pronouncing both as a plosive unless they occur in intervocalic position, in which case they are pronounced as a fricative. A similar process occurs with and, because does not exist in Spanish.
- The three nasal phonemes of Spanish neutralize in coda-position; speakers may invariably pronounce nasal consonants as homorganic to a following consonant; if word-final common realizations include, deletion with nasalization of the preceding vowel, or.
- Devoicing of final consonants.
- Narrower pitch range, with emphasis marked with extra length instead of extra pitch variation.
- Problems with variable stress.
- Problems with contrastive stress.
Thai
Vietnamese
Note: There are three main dialects in Vietnamese, a northern one centered on Hanoi, a central one whose prestige accent is centered on Huế, and a southern one centered on Ho Chi Minh City.- Speakers may not produce final consonants since there are fewer final consonants in Vietnamese and those that do exist differ in their phonetic quality:
- *Final is likely to be confused with.
- *Final is likely to be confused with.
- *Final is likely to be omitted.
- *Final is likely to be confused with, but some Vietnamese pronounce the word bell as
- *Final is likely to be confused with by southern Vietnamese.
- Speakers also have difficulty with English consonant clusters, with segments being omitted or epenthetic vowels being inserted.
- Speakers may not aspirate initial,, and, native English-speakers think that they pronounce as and. For example, when Vietnamese people pronounced the word tie, native English-speakers think that they say the word die or dye.
- Speakers often have difficulty with the following phonemes and confuse them, which may depend in some cases upon where in Vietnam they are originally from:
- * with,.
- * with,.
- * with .
- * with.
- * with.
- * with or.
- * with by northern Vietnamese.
- * with,, or by northern Vietnamese.
- * with by southern Vietnamese.
- * with.
- * with or.
- * with.
- Vietnamese is a tonal language and speakers may try to use the Vietnamese tonal system or use a mid tone with English words, but they pronounce with a high tone when the closed syllable is followed by. They may also associate tones onto the intonational pattern of a sentence and become confused with such inflectional changes.