Anglophone pronunciation of foreign languages

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The following is a list of common non-native pronunciations English-speakers make when trying to speak foreign languages. Much of it is due to transfer of phonological rules from English to the new language as well as differences in grammar and syntax that they encounter.

This article uses International Phonetic Alphabet pronunciation. See Help:IPA pronunciation key and IPA chart for English for an introduction.

Contents

[edit] Arabic

  • English has no pharyngeal consonants and speakers are likely to have difficulty with the both the voiced and voiceless pharyngeal fricatives.
  • Speakers may omit the glottal stop.
  • English has no voiced uvular fricative and speakers may replace it with [g].
  • Arabic distinguishes certain emphatic (pharyngealized) consonants (mostly alveolar) with non-emphatic ones; English makes no such distinction and speakers are likely to pronounce them as their English equivalents.
  • Speakers have difficulty with gemination of consonants, which is contrastive in Arabic (i.e. /darrasa/ 'taught' vs. /darasa/ 'studied') but not in English.
  • Speakers may also have difficulty with vowel quality, which is dependent largely on surrounding consonants rather than length.
  • Speakers also have difficulty with phonemic vowel length as in the distinction between /kaʃafa/ ('to uncover') and /kaːʃafa/ ('to demonstrate').
See also: Arabic phonology

[edit] Esperanto

  • Many English speakers have difficulty with the voiceless velar fricative (written <ĥ>). They may instead pronounce it as [tʃ] (because of spelling) or [k].
  • Because of soft and hard pronunciations of <g> in English, speakers may confuse /g/ (<g>), /dʒ/ (<ĝ>), and /ʒ/ (<ĵ>)
  • Many English speakers have difficulty with the diphthong /eu/ (spelled <eŭ>), as it doesn't exist in English.
  • Speakers may have difficulty with the voiceless alveolar affricate /ts/, especially word-initially and instead pronounce it as [s]. This sound is spelled with a <c> and speakers may commit a spelling pronunciation error and say [k] instead.
See also: Esperanto phonology

[edit] Finnish

  • Speakers may speak too formally; written Finnish is so formal that it is awkward when spoken in casual conversation and speakers may not recognize the distinction.
    • e.g. “hyvää päivää, nimeni on Jaakko” (written), rather than “terve, mun nimi on Jaakko” (spoken).
  • Speakers may also overuse "kiitos" (thank you, please) and "ole hyvä" (please) in an attempt to be polite. In Finnish, politeness is given by the level of speech formality.
  • English has no front rounded vowels and speakers may have difficulty with Finnish /y/ and /ø/, as well as any diphthongs that include these vowels. English speakers may use /jʊː/ (as in dew) instead /y/, because it is the closest sound and /ʊː/, instead of /ø/.
  • Speakers may make certain spelling pronunciations causing them to pronounce orthographic <ee> as [iː], <ä> as [ɑː], and <oo> as [uː].
  • Some speakers have difficulty with the trilled /r/ since this is not an English sound.
  • English speakers often have difficulties with the accusative and partitive cases, since English has no such cases and speakers are rarely aware of the distinction.
    • Some verbs require the usage of the accusative or partitive affixes as part of the verb; this can be easily forgotten.
  • Speakers may have difficulty with consonant gradation, so Helsingin sounds like Helsinkin and pankia like pankkia.
  • Speakers may have difficulty with vowel length and gemination; i.e. tuli (/tu'li/ fire) and tulli (/tu'lːi/, customs) may both be [tʊli]. Speakers aren't likely to have trouble with tuuli (/tuː'li/, wind) but the precise length and phonetic quality may be different enough to be confusing to native speakers.
  • Difficulty with pluralization (the partitive case is used to pluralise numbered nouns, rather than a standard plural). i.e. kaksi autot, rather than kaksi autoa.
See also: Finnish phonology

[edit] French

See also: French phonology
  • Difficulty with nasalized vowels, e.g. making an [ɑ̃] (year) sound more like [ɑ̃ːn].
  • As English lacks front rounded vowels, speakers may have difficulty with French /y/, /ø/, /œ/, and /œ̃/.
  • Difficulty in distinguishing /ɛj/, /e/, and the rarer /ei/, leading to abeille ('honey bee'), abbé ('abbot'), and abbaye ('abbey') all tending to be pronounced as [æˈbeɪ].
  • Tendancy to pronounce unstressed vowels as a schwa ([ə]). This leads for instance to le (masculine definite article) and la (feminine definite article) being pronounced the same.
  • The voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/ may be pronounced as an affricate (/dʒ/), the distinction between the two rarely being significant in English.
  • Written French <ch> is the equivalent of English <sh>. English-speakers may commit a spelling pronunciation error and say [ʧ] instead of [ʃ].
  • The French rhotic is trilled and usually a uvular /ʁ/; English-speakers tend to use the approximant [ɹ].
  • Speakers may uniformly use dans and en or mix them up, because both translate as "in" in English.
  • Although nous is the first person plural pronoun in Standard French, its use may come off as too formal since colloquial varieties are more likely to use on. See French personal pronouns.
  • Difficulty in observing the rules of liaison, where a final consonant preceding an initial vowel must sometimes be silent and sometimes not: e.g. Mes amis arrivent /mezami.aʁiv/ (My friends are arriving).
  • Although rare, speakers may forget that orthographic <h> is always silent in French.
  • Speakers may not include determiners like le or la as often as is appropriate, such as when showing the object of a sentence.
  • English has very little grammatical gender. As a result, mistakes may arise with the French gender system:
    • mon and ton (possessive adjectives "my" and "your" respectively) apply to feminine nouns if they start with a vowel, English speakers may forget and say ma and ta, which are the feminine forms before words beginning in consonants.
    • Feminine and masculine articles, especially for inanimate objects, have to be memorized and speakers may mix them up. e.g. "le main" instead of "la main" (the hand), "la pont" instead of "le pont", "le douleur" instead of "la douleur" (the pain), etc.
    • Speakers may have difficulty with gender and number agreement in adjectives. e.g. "la maison blanc" instead of "la maison blanche" (the white house)
  • Beginning speakers may transfer usage of English auxiliary "be" and use "être" to reflect a continuous aspect, as in "Je suis allé(e) au magasin" instead of "Je vais au magasin" ('I am going to the shop'). In this example, je vais can mean one of three things: I am going, I go, and I do go.
  • French has a T-V distinction, tu and vous, many English-speakers often use the wrong one for the situation, like using vous between close friends and tu for formal occasions. Plus, the usage in European French and in Canadian French differs slightly, as Canadians (including Québécois) use the tu form more often.
  • Inappropriate usage of the term "Mademoiselle", especially to older women. The term should only be used for unmarried women under say 25, and even unmarried single women over that should be called Madame. When calling a room, it should be only "Mesdames et messieurs", not "Mesdames, mesdemoiselles, messieurs".

[edit] German

  • Many English speakers have difficulty with the voiceless velar fricative (written <ch>). They may instead pronounce it as [ʧ] (because of spelling) or [k].
  • English speakers may have difficulty pronouncing the rhotic consonant of Standard German, which is [ʁ]. However, depending on dialect, this can also be [ʀ], [r], and (very rarely) [ɹ]. English speakers are most likely to use this last realization.
  • Many English speakers also have difficulty with the voiceless palatal fricative (also written <ch>). For this reason, they may pronounce ich ("I") as [ɪʃ] rather than [ɪç]. Note that the former is a common feature in some (non-standard) German dialects.
  • German <z> represents the affricate /ʦ/. English speakers may commit a spelling pronunciation error and say [z] instead of [ʦ]. Or, conversely, some English speakers hypercorrect and have trouble prouncing [z] when it is close to a [ʦ]: "zusammen" - German: [ʦuˈzamən], Anglophone: [ʦuˈʦamən].
  • English speakers may mix up <ie> and <ei> due to their pronunciations in English spelling and thus incorrectly pronounce die ("the", feminine) as the English word "die". This may also cause the humorous mistake of pronouncing schießen ("to shoot") as scheißen ("to defecate, to shit").
  • English has no front rounded vowels and speakers may have difficulty with German /y/, /ʏ/, /ø/, and /œ/.
  • English has very little grammatical gender. As a result, mistakes may arise with the German gender system:
    • Masculine, feminine, and neutral articles, especially for inanimate objects, have to be memorized and speakers may mix them up. e.g. "das Tisch" instead of "der Tisch" (the table).
    • Speakers may have difficulties with gender and number agreement in adjectives. e.g. "das weiß Haus" instead of "das weiße Haus" (the white house), "die grün Blumen" instead of "die grünen Blumen" (the green flowers), etc.
  • English speakers often have difficulties with the accusative and dative cases, since English has no such cases (except in pronouns) and speakers are rarely aware of the distinction.
    • e.g. accusative: "der weiße Tisch" instead of "den weißen Tisch" (the white table), etc.
    • e.g. dative: "das weiße Haus" instead of "dem weißen Haus" (the white house), "die roten Blumen" instead of "den roten Blumen" (the red flowers), etc.
See also: German phonology

[edit] Japanese

  • Speakers may have trouble distinguishing between long and short vowels. They may also pronounce short vowels closer to English lax vowels:
    • Short /i/ may become [ɪ]
    • Short /ɯ/ listen (help·info) may become [ʊ]
    • Short /e/ may become [ɛ]
    • Short /o/ listen (help·info) may become [ɔ]
    • Short /a/ may become [æ]
  • Speakers may pronounce long /ɯː/ with full lip rounding (i.e. [uː]).
  • May have difficulty distinguishing between /ai/ and /ae/, as both may be perceived as similar to the English diphthong /aɪ/.
  • May have difficulty distinguishing between /aɯ/ and /ao/, as both may be perceived as similar to the English diphthong /aʊ/.
  • May use stress accent, as is normal in English, rather than the standard Japanese pitch accent, and may replace /a/ with a schwa when making syllables unstressed.
  • Standard Japanese postalveolars (the sounds spelled with sh, ch and j) are alveolo-palatal and English speakers may pronounce them as [ʃ], [tʃ] and [dʒ] instead of [ɕ], [tɕ] and [dʑ] respectively.
  • May have difficulty producing geminated consonants.
  • Speakers may fail to pronounce an utterance-final [ɴ] as uvular and, instead, may pronounce it as a velar nasal.
See also: Japanese phonology

[edit] Portuguese

  • Although rare, speakers may forget that orthographic <h> is always silent in Portuguese (like in French and Spanish).
  • Difficulty with nasal vowels, especially in the nasal diphthongs /ɐ̃ũ/ (as in João, pão etc.) and /ɐ̃ĩ/ (as in Magalhães, mãe etc.).
  • As with French, Portuguese <ch> represents the equivalent of English <sh>. English speakers may commit a spelling pronunciation error and say [tʃ] instead of [ʃ].
  • As with French, the voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/ may be pronounced as an affricate ([dʒ]).
  • Speakers may have trouble distinguishing between similar Portuguese diphthongs like /ei/ and /ɛi/, /oi/ and /ɔi/, and /eu/ and /ɛu/.
  • Speakers may have difficulty with stressed vowel alternations such as novo [novu] (new, sing.) versus novos [nɔvuʃ] (new, plural).
  • Speakers may have difficulty with the various realizations of Portuguese /r/. See Guttural R in Portuguese.
  • English has very little grammatical gender. As a result, mistakes may arise with the Portuguese gender system:
    • Feminine and masculine articles, especially for inanimate objects, have to be memorized and speakers may mix them up, e.g. "o mão" instead of "a mão" (the hand), "o ponte" instead of "a ponte" (the bridge), "o dor" instead of "a dor" (the pain), etc.
    • Speakers may have difficulty with gender and number agreement in adjectives, e.g. "a casa branco" instead of "a casa branca" (the white house), "as flores vermelha" instead of "as flores vermelhas" (the red flowers), etc.
    • The singular feminine definite article in Portuguese is "a" but this is also the indefinite article in English. This may lead to "a menina" being mistranslated as "a girl" instead of "the girl" with "uma" (a/an) and "a" (the) possibly being mixed up. To make things even more confusing, "a" also is a preposition meaning "to."
    • The word for "thank you" is different for men and women, "obrigado" when the speaker is a man and "obrigada" when the speaker is a woman. Many speakers may choose the wrong one.
  • Speakers may not include determiners like "o" or "a" as often as appropriate, especially before certain geographic toponyms. For example, Anglophones tend to say "Ele nasceu em Rio de Janeiro " (He was born in Rio de Janeiro) instead of the correct "Ele nasceu no Rio de Janeiro". In European and southeastern Brazilian Portuguese, the articles "o" and "a" are optional before a proper name, e.g. "A Maria é..." (rather than "Maria é..."), and required before a possessive adjective, e.g. "Falei com o teu pai" (rather than "Falei com teu pai").
  • Conversely, they might hypercorrect and include determiners where it would be otherwise inappropriate, e.g. "Ele foi para os Santos" (rather than "Ele foi para Santos").
  • Speakers may place adjectives before a noun rather than after, which can often change the meaning: e.g., grande homem (great man) versus homem grande (big man).
  • Speakers may uniformly use por and para or mix them up, because both can translate as "for" in English.
  • Speakers may uniformly use ser and estar (and their conjugated forms) or mix them up, because both translate as "to be" in English.
  • Portuguese has quite a few homographs and homophones like como which is either “how” or “I eat” and a is either “the (feminine)”, “at/to” or “it (feminine)”. Another homophone is sem with is “without” and cem which is “hundred”, are both pronounced the same.
  • Since many Anglophone speakers learning Portuguese have previously studied Spanish (but are not fluent), subtle, yet obligatory differences in pronunciation may be overlooked. Examples: Spanish dos (two) instead of dois, Spanish no (no) instead of não, and Spanish pequeño (small) instead of pequeno.
See also: Portuguese phonology

[edit] Russian

See also: Russian phonology
  • Speakers are likely to have difficulty with Russian's extensive palatalization system. Instead of palatalized sounds they may produce a C+[j]:
    • Speakers of English dialects that have undergone yod-dropping may have more difficulty with /tʲ/, /dʲ/, /sʲ/, /zʲ/, and /nʲ/ (coronal consonants) than other speakers.
    • Most speakers have little difficulty with /fʲ/ and /vʲ/.
  • Some speakers have difficulty with the trilled [r] in Russian, especially the palatalized [rʲ] since neither are sounds of English.[1]
    • Non-rhotic speakers, even after learning rolled-r, are prone to omit /r/ in such Russian words as удар [uˈdar] ('blow') and горка [ˈgorkə] ('hillock').[2]
  • Speakers may forget to devoice consonants in word-final positions or in other phonetic environments.
  • Depending on the speaker's dialect, they may have difficulty with "dark l" (that is, velarized /l/, which in Russian contrasts with a palatalized /lʲ/) in positions other than in the syllable coda.[3]
  • Speakers may have difficulty with the voiceless velar fricative and instead pronounce it as [h].
  • Speakers may have trouble with consonant clusters that do not exist in English such as тьма [tʲma] ('darkness'), ждать [ʐdʲætʲ] ('to wait'), ткнул [tknul] ('prodded'), всегда [fsʲɪgˈda] ('always'), мной [mnoj] ('me', instrumental), and взморье [ˈvzmorʲjə] ('sea-shore'). Most likely, they will insert an epenthetic schwa.
  • Difficulty with Russian vowels:
    • Most English speakers have no /ɨ/ (although it is an allophone in some dialects) and speakers generally have difficulty producing the sound.[4] They may instead produce [ɪ].
    • Speakers may replace /e/ with the diphthong in day. e.g. [ˈdeɪlə] instead of /ˈdʲelə/ дело ('affair').[5]
    • Speakers are likely to diphthongize /u/, making сижу /sʲɪˈʐu/ ('I sit') sound more like [sɪˈʒʊu]. Some speakers may also universally front it to [ʉ].[6]
    • Speakers may also diphthongize /i/ in a similar fashion, especially in open syllables[7]
    • Speakers may have difficulty with Russian /o/, pronouncing it as either [ɔ] or the diphthong in boat.[8]
    • It is likely that speakers will make the second element of Russian diphthongs insufficiently close, making them resemble English diphthongs (e.g, [druzʲeɪ] instead of [druzʲej]) or pronounce it too long.[9]
    • Speakers may pronounce /a/ as [æ] in closed syllables так ('so') and [ɑ] in open syllables два ('two').[10]
  • Speakers may also have difficulty with the Russian vowel reduction system as well as other allophonic vowels.
    • Speakers generally fail to front /u/ and /o/ to [ʉ] and [ɵ], respectively, between palatalized consonants.
    • Tendency to reverse the distribution of [ʌ] and [ə]. English speakers tend to pronounce [ə] in the pretonic position, right where [ʌ] is required in Russian, while they pronounce [ʌ] in pre-pretonic positions, where [ə] occurs. Thus speakers may say голова ('head') as [gʌləˈva] instead of [gəlʌˈva] and сторона ('side') as [stʌrəˈna] instead of [stərʌˈna].[11]
  • Speakers may forget that orthographic <ё> (as well as <е> sometimes) is an o-sound.
  • There are no cues to indicate correct stress in Russian. Speakers must memorize where primary and secondary stress resides in each word and are likely to make mistakes.[12]
  • Speakers tend to forget to geminate double consonants.[13]

[edit] Spanish

  • Speakers may occasionally forget that orthographic <h> is silent in Spanish as it is in French.
  • Similarly, speakers may pronounce words with <ll> as /l/ rather than the palatal /ʎ/ or other palatal sounds depending on dialect.
  • Speakers are likely to pronounce /x/ (as in "México" and "trabajo") as [h] (a number of Spanish dialects do this as well).
  • Some speakers have difficulty with the trilled /r/ since this is not a phoneme in English.
    • Some speakers may fail to distinguish between the trilled /r/ and the tapped /ɾ/, making word pairs like carro (car) and caro (expensive) homophones.
    • Non-rhotic speakers often omit /ɾ/ in words like carne (meat) and tercer (third).
  • Many speakers are liable to use English vowel qualities for Spanish ones (like [ʊu] instead of /u/), particularly word-finally.
  • Speakers may not pronounce voiced stops (/b/ /d/ /g/) as fully voiced. They may also fail to pronounce them as approximants or fricatives between vowels and word-finally (in such positions, /b/ is realized as [β], /d/ as [ð], and /g/ as [ɣ].
  • Speakers may pronounce orthographic B as [b] and orthographic V as [v]. In Spanish, these two letters represent a single /b/ phoneme with an allophone [β].
  • English speakers frequently split diphthongs into two distinct vowels, pronouncing words like tienes ('you have') as [tʰiːˈɛ.nɪs] instead of [ˈt̪je.n̪es] and jueves ('Thursday') as [huːˈɛvɪs] instead of [xwe.βes] (notice that this changes the number of syllables).
  • In unstressed syllables, English speakers are very likely to merge /i/ and /e/ to [ɪ]: pintar /pin'tar/ becomes [pɪn'taɹ]. Even more commonly, speakers are likely to reduce unstressed /a/ to [ə]: gracias /ˈgɾa.θjas/ becomes [ˈgɹɑ.si.əs].
  • In European Spanish, C and Z represent /θ/. This sound has merged with /s/ in other dialects. English speakers tend to treat these letters as they are used in English so that cintura ('waist') and zapato ('shoe') are pronounced [sɪnˈtɚ.ə] and [zəˈpɑ.toʊ] respectively rather than [θinˈtu.ɾa] and [θaˈpa.to] (or [sinˈtu.ɾa] and [saˈpa.to]). They also may pronounce rosa ('pink') as [ˈɹo.zɑ].
  • English speakers are likely to pronounce /t/ and /d/ as alveolar [t] and [d], respectively, instead of the dental [t̪] and [d̪] which a native speaker would use.
  • Speakers may place adjectives before a noun rather than after.
  • Speakers may uniformly use por and para or mix them up, because both translate as "for" in English.
  • Speakers may uniformly use ser and estar (and their conjugated forms) or mix them up, because both translate as "to be" in English.
  • English has very little grammatical gender. As a result, mistakes may arise with the Spanish gender system:
    • Feminine and masculine articles, especially for inanimate objects, have to be memorized and speakers may mix them up, especially for nonintuitive genders. e.g. "el mano" instead of "la mano" (the hand), "la puente" instead of "el puente" (the bridge), "la dolor" instead of "el dolor" (the pain), etc.
    • Speakers may have difficulty with gender and number agreement in adjectives. e.g. "la casa blanco" instead of "la casa blanca" (the white house), "los flores roja" instead of "las flores rojas" (the red flowers), etc.
See also: Spanish phonology

[edit] Welsh

  • Welsh has a number of voiceless sonorants that English lacks, including nasals (/m̥/, /n̥/, and /ŋ̊/) and liquids (/r̥/, and /ɬ/); speakers may substitute these sound for their voiced counterparts.
    • An exception to this may be the voiceless lateral, which is actually an alveolar lateral fricative, a sound that speakers may confuse with /ʃ/
    • Speakers may also simply pronounce both rhotics as an alveolar approximant [ɹ].
  • Speakers have difficulty with the velar fricative /x/ and pronounce it as [h]
  • Welsh has a range of diphthongs that don't exist in English and speakers may have difficulty pronouncing and differentiating between them.
  • Northern Welsh has /ɨː/ and /ɨ̞/ (spelled <y>) while Southern Welsh has merged these vowels with /iː/ and /ɪ/ respectively. Speakers may have difficulty with these northern vowels.
  • Speakers may have difficulty with Welsh consonant mutation.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Jones & Ward (1969:185)
  2. ^ Jones & Ward (1969:185)
  3. ^ Jones & Ward (1969:168)
  4. ^ Jones & Ward (1969:33)
  5. ^ Jones & Ward (1969:41)
  6. ^ Jones & Ward (1969:64)
  7. ^ Jones & Ward (1969:30)
  8. ^ Jones & Ward (1969:56)
  9. ^ Jones & Ward (1969:75)
  10. ^ Jones & Ward (1969:47)
  11. ^ Jones & Ward (1969:55)
  12. ^ Jones & Ward (1969:212)
  13. ^ Jones & Ward (1969:214)

[edit] Bibliography

  • Jones, Daniel & Ward Dennis (1969), The Phonetics of Russian, Cambridge University Press
  • Schane, Sanford A (1968), French Phonology and Morphology, M.I.T. Press