PE3011 English Language Studies and Teaching 1

Phonetics 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 aspiration
Full 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

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

/θ/ and /  /

How do your students tend to say these words? Why? What

could be the sources of the problems?

Thick
Faith
Then

• No such sounds in Cantonese

• substitute either /t/ or /f/ for /θ/ in words like "thick", and
either /d/ or /v/ for /  / in words like "this".

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

She
Shoes
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 /  / 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.
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•/  / 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?

Jump
Cheap
Jack
Jam
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" /ti:p/, "jump" /dmp/ =>/tsi:p/ and /dz

mp/

Nasals, Laterals and /r/

Can your students differentiate the words in the following

word pairs?

Ride vs wide
Rick vs lick
Nick vs lick

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Nine vs line
Nip vs lip
Help vs hep
Bottle 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 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".

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/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" /kp/ and
"caught" /k:t/.

Diphthongs

One more not covered: "point" as /p nt/

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 /pnt/.

Consonant clusters

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

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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 /hd/ 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" /brz/ may sound like "bothers" /bz/
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" /blz/.)

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

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.)

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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 => [p k tp]

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

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

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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?

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

Conclusion:

L1 transfers:

 Transferring t h e c l o s e s t s o u n d s w h e n
no such soun d s i n C a n t o n e s e

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Unaware of a feature / sound / pattern in
English:

 Voicing not t h a t c o m m o n i n C a n t o n e s e
and does not c o n s t i t u t e a d i f f e r e n t
phoneme

 When the sou n d d o e s n o t e x i s t i n

Cantonese

 When the sou n d ( s a m e o r s i m i l a r i n

Cantonese) o c c u r s i n f i n a l o r m e d i a l
positions

 The stress / r h y t h m p a t t e r n d o e s n o t
constitute a m a j o r c o m m u n i c a t i o n
signal

Overgeneralization:

 Realizations o f s o u n d s d e c o d e d f r o m
spellings ca n v a r y a c c o r d i n g t o
situation, e . g . , ‘ Ap p l e ’ v s
‘about’  n o t a w a r e o f t h i s a n d
thus general i z i n g p r i n c i p l e s a c r o s s
words and si t u a t i o n s

 Reazlization s o f s o u n d s v a r y
according to t h e c o n t e x t , e . g . ,
function wor d s g e t u n s t r e s s e d i n
natural, con n e c t e d s p e e c h . 
generalizing p r o n u n c i a t i o n a c r o s s a l l
situations

Implications for t e a c h i n g ?

 Isolated sou n d s d r i l l s t o p r e v e n t
transfers

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 Awareness-ra i s i n g t e a c h i n g a p p r o a c h e s
through the u s e o f m e t a l a n g u a g e ,
visual aids, ( e . g . , s p r e a d i n g o f
lips, articu l a t o r s , p l a c e o f
articulation , v o i c i n g , c a n d l e s ,
touching thr o a t f o r v i b r a t i o n ,
audibility o f s o u n d s , e t c . )

 Contextualiz i n g t e a c h i n g o f s o u n d s t o
raise awaren e s s o f v a r i a t i o n s a c r o s s
contexts (pr e s e n t i n g s e g m e n t s o f
natural spee c h t o r a i s e s t u d e n t s ’
awareness, e t c . )

 Contrastive t e a c h i n g a p p r o a c h e s t o
show sounds w h i c h c a n g e t t r a n s f e r r e d
easily from t h e s i m i l a r L 1 s o u n d s ;
again can be d o n e u s i n g m e t a l a n g u a g e ,
visual aids, e t c .

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