Difficulties of English Pronunciation for Cantonese EFL Learners——A Case Study in Mainland

○ Jiang Yue

(School of Foreign Studies, Lingnan Normal University, Zhanjiang, Guangdong, 524038)



Difficulties of English Pronunciation for Cantonese EFL Learners
——A Case Study in Mainland

○ Jiang Yue

(SchoolofForeignStudies,LingnanNormalUniversity,Zhanjiang,Guangdong, 524038)

Cantonese English foreign language (English as foreign language) learners are the unique subjects in studies of English pronunciation, for the trilingual context (Cantonese, Mandarin and English) increases the complexity of analysing their language acquiring and learning, especially their pronunciation. Therefore, adopting a Cantonese EFL learners as the study subject is necessary to investigate their difficulties of English pronunciation in Mainland.

difficulites of English pronunciation, Cantonese EFL learners, Mainland

I. Introduction

According to Chen, Cantonese EFL learners are the unique subjects for phonology scientists to study language transfer of English pronunciation.[1]70-72Normally, the research on language transfer will focus on the similarities and differences between learners’ previously-acquired languages and target language[2], and the bilingual context in the Cantonese-speaking regions of Mainland China provides a suitable background for the scientists to study the complexity of language transfers. Unlike Hong Kong ESL (English as second language) learners who

adopt Cantonese and English as official and survival languages or those Mandarin EFL learners who use Mandarin as their first language in living and working, the majority of Cantonese speakers in Mainland China have to learn Mandarin before English or other foreign languages in schools.[3]Therefore, these Cantonese EFL learners in Mainland China will have double negative transfers in English learning caused by Cantonese and Mandarin respectively.

In another aspect, during English language teaching, it is a common phenomenon that students cannot pronounce accurately or have strong accents when speak English even though they have learned English systemically for several years. Though Mainland China has experienced the educational reform from Mute English to Communicative English, more concentration is still payed to stimulate students’ speaking rather than the quality of speaking. More important, English phonology is not a independent discipline and compulsory course in primary and secondary schools of Mainland China. Most students are expected to practice their pronunciation by imitating their teachers and audio tapes without any formal guidance on getting rid of the negative influence from their mother tongues. In this situation, the research of negative transfer to target language (i.e. English) does not gain sufficient attention under the examination-oriented educational context in Mainland China nowadays.

In order to have further study on the complexity of English pronunciation for Cantonese EFL learners in Mainland China, this paper will focus on analyze the pronunciation of a selected subject and attempt to identify the negative transfers of his Cantonese and Mandarin to the pronunciation in English.

Ⅱ. Literature Review

Since 1950s, the research of language transfer has become a core issue in language acquisition and learning.[2]According to He and Mei, language transfer can be divided into two types — positive transfer and negative transfer.[4]The former one is referred to the similarities between the previous learned language(s) and the target language, which will help the learners avoid making mistakes during the process of language acquisition, while the latter one means that the differences existing between the two languages will interfere learners when they are acquiring a new language. Under this circumstance, the impact of negative transfer is greater than that of positive transfer to Cantonese EFL learners in Mainland China, principally because Chinese (including Cantonese and Mandarin) and English belong to two different language systems. Consequently, when learning English pronunciation, Cantonese speakers will be unconsciously effected by their mother tongues and form certain negative pronouncing habits.[5]

So far, most research on the negative transfer of Mandarin and Cantonese is conducted separately. For the research on the negative transfer of Mandarin, Deterding and Poedjosoedarmo[6]has compared the varied parts of Mandarin Chinese and English in terms of syllabus structure, consonants and vowels. They demonstrated that, in Mandarin, the initial consonants /f/, /s/ and /z/ are never used at the end of a syllabus (Mandarin does not have /v/), while in English, /f/-/v/ and /s/-/z/ which are the voiceless and voiced pairs of fricatives can be placed at both the start and the end of a syllabus. Additionally, Mandarin has no voicing plosives while English holds the opposite case. The gap between Mandarin and English will increase the complication of language acquisition for Chinese EFL learners. Meanwhile, Li has discussed the problematic English phonemes for Chinese EFL learners.[7]He designed a series of experiments based on COLSEC①to identify the difficult phonemes for Chinese EFL learners. Judging from the result of the experiments, the failure of distinguishing voiced and voiceless pairs of plosives and fricatives are the most prominent difficulty for most Chinese EFL learners. They tend to use the voiceless phones to replace the voiced phone, e.g. using /f/ to replace /v/. The findings prove that learners will assimilate the various parts of the two languages with their existing knowledge of language.

As for the research on Cantonese and English, Hong Kong is the best representative in this field, for Hong Kong is the only region to adopt both Cantonese and English as the official and survival languages. Hung also states that “Hong Kong English (HKE) was originally modeled on standard British English (BrE), but heavily influenced by Cantonese…”[8]The strong Cantonese feathers has contributed HKE to become a variety of English, with its unique sound system. Take fricatives for instance, Cantonese only has /f/, /s/ and /h/, while English has /f/, /v/, /θ/, //, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, // and /h/. The unavailability of English fricatives in Cantonese will easily lead the HK English learners to use Cantonese features in English so as to reduce the complexity of the target language.

Nevertheless, unlike ESL and EFL learners in Hong Kong or Mandarin EFL learners in Mainland China, the Cantonese EFL learners in Mainland China are not merely interfered by only one language when they learn English. Unsatisfactorily, most research on negative transfer of Chinese to English in recent decades is mostly restricted to the interference of L1 but not considering learners’ L2 (or even L3, L4…) comprehensively. Based on the abovementioned studies, a specialized experiment for Cantonese EFL learners in Mainland China is required in order to understand the difficulties of English pronunciation for them in depth.

Ⅲ. Methodology

3.1 Participant

In this research, one Cantonese EFL learner is invited as the subject. The selected subject who is a male adult used to be educated in Guangdong Province where Cantonese is the everyday spoken language while Mandarin is the instructional medium and official language. Specifically, this subject speaks Cantonese as his L1 in daily life and has learned Mandarin as his L2 since he was in the kindergarten (about 3 years old). Even though Cantonese and Mandarin belong to Chinese, they do not share the same phonological system. In other words, he has been equipped with two languages before he began to learn English when he was 10 in Primary School. So far, this subject has learned English for more than ten years, and he has probably formed certain habits in his English pronunciation. As a primary English teacher, he also has acceptable and stable English level. According to his condition, double negative transfers of Cantonese and Mandarin can be reflected relatively obviously in his English pronunciation.

3.2 Data collection

The data is collected through sound recording, so that the subject’s pronunciation can be repeated during the process of

analysis. Also, the recording is transcribed into IPA forms which are more suitable and convenient to technical measurement. Furthermore, in order to concentrate on the main issue of this paper, 16 sentences which reveals the features of double negative transfers from Cantonese and Mandarin to English pronunciation are particularly picked out to further analyze. In the end, a post-research interview to the subject is needed for the purpose to figure out the root of his problematic pronunciation.

Ⅳ. Data Analysis

The analysis of the transcription shows that the subject can read the passage fluently as a whole, exclusive of two mispronounced words. In addition, different from HKE, his English pronunciation does not reflect heavy Cantonese accent, probably because the English teaching materials in Mainland China employs BrE as the standard language. However, there are three obvious characteristics in the subject’s pronunciation: (1) some problematic pronunciation of English fricatives, (2) the disappearance of plosives /t/ and /d/, and (3) the mixed-pronunciation.

In the first place, some voiced English fricatives are the prominent barriers for the subject in English pronunciation. According to the transcription, there are 14 of the 16 selected sentences reflecting this problem (see appendix). Obviously, the habits of using /s/ to replace /θ/, // or /z/; using /d/ to replace // and using /f/ to replace /v/ considerably correspond to the existing research on negative transfers of Cantonese and Mandarin to English. Judging from table 1, /z/, //, /θ/ // and /v/ are not available either in Cantonese and Mandarin. Hence, it is not easy for the subject to pronounce the sounds in physical and technical perspectives, especially reading them in a whole sentence. To reduce the difficulty of reading the unavailable consonants in Cantonese and Mandarin, the subject tends to solve the problem by “assimilation”, by definition, using the approximate phonemes to replace the difficult sounds. For example, the subject pronounces the words “these”, “thanks”, “apples”, “five” and “measure” in /dIs /, /sks/, /pls/,

/faIf/ and /mesu/ respectively in the sentence. However, the subject emphasizes that he can pronounce these fricatives correctly if they appear in the single word. In the sense, the complexity of English fricatives mostly occurs in sentences instead of in a single word.

On the other hand, the subject will overlook some final consonants like /t/ and /d/ in a sentence. In the transcription, the words “first”, “and” and “pound” are read in /fзs/, /n/ and /paun/ respectively. Most Cantonese speakers may ignore these final sounds, for they are not used to putting an voicing distinction in plosives because the plosives in Cantonese are distinguished by aspiration but not voicing. The same feature of plosive is also shared by Mandarin in which there is no voicing plosives, fricatives and affricates (Deterding and Poedjosoedarmo, 1998). Another reason for this issue is the convenience of liaison. Viewing back to the sentences, “first early” and “pound of” should be read in liaison because they both end up with consonants in the first words and begin with vowels in the second words. To read the sentence fluently with a liaison in it, the learner has to naturally omit or weaken the final consonant of the first words.

Unexpectedly, the analysis also reveals a “mixed-mode” in the subject’s English, namely, mixing American English (AmE) pronunciation into BrE pronunciation. Take the sentence “A pot of hot coffee” for example, the transcription of British English is /ptvhtkfi/, but the subject reads it as

Table 1 Comparison among English,

Mandarin and Cantonese Consonants[6]194

Ⅴ. Conclusion

In conclusion, Cantonese EFL learners in Mainland China may have more difficulties in learning English phonology, for they have to cope with the double negative transfers from both Cantonese and Mandarin during the learning process. Unlike the negative transfer occurring on the Mandarin EFL learners and HK ESL learners, in most cases, Cantonese EFL learners in Mainland China adopt Cantonese as the L1 in daily life while Mandarin as the L2 in schools and workplace. Theoretically, the language transfer caused by learners’ language background can be positive and negative. However, Cantonese, Mandarin and English have unique and independent phonological systems respectively. Hence, EFL learners with Cantonese and Mandarin as their background languages will get more negative transfers rather than positive transfers in learning English phonology.

Meanwhile, based on the case in this research, the findings are corresponding to the existing research on negative transfer. The case shows that the subject cannot correctly pronounce some English phonemes which are unavailable in his background languages. Physically speaking, the different places and manners of articulation in Chinese and English may lead the learners to

apply their previous language habits in target language. As a

result, when meeting certain complicated sounds, the subject mostly tries to reduce the complexity of these phonemes by using other approximate sounds which are more comfortable for him to produce to replace the target sounds. For example, he adopts /f/ to replace /v/, /d/ to replace // and /s/ to replace /z/, /θ/ and //. Also, the subject is used to omitting or weakening the final plosives /t/ and /d/ in English, because neither Cantonese nor Mandarin has any voicing plosives at the end of the syllables. Particularly in liaison, the subject directly omit the final plosives /t/ and /d/ so as to read the sentences more naturally.

In this research, there is a surprising finding — the pronunciation of the subject is the mixture of BrE and AmE. Though AmE is not one of the subject’s background languages and it is acquired in an informal way, it also interferences the target language in various degrees. This fact fundamentally renews the current concept on negative transfer, which suggests that negative transfer is not merely caused by the previously-acquired languages, but also influenced by the learning/ acquiring languages.

Even though the research with only one subject cannot covers all the problems of Cantonese EFL learners in learning English phonology, it reflects some typical difficulties to some extent. During English language teaching, teachers in Cantonese-speaking regions should pay more attention to these problems, not only the double negative transfers caused by the unique language context but also other language interference from the modern media, thereby helping students improve their quality of spoken English.

【 Notes 】

①COLSEC: College Learners Spoken English Corpus

[1]Chen, H. 2004. Barriers Analysis of English Pronunciation Learning and Teaching Practice[J].Journal of Kaifeng University, 18(1).

[2] Odlin, T. 1989. Language Transfer: Cross-linguistic Influence in Language Learning[M].Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[3] Gan, N. 2011. How to Solve the Problems of Negative Pronunciation Transfer from Cantonese to English[D].Huazhong Normal University.

[4] He, Z., Mei, D. 1999. Modern Linguistics[M].Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.

[5] Jia, S. 2011. The Negative Transfer of Voiceless Plosive Endings from Chinese to English and Its Match Patterns of Equivalence Classification[J].China Academic Journal, 8.

[6] Deterding, D. H., Poedjosoedarmo, O. R. 1998. Sounds of English: Phonetics and Phonology for English Teachers in Southeast Asia[M].Singapore: Prentice Hall.

[7] Li, N. 2006. Problematic English Phones for Chinese EFL Learners[D].Henan Normal University.

[8] Hung, T. T. N. 2011. Hong Kong English[C]//Law, E., Hashim, A. English in Southeast Asia: Features, Policy and Language in Use, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

蒋悦，女，广东湛江人，岭南师范学院外国语学院教师，硕士，研究方向：外语教学。

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粤语为母语的英语学习者英语发音困难分析——内地个案研究

蒋悦

(岭南师范学院 外国语学院，广东 湛江 524038)

粤语为母语的英语学习者在英语语音研究中是特有的对象，因为其所在地区的三语环境(粤语、普通话和英语)增加了他们英语语言习得和学习的复杂性，尤其是英语发音。因此，采用一个粤语为母语的英语学习者作为研究对象，对于探索内地该群体英语学习者的语音问题是十分必要的。

英语语音难题； 粤语为母语的英语学习者； 内地