Non-native pronunciations of English


Non-native pronunciations of English result from the common linguistic phenomenon in which non-native speakers of any language tend to transfer the intonation, phonological processes and pronunciation rules of their first language into their English speech. They may also create innovative pronunciations not found in the speaker's native language.

Overview

may pronounce words differently than native speakers either because they apply the speech rules of their mother tongue to English or through implementing strategies similar to those used in first language acquisition. They may also create innovative pronunciations for English sounds not found in the speaker's first language.
The extent to which native speakers can identify a non-native accent is linked to the age at which individuals begin to immerse themselves in a language. Scholars disagree on the precise nature of this link, which might be influenced by a combination of factors, including: 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.
Phonological differences between a speaker's native language and English often lead to neutralization of distinctions in their English. Moreover, differences in sound inventory or distribution can result in difficult English sounds being substituted or dropped entirely. This is more common when the distinction is subtle between English sounds or between a sound of English and of a speaker's native 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 speech patterns can be passed on to the children of learners, who will then exhibit some 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 from Indo-European languages">Indo-European">Indo-European languages

[Germanic languages]

Dutch

;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 is replaced by such 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 the dark l does not 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.
;Vowels
  • Speakers confuse between and, so that man and men are both pronounced as the latter.
  • Speakers confuse 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 .
  • is replaced by. Spelling might cause confusion 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 consonant.

    German

;General
;Consonants
  • Speakers may not velarize in coda positions as most native speakers do.
  • 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 uvula, in the latter case it does not.
  • After German speakers master the pronunciation of , some of them hypercorrect to incorrectly pronounce the phoneme in English as without realizing it.

    [Hellenic languages]

Greek

;Consonants
  • Greek speakers tend to struggle with the difference between and.
  • and can be replaced by or.
  • tend to be unaspirated.
  • Greek speakers may pronounce the English rhotic as a flap.
  • The closest sound to English in Greek is, and speakers may substitute this sound in words like house.
;Vowels

Catalan

;Consonants
  • Devoicing of final consonants: to .
  • 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.
;Vowels
  • Vowel length confusions.
  • Confusion of , usually realized as
  • Confusion of , usually realized as.
  • Confusion of , usually realized as.
  • Confusion of , usually realized as or.
;Suprasegmental features
  • Narrower pitch range, with emphasis marked with extra length instead of extra pitch variation.
  • Problems with variable stress.
  • Problems with contrastive stress.

    Italian

Studies on Italian speakers' pronunciation of English revealed the following characteristics:
;General
Italians learning English have a tendency to pronounce words as they are spelled, so that walk is, guide is, and boiled is. This is also true for loanwords borrowed from English as water, which is pronounced instead of.
;Consonants
  • Tendency to realise as or as because Italian is an allophone of before velar stops.
  • Tendency to realise word-initial with, e.g. small. This voicing also applies to and. The main reason is that the letter "s" is always pronounced as before a voiced consonant in Italian.
  • 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.
  • 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.
;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.
  • Schwa does not exist in Italian; speakers tend to give the written vowel its full pronunciation, e.g. lemon, television, parrot, intelligent, water, sugar.

    French

;Consonants
  • 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..

    Portuguese

Brazilian speakers of English as a second language are likely to exhibit several non-standard pronunciation features, including:
;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.
;Consonants
  • Difficulty with dental fricatives and. These may be instead fronted, stopped or hissed.
  • Speakers may pronounce word-initial r as a guttural r 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.
  • The insertion of 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 confused with each other. Spelling pronunciations are also possible, in which all words that historically contain schwas in their orthography are pronounced as /z/, even when the usual pronunciation would be /s/.
  • 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.
  • With 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.