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 1 Arabic 2 Chinese (Mandarin) 3 Esperanto 4 Finnish 5 French 6 German 7 Hebrew 8 Indonesian 9 Irish 10 Italian 11 Japanese 12 Portuguese 13 Russian 14 Spanish 15 Welsh 16 See also 17 References 18 Bibliography

[edit] Arabic

• English has no pharyngeal consonants and speakers are likely to have difficulty with the both the voiced and voiceless pharyngeal fricatives.
  • The voiceless pharyngeal fricative (/ħ/) may be pronounced as the voiceless glottal fricative ([h])
  • The voiced pharyngeal fricative has no clear equivalent in English and speakers may simply omit it.
• 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').

[edit] Chinese (Mandarin)

• Like many European or other non-tonal language speakers, English speakers have difficulty with the 4 tones in standard Mandarin.
• Chinese initials also cause a problem.
  • The aspiration is stronger in Chinese and the English voiced consonants have voiceless Chinese counterparts: /d/, /b/, /g/ are missing in Chinese and are pronounced as unaspirated /t/, /p/, /k/, English speakers often pronounce them as /d/, /b/, /g/.
  • The aspirated consonants are often pronounced as unaspirated by English speakers, thus making the words sound like different initials.
  • Distinguishing between [ʈʂ] (zh) and [tɕ] (j) or [ʈʂʰ] (ch) and [tɕʰ] (q) is often a problem, besides, as mentioned above, the difference between voiced/voiceless may not be correct.
• Initial /ɻ/ (r) (also pronounced and transcribed as [ʐ] is difficult to pronounce for English speakers.
• Final [y] (ü) is often mispronounced as [u].
• Final [ɨ] (in zhi, zi, chi, ci, shi, ri) is often substituted with [i] by English speakers. (This vowel can be described as missing (null), just as an extension of the consonant. So, final /ʐɨ/ can viewed as /ʐʐ/).
• Typical for Northern dialects and standard Mandarin erhua (/ɚ/ -r) and the phonetical changes in the finals cause difficulties for English and other foreign language speakers, although the sound exists in American English ("car", "war").

[edit] Esperanto

• Many English speakers have difficulty with the voiceless velar fricative /x/ (written <ĥ>). They may instead pronounce it as [k] or [h].
• 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.

[edit] Finnish

• 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 in most English dialects.
• Speakers may have difficulty with consonant gradation, so Helsingin sounds like Helsinkin and pankkia like pankia.
• Speakers may have difficulty with phonemic vowel length and gemination; i.e. tuli (/'tuli/ fire) and tulli (/'tulːi/, customs) may both be [tʊli]. Speakers aren't likely to have trouble with tuuli (/'tuːli/, wind) but the precise length and phonetic quality may be different enough to be confusing to native speakers.

[edit] French

• 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/. This often leads to dessus("above") and dessous("below") both being pronounced /dɛˈsuː/
• 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].
• French short /i/ may be replaced by English /ɪ/, especially in the combinations inn-, imm-.
• Many English varieties (including Received Pronunciation as well as Australian and New Zealand) English do not have the vowel /a/, which is frequent in French. Speakers of these varieties tend to use /æ/, or even /ɛ/ instead, so a Frenchman might hear sec ("dry") instead of sac ("bag").
• 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 [tʃ] instead of [ʃ].
• French suffixes -tion, -sion etc may be pronounced with [ʃ] or /ʒ/ as in English, instead of French /sj/,/zj/.
• The French rhotic is trilled and usually a uvular /ʁ/; English-speakers tend to use the approximant [ɹ].
• 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).
• Speakers may occasionally forget that orthographic <h> is always silent in French. The "aspirated h" causes particular problems, as it is still silent but affects the preceding word: eg la haie ("hedge") is /la ɛ/ but l'homme ("man") is /lom/- English speakers often say for example /lɛ/ (lait ,milk) or /lə (h)om/ instead.

[edit] German

• Many English speakers have difficulty with the voiceless velar fricative (written <ch>). They may instead pronounce it as [tʃ] (because of spelling) or [k]. Scots (whose Scots language has the phoneme) and Americans (especially ones with extensive contact with Yiddish-speaking Jews) tend to have less trouble, however.
• 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.
• 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.
• German <z> represents the affricate /ts/. English speakers may commit a spelling pronunciation error and say [z] instead of [ts]. Or, conversely, some English speakers hypercorrect and have trouble prouncing [z] when it is close to a [ts]: "zusammen" - German: [tsuˈzamən], Anglophone: [tsuˈtsamən].
• 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-speakers sometimes ignore umlauts entirely, pronouncing the words like their un-umlauted equivalents, due to the values of the native English vowels. (For example, English a actually sounds closer to German ä than a; and similarly for o and u, especially for British English). In the case of äu, English-speakers oftentimes get confused and forget that it should be pronounced /oj/.

[edit] Hebrew

• Many English speakers have difficulty with the voiceless velar fricative.
• English speakers pronounce the rhotic consonant r less gutturally, instead of the uvular (or alveolar) fricative of Modern Hebrew.
• Modern Hebrew generally emphasises the last syllable in a word (מלעיל), while English speakers may be tempted to employ an Ashkenazi-styled pronunciation of the penultimate syllable.

[edit] Indonesian

Some trends in English speakers' pronunciation of Indonesian include:

• English speakers tend to have difficulty distinguishing between pronounce <ng> and <ngg>. For example mengantuk ([mɘŋantuk] ('sleepy') is often pronounced as [məŋɡantuk].
• Not pronouncing final /k/ as a glottal stop (which is normal in for a number of words). This can create confusion as e.g. pak ('sir') is pronounced [paʔ]; if pronounced [pak], the meaning changes to 'package'.

[edit] Irish

• /x/ may become /k/
• /ɣ/ may become /g/

[edit] Italian

Italian is actually considerably easier for English speakers to pronounce than Spanish (see below). The problems that English-speakers have with Spanish b/v, d, g, ll, and medial s in Spanish do not pose a problem in Italian. Otherwise, however, Italian presents the same challenges overall that Spanish does. In addition, English-speakers, even if they reproduce the Italian phonemes correctly, tend to have a lax quality to their speech which sounds rather strange to native Italian speakers.

• One mistake that English-speakers tend to make is to get the voicing of z/zz wrong (/ts/ or /dz/), as it is not indicated orthographically.
• Italian voices s before l, m, and n, pronouncing it /zl/, /zm/, and /zn/, as opposed to the tendency of English-speakers to say /sl/, /sm/, /sn/.
• Mispronunciation of sch with its American English value of /ʃ/ (which was imported from German and Yiddish) rather than the correct /sk/ is extremely common, as in the brand name "Freschetta" and for Maraschino cherries.

[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.

[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.
• 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.

[edit] Russian

• 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 /x/ and instead pronounce it as [h] or /k/ (the latter is often the result of the digraph "kh" used to transliterate Russian Х, х).
• Consonant /ɕɕ/ causes problems for many foreign speakers including Anglophones. Most common mispronunciation is a historically valid /ʂt͡ɕ/.
• Speakers may have trouble with consonant clusters that do not exist in English such as тьма [tʲma] ('darkness'), ждать [ʐdætʲ] ('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.
• Similarly, speakers may pronounce words with <ll> as /l/ rather than the palatal /ʎ/ or other palatal sounds depending on dialect.
• 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 ahorra ('save') and ahora ('now') 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]; or, in an attempt to imitate native speakers, pronounce both as /b/ initially and /v/ between vowels. In most dialects of Spanish, these two letters represent a single /b/ phoneme with an allophone [β]; /v/ does not exist in Spanish.
• 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 (before front vowels) 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 voice s if it appears between vowels, such as rosa ('pink') as [ˈɹo.zɑ]; while this would be correct in Italian, s is never voiced in Spanish.
• 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.

[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 [ɬ], spelt <ll>>, a sound that English speakers may confuse with /ʃ/ or to pronounce as /kl/.
  • Speakers may also simply pronounce both rhotics as an alveolar approximant [ɹ].
• Speakers have difficulty with the velar fricative /x/ spelt <ch> and pronounce it as [k] or [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.
• Tendency to pronounce unstressed vowels as a schwa.

[edit] See also

• Non-native pronunciations of English
• Accent reduction

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

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