PE3011 English Language Studies and Teaching 1Phonetics Lecture 8 : Problems of Cantonese Speakers

Learning English Pronunciation

Plosives

What could be some problems with the English plosives as illustrated in the following words?

Bad bind Pat Kick

Problematic when in final positions:

Not fully realized and in particular not aspirated in Cantonese

Transferring this feature to the pronunciation of the plosives in English words.

Can you think of any words which have plosive-like final consonants?

Contrastive distribution of sounds In terms of distribution, all the plosives in English may

occur in the initial or final position of a syllable.

in Cantonese, only the less audible, and usually incompletely aspirated plosives /p, t, k/ may occur in

the syllable-final position, so some Cantonese learners of English may tend to substitute /p, t, k/ for /b, d, g/ in syllable-final positions.

Swallowed aspirationFull release as one identifiable feature of aspiration, e.g., /pet/,

In Cantonese plosives are never released, as in the case of the

words /aap3/ 鴨, /faat3/ 發, /uk1/ 屋,

i.e. /p/ : lips remain closed; /t/ : the tongue tip clings to the roof of the mouth/k/ : the back of the tongue clings to the roof of the mouth.

Less advanced Ss “transfer" these articulatory habits to English, and consequently the final plosives in English seem to be "swallowed".

Fricatives

9 fricatives in English vs only 3 in Cantonese. There are no voiced counterparts for the Cantonese /f/

and /s/

the English dental and palato-alveolar fricatives are totally missing in Cantonese. => some difficulties for students.

/v/ mixed up with /f/ and /w/

safe vs save => same to many Cantonese speakers wine vs vine => same to many Cantonese speakers

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/z/

Cantonese does not have /z/, so this phoneme is always replaced by /s/.

/q/ and / /

How do your students tend to say these words? Why? What could be the sources of the problems?

ThickFaithThen

No such sounds in Cantonese substitute either /t/ or /f/ for /q/ in words like "thick", and

either /d/ or /v/ for / / in words like "this".

/ / How do your students tend to say these words?

SheShoes Should Fish

mispronounced as /s/ e.g., "see" and "she", "same" and "shame" will be

problematic. This situation is complicated by the fact that before the /u:/

sound as in "moon" /mu:n/, learners will substitute / /

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for /s/, so they will pronounce "Sue" /su:/ as "shoe" / u: /.

/ / no such sound in Cantonese, so Cantonese learners of

English find it particularly hard to learn. / / has a defective distribution, i.e., rarely occurs in

syllable-initial positions, and is seldom found in syllable-final positions. Difficult to detect the existence of this sound. E.g., ‘Pleasure’ ‘Usual’.

the absence of the sound in Cantonese makes the learner less prepared to detect such a sound in the English language.

Affricates

How do your students tend to say these?

JumpCheapJackJam Jim

in English are palato-alveolar (slightly further back) vs whereas simply alveolar in Cantonese (/ts/ and /dz/)

My experience in Japan with the word ‘ticket’.

lip-rounding in English vs lip-spreading in Cantonese affricates

=> These "cheap" /ti:p/, "jump" /dmp/ =>/tsi:p/ and /dzmp/

Nasals, Laterals and /r/

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Can your students differentiate the words in the following word pairs?

Ride vs wide Rick vs lick Nick vs lick Nine vs line Nip vs lip Help vs hepBottle vs Auto

Why the inability?

/l/ and /n/ do not constitute phonemes, i.e., both are allowed to mean the same sound in initial positions and usually /l/ is used in initial positions.

/r/ non-existent in Cantonese => the closest sound is /w/ => L1 transfer of /w/ to /r/

Cantonese words are all mono-syllabic, /l/ occurs only in initial positions.

/l/ most are not aware of its existence in medial or final positions not learning them.

/l/ in final positions sounds like ‘o’ replaced it with the sound.

Vowels

/æ/ and /e/Many Cantonese learners of English are unaware of the major difference between /æ/ and /e/, i.e. the lips are more open

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for /æ/ than for /e/. They tend to substitute the latter for the former, thus pronouncing the word "man" as /men/ instead of /mæn/.

/u:/ and / /Cantonese learners also have problems distinguishing /u:/ in "shoot" from // in "book".

/i:/ and //Cantonese learners tend to underdifferentiate the difference between the vowels /i:/ and //, so will have difficulties distinguishing word pairs like "cheap" and "chip", where the former should be pronounced with a long vowel and the latter a short vowel. They tend to pronounce both words with a short vowel.

/ : /, / / and / : /Cantonese speakers may have problems distinguishing the above vowels in words like "hard" /h :d/, "cup" /kp/ and "caught" /k:t/.

Diphthongs

One more not covered: "point" as /pnt/

How do your students tend to say the word?

Cantonese speakers also have problems in certain diphthongs and tend to replace them by a similar pure vowel. e.g. Instead of pronouncing the word they will tend to substitute / / for the diphthong and produce something like /pnt/.

Consonant clusters

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Unlike English, Cantonese has no consonant clusters. In trying to cope with consonant clusters, Cantonese learners will show the following tendencies.

Word final consonant clusters

These may be simplified by deleting one or more of the consonants. The consonants most often deleted are /l, t, d/, for example "hold" may become /hd/ or /h/.

Word initial consonant clusters

Deletion is also used to simplify word initial consonant clusters. /r/ seems to be frequently deleted when it follows a plosive, so "brothers" /brz/ may sound like "bothers" /bz/ with the /r/ deleted. (Since /r/ itself is also a problem to Cantonese learners, instead of deleting the consonant, some Cantonese learners may tend to replace /r/ by /l/, producing something like "blothers" /blz/.)

Consonant clusters with three or more consonants will create even more problems to the Cantonese learner of English, e.g. words like "string" /str/, "next" /nekst/.

Unaware of clusters that correspond to a single letter in spelling, e.g., ‘x’

Unaware of sounds that correspond to some letters, e.g., ‘c’ prounced as /k/ in many cases, and hence missing the consonant clusters in words such as ‘contact’, ‘intact’, etc.

Words in Connected Speech

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Weak Forms

No such differentiation in Cantonese between function words and content words speaking all words stressed

This is what you said to me last night.

(Try out the English version and the Cantonese-transfer version.)

Linkage

How do you say the following phrases with the least effort?

Come over here. Have an anpple.I want a tomato and a potato.

Linking sounds:

~sound 1 sound 2sound 3 sound 4~pick it up

~1234~

pickitup => [pktp]

Occuring when two words are in the same tone group the first ends with a consonant the second begins with a vowel

Listen to Celine Dion’s songs

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How do you say the highlighted parts in connected speech?

We were of the same kind.

Can students produce the linked sounds naturally?

Stress and Rhythm

How would your students say the following sentences?

I am a boy. She is a girl. Miss, I want to go toilet.

English has stress-timed rhythm. stressed syllables will tend to occur at relatively

regular intervals whether they are separated by unstressed syllables or not.

Cantonese => syllable-timed all syllables are said to recur at regular intervals. no reduction in terms of vowel length or intensity

with which each syllable is pronounced.

Say these:

"國際機場" and "約翰以前學過法文"

Say these: "International airport" and "John has learnt French before",

What do you notice?

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Time intervals (amount of time spent on the syllables?)The stress pattern? Which is more rhythmic?

Conclusion:

L1 transfers:

Transferring the closest sounds when no such sounds in Cantonese

Unaware of a feature / sound / pattern in English:

Voicing not that common in Cantonese and does not constitute a different phoneme

When the sound does not exist in Cantonese

When the sound (same or similar in Cantonese) occurs in final or medial positions

The stress / rhythm pattern does not constitute a major communication signal

Overgeneralization:

Realizations of sounds decoded from spellings can vary according to situation, e.g., ‘Apple’ vs ‘about’ not

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aware of this and thus generalizing principles across words and situations

Reazlizations of sounds vary according to the context, e.g., function words get unstressed in natural, connected speech. generalizing pronunciation across all situations

Implications for teaching?

Isolated sounds drills to prevent transfers

Awareness-raising teaching approaches through the use of metalanguage, visual aids, (e.g., spreading of lips, articulators, place of articulation, voicing, candles, touching throat for vibration, audibility of sounds, etc.)

Contextualizing teaching of sounds to raise awareness of variations across contexts (presenting segments of natural speech to raise students’ awareness, etc.)

Contrastive teaching approaches to show sounds which can get transferred easily from the similar L1 sounds; again can be done using metalanguage, visual aids, etc.

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