Running Head: THE POTENTIAL DIFFICULTY IN ENGLISH PHONOLOGY FOR CHINESE LEARNERS

The Potential Difficulty in English Phonology

for Chinese Learners

Xichen Nie

Colorado State University

Introduction

Chinese learners may encounter many problems when they learn English

pronunciation. These may be attributed to the different language systems of English and

Chinese. There exists a huge difference between these two languages, and there may be a

problem of language transfer during the process of learning a second language. Chinese

learners are highly attached to their mother tongue and may make mistakes or deviations

when they speak English. Through analyzing the pronunciation in Chinese Mandarin and

English, this paper explores potential problems that Chinese learners may encounter,

displayed on both segmental and suprasegmental levels.

Pronunciation Problem Analysis at Segmental Level

Chinese phonetic system contains 25 letters. The majority of phonetic symbols in the

Chinese phonetic system are similar with those in the English phonetic system. Chinese

phonetics and phonology include consonants, vowels and intonation, like English

phonetics, but there are still some differences.

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THE POTENTIAL DIFFICULTY IN ENGLISH PHONOLOGY FOR CHINESE LEARNERS

Ÿ Consonants

As shown in Table 1, Chinese has approximately 23 consonant sounds, while English

has approximately 28 consonant sounds.

• Differences in terms of consonants

1) /θ/. There is no such consonant in the Chinese sound system. It is a sound of voiceless

fricative. The sound is formed when upper and lower teeth gently nibble the tip of the

tongue. Many Chinese learners may unconsciously find a substitution sound for /θ/,

such as: /s/ and /t/. For example, “thin /θin/” are often mistakenly pronounced as “sin

/sin/” or “tin /tin/”.

Table 1

Chinese and English Consonant System

Language Shared Unique

Chinese /zh/, /ch/, /sh/ /b/, /p/, /m/, /f/, /d/, /t/, /n/, /l/,

(23 consonant sounds) /g/, /k/, /h/, /j/, /q/, /x/, /r/, /z/,

/c/, /s/, /y/, /w/

English /ts/, /tr/, /dz/, /dr/, /dȝ/ /p/, /t/, /k/, /f/, /θ/, /s/, /∫/, /t∫/,

(28 consonant sounds) /b/, /d/, /g/, /v/, /ð/, /z/, /ȝ/,

/m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /h/, /l/, /r/, /j/, /w/

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THE POTENTIAL DIFFICULTY IN ENGLISH PHONOLOGY FOR CHINESE LEARNERS

2) /ð/. This sound does not exist in the Chinese sound system, either. It is a voiced

fricative sound whose articulate manner is the same as that of /θ/. Chinese students

may confuse it with /d/ and /z/ which are easier to pronounce. So, they might say “they”

as “day”, “clothes” as “close”. Another difficulty for Chinese learners to articulate the

combination of “th” and “s”. For example, when they speak the words “clothes

/klauðz/” and “sixths /siksðz/”. When they encounter these kinds of words in their

expressions, fluency may be reduced, because they need to make some effort to

pronounce the words as clearly as possible. However, sometimes the word “clothes

/klauðz/” is wrongly pronounced as /klauðiz/. They tend to add a vowel /i/ as a

transition from the dental /ð/ to the alveolar /z/ to help them produce the sound.

Likewise, they may pronounce “sixths /siksðz/” as /sikðiz/ by adding an /i/ before /z/,

and dropping the second /s/ in “six /skðz/”.

3) /v/. This sound also exists in Chinese. It is a voiced fricative sound with upper teeth

touching the lower lip. However, /v/ and /f/ in both Chinese and English belong to the

same articulation classification - labiodental fricative. The subtle difference between

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THE POTENTIAL DIFFICULTY IN ENGLISH PHONOLOGY FOR CHINESE LEARNERS

them is that the vocal cord vibrates when /v/ is articulated, while there is no vibration

when articulating /f/. The manner of articulating /f/ is entirely the same in Chinese and

English. Therefore, /f/ and /v/ are confusable. For example, “van” is possibly

pronounced as “fan”.

4) /w/ and /v/. “When the sound /w/ appears in the initial position of a word, many

Chinese people, especially people from Beijing, usually articulate it as /v/, a

labiodental sound” (San 2000. pp. 25). San suggested that, in Chinese, sound

substitution of these two sounds will not cause any differences in meaning. Therefore,

although learners may have learned how to pronounce these sounds, they do not tend

to make an effort to distinguish them which may affect their speech intelligibility. For

example, the phrase “very well” may be mistakenly pronounced as /veri vel/ or /weri

wel/.

5) /d/ and /t/. Although there are plosives both in Chinese and English, their

pronunciations are not exactly the same in the two languages. In English, plosives go

in contrastive pairs, with one voiced and the other voiceless. However, in Chinese,

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THE POTENTIAL DIFFICULTY IN ENGLISH PHONOLOGY FOR CHINESE LEARNERS

plosive pairs are distinguished by aspiration differences, rather than by voicing. For

example, in Chinese, both /b/ and /p/ are voiced, and so are the other pairs such as /d/

and /t/, /g/ and /k/, /zh/ and /ch/, etc. The only differences among those sounds is that

when the aspirated /p/, /t/, /k/ and /ch/ are articulated, the air stream is strong, whereas

when the unaspirated /b/, /d/, /g/ and /zh/, the air is let out with a pop through the lips.

6) /∫/ and /s/. There is no /∫/ in Chinese. The other sound which is easy to be confused

with it is the sound /s/ because both /∫/ and /s/ are voiceless fricative sounds. The only

difference between them is that /s/ is an alveolar sound while /∫/ is a palatal sound. The

features of the sounds make them acoustically similar, so it is difficult for Chinese

leaners to distinguish.

7) /t∫/ and /dȝ/. The Chinese sound system does not contain these two sounds. They belong

to palatal sounds, but one is voiceless while the other is voiced. For a beginner of

English learning, it may be difficult to distinguish “rich” and “ridge” (Kenworthy,

1987. pp. 129).

8) /n/ and /l/. For people from Southern China, they usually distinguish /n/ and /l/ in their

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THE POTENTIAL DIFFICULTY IN ENGLISH PHONOLOGY FOR CHINESE LEARNERS

ordinary Chinese speaking. Their pronunciation habit also effects their manner of

articulation of English. For example, “knife /naif/” is usually pronounced as /laif/. /n/

and /l/ are both alveolar. However, when producing /n/, the air stream should go

through the nasal cavity, but for lateral /l/, the air stream goes out through the two sides

of the tongue.

9) /r/. This sound in English should be articulated with the tip of the tongue curled back

to the alveolar ridge or even to the upper palate of the mouth cavity, while Chinese

people should only a little bit curl the tongue. It is a common-known phenomenon that

people from Northern China feel it is very difficult to produce this sound or pronounce

it with enough retroflex.

10) /n/ and /ŋ/. There is no sound /ŋ/ in Chinese, thus it’s quite possible that a Chinese

learner may not be able to hear the difference between the words “sin” and “sing”.

Even though they may be told that /n/ is an alveolar sound while /ŋ/ is a velar sound,

they may still have difficulty in pronouncing it especially when producing a whole

sentence.

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THE POTENTIAL DIFFICULTY IN ENGLISH PHONOLOGY FOR CHINESE LEARNERS

Ÿ Vowels

As shown in Table 2, Chinese vowel system consiste of three types of vowels: there

are six monophthongs, thirteen diphthongs and sixteen nasal sounds. The nasal sounds can

be further devided as alveolar nasals and velar nasals.

While English vowel sound system is composed of seven simple vowels, four glides

and three diphthong.

monophthong (6) /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/, /ü/

diphthong (13) /ai/, /ao/, /ei/, /ia/, /iao/, /ie/, /iou/,

/ou/, /ua/, /uai/, /üe/, /uei/,

/uo/

Nasal (16) alveolar nasal (8) /an/, /en/, /ian/, /in/, /uan/, /üan/, /uen/,

/ün/

velar nasal (8) /ang/, /eng/, /iang/, /ing/, /iong/, /ong/,

/uang/,

/ueng/

Table 2 Chinese vowel system

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simple vowels (7) /I/, /ɛ/, /æ/, /ɑ/, /ʌ/, /ɔ/, /ʊ/

glides (4) /iy/, /ey/, /ow/, /uw/

diphthong (3) /ay/, /aw/, /ɔy/

Table 3 English vowel system

Ÿ Differences in terms of vowels

From the Table 2 and 3, we can easily find that there are some vowels in the Chinese

sound system that do not exist in English, like /ü/. Likewise, there are some English vowels

that the Chinese sound system doesn’t contain, such as /ʌ/ and /æ/. In addition, in English,

vowels can be distinguished through the length of sound articulation, like /i:/ and /i/. It is

because of the gap left by the sounds which exist in one language system but not in the

other one, a Chinese English learner, especially a beginner, may encounter some

obstructions when they pronounce some English vowels. The articulation problems 1), 2),

3) and 5) below are based on this reason. The sound mentioned in 3) exists both in

Chinese and English, but the difficulty for Chinese people to pronounce this sound attribute

to that the sound combination in English does not exist in Chinese.

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THE POTENTIAL DIFFICULTY IN ENGLISH PHONOLOGY FOR CHINESE LEARNERS

1) Vowel length does not cause differences in Chinese. Different tones are used to

distinguish sounds of the same quality. For example: /mā/, /má/, /mǎ/, /mà/

represent four different Chinese characters. Since there are tones, the meaning of

each character is obviously told. However, although learners may be told there is

a difference between short vowels and long vowels, they sometimes feel confused

about the rule of articulation when they see a variety of spelling forms. In English,

the short vowels do not need much muscular tension; the tongue should be held

loosely. While in Chinese, there are no such lax and tense pairs, thus these sounds

are difficult for Chinese learners.

2) There is no /æ/ in the Chinese sound system. Chinese learners are not used to

opening their mouth so widely to produce a sound. Therefore, they often wrongly

pronounce /æ/ as /e/ or /ai/ which sounds similar to it. For example, it’s always

very hard to tell learners the articulatory difference between these two typical

words - “bed” and “bad”.

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THE POTENTIAL DIFFICULTY IN ENGLISH PHONOLOGY FOR CHINESE LEARNERS

3) There is no phoneme /ʌ/ in Chinese. Many learners unconsciously pronounce it as

/a/. Chinese phoneme /a/ is an open, front and unrounded long vowel with lips

spread while English /ʌ/ is a half-open, central and unrounded short vowel. For

example, when they say “mother /mʌðɚ/”, it is usually pronounced like /ma/, and

“love /lʌv/” sounds like /lav/.

4) The sound /i/ is sometimes pronounced by Chinese learners as /ei/ when following

an “h”, because /h/ and /i/ never appear together in Chinese. Moreover, “h” in

Chinese is a voiced velar fricative sound while it is glottal in English. Thus

“history /histri/” is often pronounced as /heistri/; and “he /hi:/” as /hei/ (/hei/ is the

same as the sound of a greeting character in Chinese).

5) Another phoneme that does not exist in Chinese is /ɔ/. Chinese learners usually

wrongly produce this sound when combining letter “a” and “u” together. Because

there is a diphthong /au/ in Chinese, thus “naughty /noti/” may be pronounced as

/nauti/.

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THE POTENTIAL DIFFICULTY IN ENGLISH PHONOLOGY FOR CHINESE LEARNERS

Pronunciation Problem Analysis at Suprasegmental Level

Nunan (1991) argues that suprasegmental contrast is particularly important when

moving from a non-tonal language like English, in which pitch changes indicate attitudinal

and emotional meaning, to a tonal language like Chinese, in which changes in intonation

and pitch mark phonemic differences. Below is a discussion of Chinese learners’

pronunciation problems by analysis from the suprasegmental level which includes stress,

intonation, liaison and rhythm.

Ÿ Stress

Stress patterns are vital in English pronunciation. Sometimes the stress alteration will

result in the change of part of speech. For instance, “record /ri’kɔrd/” is a verb with its

stress on the second syllable, while “record /’rɛkɚd/ is a noun with its stress on the first

syllable. Chinese learners may have difficulty in distinguishing them because in Chinese,

individual characters are distinguished by tone, and only sentences have stress. However,

English has stress in both words and sentences. Furthermore, in the beginning learners may

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THE POTENTIAL DIFFICULTY IN ENGLISH PHONOLOGY FOR CHINESE LEARNERS

tend to stress each syllable of a word or stress each word in a sentence. For example,

“greenhouse /’gri:nhaus/” may be pronounced as /’gri:n’haus/, “blackboard” /’blækbɔ:d/”

as /’blæk’bɔ:d/. However, in English, the non-stressed words are not usually read clearly.

Ÿ Intonation

Roach (1991) points out that English is not a tone language, but an intonation language.

In English, the intonation pattern in a sentence can be used to indicate the function of the

sentence and the emotion of the speaker. Chinese is a tonal language. There are four tones

in Chinese. A different tone can distinguish different sounds of the same quality. Due to the

gap between these two languages, English intonation becomes a big obstruction for

Chinese learners. (Kenworthy 1987. pp. 130)

Ÿ Liaison

Liaison is the “connecting of the final sound of one word or syllable to the initial

sound of the next” (Celce-Murcia, 1996. pp.158). We must try to imitate native speakers’

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way of linking words together smoothly and naturally in order to speak English fluently.

In Chinese, although there is also liaison phenomenon, people tend to produce each

character in a sentence relatively more individually than the way people speak in English.

However, in English, there is no clear division between syllables. The end of one word

should flow straight onto the beginning of the next word in a sentence. The features of the

two languages mentioned above contribute to the difficulties that Chinese learners have

encountered when they listen and speak English.

Ÿ Rhythm

The English language is a typical stress-timed language and rhythm is one of its

notable characteristics (Dalton & Seidlhofer, 1994). In other words, the rhythm of English

is basically formed by stressed syllable, and the amount of time between stressed syllables

tends to be equal. Stressed syllables are pronounced longer, but unstressed syllables

(syllables between stresses) are shortened. Vowels in unstressed syllables are shortened as

well, and vowel shortening causes changes in vowel quality which is called vowel

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THE POTENTIAL DIFFICULTY IN ENGLISH PHONOLOGY FOR CHINESE LEARNERS

reduction (e.g., in the sentence, “There is no exam at the end of the course.1”). Between

two stressed syllables, there might be one syllable, or sometimes even two or three syllables.

However, the time span of reading those unstressed-syllables between the stressed syllables

are nearly the same, otherwise, there is no rhythm. This rule does not work in Chinese,

because Chinese is a syllable-timed language. Every syllable is perceived as taking up

roughly the same amount of time, though the absolute length of time depends on the

specific prosody of the Chinese language. Chinese tends to give syllables approximately

equal prominence and generally no vowel reduction. Many Chinese students pronounce

the words in a sentence with equal emphasis. It is a big problem for Chinese students who

are used to speaking with equal rhythm to master the rules of rhythm variation in English.

1
The stressed syllables in the sentence are bolded.

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THE POTENTIAL DIFFICULTY IN ENGLISH PHONOLOGY FOR CHINESE LEARNERS

Conclusion

This paper mainly compares the gaps of the articulation systems between the Chinese

and English languages, and points out the obstructions Chinese students have encountered

as a result of those gaps. English and Chinese sound systems do not match completely.

Some phonemes seem to be similar but are far from identical. Yet beginning learners almost

inevitably resort to Chinese sounds which have some similarities with English ones to help

them articulate. It is difficult for them to speak with the right shape of mouth or the right

speech organ, especially when the students take it for granted that the sounds in English

and Chinese are the same. Although, negative aspects of language transfer do reduce the

learner’s language proficiency in the target language, those problems are all possible to

erase through imitation. The phonetic knowledge as well as some phonological rules should

be learned and systematically introduced to reduce the errors and barriers.

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References

Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D, & Goodwin, J. (1996). Teaching Pronunciation. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Dalton, C. & Seidhofer, B. (1994). Pronunciation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Deterding, D. (2006). The Pronunciation of English by Speakers from China. English

World-wide.

Kenworthy, J. (1987). Teaching English Pronunciation. London: Longman.

Nunan, D. (1991). Language Teaching Methodology. New York: Prentic Hall.

San, D. (2000). The phonology of Standard Chinese. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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