Grammar differences (for example the lack or surplus of Tense , Number , Gender etc.) in different Languages often lead to grammatical mistakes that are telltale signs of their native language. Sometimes non-verbal Body Language , Facial Expression s, or other cues also give away the origin of the speaker.
Another factor is how the English language is taught as a second language. In such cases, the accent of the teachers will affect the accent of the students. In some places that were formerly under British rule, such as India , Hong Kong and Malaysia , the English language remains a mandatory subject in most schools. Students study the English language at schools while using their native language in daily life. Thus, there may be distinctive features of pronunciation in those speakers.
A reverse version of this article is to be found at: Anglophone Pronunciation Of Foreign Languages
Non-native accents by region in alphabetical order:
- Afrikaans has a voiced rather than English’s voiceless , this may carry over when speaking English.
- Non-rhotic accent. Typically, r may be otherwise trilled.
- are unaspirated, which may sound like
- Final obstruent devoicing.
- Interdental fricatives and become labiodental and respectively.
- Trouble with many English vowels, since Classical Arabic has only long and short forms of three vowels: . Depending on the speaker's original Dialect , the ease of learning English vowels may be facilitated by allophones of these three vowels.
- is often pronounced like b - Arabic doesn't have .
- is sometimes pronounced like f, since Arabic doesn't have .
- Arabic has only (although in Egypt , the same sound has not undergone the same Palatalization as most other dialects and retains the archaic ). As a result, English , and may be confused.
- Final obstruent devoicing.
- is trilled, as it is in Arabic.
: Classification of these dialects remains controversial. See Serbo-Croatian Language and Štokavian for more information.
- Often a palatalized dental is used instead of the typical English 'r', especially before vowels.
- is pronounced as in Spanish osé.
- Difficulty distinguishing between and because the former does not exist in these languages.
- Dental fricatives are typically replaced by apical stops.
- Difficulty with English diphthongs. May pronounce each vowel as distinct.
- Difficulty with gender pronouns, because personal pronouns may be used for normally gender-neutral inanimate objects as well (like in English) but with a different gender than in English. For example, English ''ship'' is usually neuter but can sometimes be feminine while it is masculine in Štokavian).
- Difficulty with articles such as "a" and "the" as they do not exist in Štokavian languages; the closest approximations are Demonstrative adjectives like "some" or "one" and "that".
- as in "the" or "then" is often pronounced as .
- as in "thong" or "thorough" may be pronounced as .
- Sometimes "he" or "she" is used where "it" should; on the other hand, ships could be referred to as "it."
- Overuse of definite articles, especially in phrases whose Bulgarian equivalents require articles, like "the Bulgarians usually..." instead of "Bulgarians usually..."
- Pronunciation of English as the velar fricative (as in Spanish ose).
- Voiced consonants at the end of the words may be pronounced as voiceless, like "bat" instead of "bad."
- Tendency to pronounce as in words like "sun", "up", "under."
- may be pronounced as an Alveolar Trill , absent in English, or with a hard rhotic accent at the end of words (like "car", "fire" etc.)
''see also'' Hong Kong English
- is often pronounced as or sometimes . Speech is usually non-rhotic (more common if schooled in Hong Kong because of British influence). and are also often confused since these two sounds are becoming Allophones in Cantonese.
- , often pronounced as either or .
- 'wh', pronounced as (this is the case for many native speakers of English as well).
- Dental fricatives usually become labiodental.
- Devoicing of final , and , making 'nip'/'nib', 'rot'/'rod' and 'flock'/'flog' indistinguishable.
- Tendency to epenthesize after word-final Postalveolars .
- Final may become so that win/wing and ran/rang become indistinguishable.
- Often dropping or not distinguishing articles like 'the' and 'a'.
- Difficulty with verb tenses and plurals in general, as they have no direct equivalence in Chinese grammar.
- Speakers may have difficulty with pronoun gender: (''he'', ''she'', and ''it'') since spoken Chinese does not make gender distinction in pronouns (although these words have different Hànzì ).
- Marked conversion of stress into tones since Cantonese is a tonal language.
- Introducing end-of-sentence particles that are non-existent in English (this occurs primarily in informal writing rather than in speech).
- Devoicing of word-final voiced consonants.
- Trouble distinguishing between and .
- --- With the two above combined, "bet," "bad," "bed," and "bat" will all sound like .
- Frequent voicing of between vowels, and especially after , , and , so that "insert" and "increasing" sound more like "inzert" and "increazing" respectively.
- The vowel in words like "bd" is frequently pronounced as or .
- Prevalent mispronouncing of the 'u' in words such as "purple" or "Murphy" as a : the 'u' in these words is mistakenly believed to represent about the same sound as in "but", and are often lengthened.
- (as in "heart") is Murmur ed, as it is in Czech.
- Word-final (as in "bill") is not velarized, as it is for a number of native English speakers, making it of the same quality as the initial 'l' in "lip."
- Frequent lack of Aspiration on unvoiced consonants, making "park" and "bark" harder to distinguish.
- Difficulty in distinguishing between and since the latter does not appear in Czech phoneme inventory.
- Prevalent misconception of 'oo' as representing a Long Vowel where it should be short (thus rhyming words as "book", "hook" and "foot" with "loot" instead of "put"). This is an example of Spelling Pronunciation .
- 'ng' is always treated as two separate sounds, as the sound does not exist in Czech; this, coupled with word-final devoicing, makes -ing frequently pronounced as "ink", making "thing" and "think" homophones.
- Some trouble with the dental fricatives and , which may be rendered either as and or and respectively.
- Pronouncing voiced consonants as voiceless (/d/-> /v/ -> [f , /z/ -> [s] etc), especially at the end of the words; for example, "pod" would sound like "pot."
- Dutch does not have dental fricatives. Most commonly, becomes ("though" sounds like "dough") and becomes or ("think" sounds like "sink" or "tink").
- Stereotypically, a Dutch speaker from around Amsterdam may make /s/ sound more like .
- Speakers may pronounce either slightly rolling, as in Dutch, or hypercorrecting it which may sound more like 'w'.
- The pronunciation of vowels differs widely across Dutch dialects. All dialects lack the in "putt", the in "pot" (although many American English speakers lack the second sound as well) and the in "pat." The latter of the three is usually realized as .
- Speakers from Limburg can often be identified by their intonation, even when speaking English or most any other foreign language. Their native dialect has various tones, and characteristically sentences end in the up-and-down intonation.
- An absence of the English tonal variation. In Finnish the intonation contour is typically falling, and there's no meaning-distinguishing variation at the sentence level. Thus, speakers often have difficulties producing the rising tone of a question. The tempo of general speech is usually slower, which is how Finns typically speak.
- There may be an absence of the word "please". In Finnish, politeness generally comes from tone of speech and the use of Formal Pronouns . The expression "ole/olkaa hyvä" (for "please") is generally used only in formal settings or when stressing a specific issue politely.
- In Finland, the traditional teaching policy focuses on writing with correct spelling and grammar, but pronunciation or usage gets less attention. This may lead to pronunciations imitating the spellings, e.g. "font" pronounced as , unlike the native English ( in American English), or "count" becomes instead of .
- Voicing (p vs. b, etc.) is not phonemic in Finnish, and due to this, voiced consonants may be devoiced. This includes:
- Variation of voicing inside a long word shows the problems, even if short words are correctly pronounced. For example, ''bed'', ''pet'' and ''bet'' may be distinct, but ''probably'' becomes ''propably'' or even ''propaply''.
- Devoicing of into , or confusing them when they appear in the same word. This is because in native Finnish pronunciation, 'b' is often pronounced identically to 'p', e.g. both ''baari'' ( Bar , pub) and ''paari'' ( Par ) are pronounced ''paari''. The mispronunciation ''bubi'' "pub" is found in Finnish.
- Sometimes, and are both pronounced 'k', e.g. ''inkredient'', where the "k" is a devoiced "g".
- The English voiced sibilant becomes the unvoiced , e.g. ''roses'' becomes . When the spelling is 's', it is always pronounced 's'. When the spelling is 'z', attempts at voicing might be observed e.g. with ''haze'' vs. ''hays'', but usually these are identical with the latter.
- As in German, the letter 'z' is used to write in the Finnish alphabet. This may carry over to English, especially word-initially so that ''zealous'' might be pronounced . It may also be pronounced since Finnish speakers may confuse with the voiced affricate . This would make ''zealous'' and ''jealous'' indistinct.
- Difficulty with both voiced (as in ''the'' ) and unvoiced (as in ''thin'' ) dental fricatives. Usually the pronunciation is not a fricative, but more like a dental or . For example, ''thick'' might be pronounced . While those speaking with other foreign accents may do so, Finnish speakers do not typically replace dental fricatives with alveolar fricatives ('s' or 'z').
- Difficulty distinguishing between voiced and unvoiced ] postalveolars, e.g. ''pleasure'' is pronounced with either or . The affricate as in "jump" typically becomes unvoiced i.e. , or even alveolar {Link without Title} .
- The sound does not exist as a native phoneme in Finnish. While speakers typically have no trouble producing the sound, slip-ups may occur.
- The Finnish set of vowels is extensive enough to contain the relevant English vowels, and results in little vowel confusion. However, of English pure vowels, Finnish recognizes only " (Jeffers & Lehiste 1979:140).
- In Finnish, there is no Vowel Reduction as there is in English. As a result, Finnish speakers put in non-reduced vowels in place of vowels that are typically reduced in native pronunciations. Examples:
- There is no schwa in Finnish; typically the rounded cardinal vowel replaces it. The and may be transformed into Ö or Ä . The word "baker" might be instead of , or "bird" may become .
- Similarly, when there is an 'a' in spelling but a schwa in pronunciation, it is pronounced . The word "American" might be pronounced instead of .
- The back vowels and (the ''u'' in 'cut' and the ''ar'' in 'cart') both merge into become the latter. They do contrast in length, so that "cut" is pronounced while "cart" remains as is. In contrast, remains as is, as it is a different phoneme from the in Finnish.
- Vowel Length allophony is reproduced reliably, as the difference is phonemic in Finnish.
- Finnish speakers never use the glottal stop as an allophone of like many English speakers do.
- The English "tense" and "lax" (i.e. vowels contrasted by Quantity and Advanced Tongue Root ) are completely replaced with their respective Quantity -contrasted vowels (short and long vowels), which differ only by length, not by quality like in English. E.g. "bit" is pronounced by native speakers but Finns typically say . Thus, the only difference between "bit" and "beat" is vowel length
- Aspiration does not exist in Finnish and it is not heard, i.e. "top" and "stop" are differentiated only by the 's'. However, sometimes Finnish-speakers pronounce a Geminate instead in the medial position. ( Finnish Phonetics do not allow initial or final geminates.) Geminates might also be used incorrectly, due the " Generic Gemination ", e.g. ''Inttöönet'' instead of .
- The English Approximant R is usually pronounced Rolled as in Finnish, or imitated in some innovative, but incorrect way, e.g. using a Creaky Voice instead of actual Rhoticity . However, many speakers are able to produce the English R.
- The sounds V and W are both reduced to the Finnish approximant V , which is something between them, i.e. a without any Fricative quality.
- Due to Finnish always stressing the first syllable, English words accented on other syllables are often stressed incorrectly, e.g. "vocabulary" is instead of the correct . This can produce confusion, especially with words like “record” where stress is contrastive.
- In Finnish, there is only one pronoun for "he" and "she," and needing to remember to distinguish the two can cause slip-ups. There are also no articles like "the" and "a" and Finns may have difficulty remembering to include them when speaking.
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