Some typical mistakes made by Romanians confronted with English Sounds and Intonation

Ligia Alexandra Lucaci (cas. Spiridon)

Some typical mistakes made by Romanians

confronted with English Sounds and Intonation

The English language is undoubtedly the most widespread language in the

world, quickly becoming a global language by most accounts. Some of the
most popular movies and TV shows are in English nowadays, and their
number is steadily rising. It is a given that every artist who wants to make it
on the global scene should, at least, possess a good understanding of the
English language. Not only is English one of the six official languages of the
United Nations, but it is also a requirement for almost all jobs that require
traveling abroad on a regular basis or getting in contact with people from
different sides of the world. Health care professionals, scientists, and
politicians are also required to speak English fluently, especially when
working in multinational organizations. Judging by how quickly the English
language is spreading every year, some say we should expect most people to
speak it by 2050.
Although Romanians do not seem to pose important problems while learning
English, some of them speak English with an accent similar to speakers from
other countries in Eastern Europe. An eloquent example is the former
President of Romanian, Mr. Ion Iliescu who learned English in Moscow and it
clearly shows. However, Romanian is a Romance language while the other
countries in the area have Slavic languages. In the following lines I will try to
bring into discussion some of the potential factors that lead to this
phenomenon and I will also highlight some of the most common mistakes

Some typical mistakes made by Romanians confronted with English Sounds and Intonation
Ligia Alexandra Lucaci (cas. Spiridon)

made by Romanian speakers of English in the field of pronunciation and

intonation.
Many people think that pronunciation is what makes up an accent. It may be
that pronunciation is very important for an understandable accent. But it is
intonation that gives the final touch that makes an accent native. Intonation
is the "music" of a language, and is perhaps the most important element of
a good accent. Often we hear someone speaking with perfect grammar, and
perfect formation of the sounds of English but with a little something that
gives them away as not being a native speaker. Therefore, it is necessary to
realize that there is more than the correct pronunciation of the vowels and
consonants of a language.
But what is pronunciation? And what is intonation? The English Oxford
Advanced Learners Dictionary gives the following definition for the term
pronunciation - the way in which a language or a particular
word or sound is pronounced and secondly it is the way in which
a particular person pronounces the words of a given language,
(http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/pr
onunciation?q=pronunciation )
in our case, the words of English. Well, there are two aspects of
pronunciation. The first the way in which a language or a particular word
or sound is pronounced needs a special attention, because in order to know
how to pronounce the words or the sounds of a specific language a person
should be first taught or intensively exposed to the spoken language so
(s)he may pick up pronunciation.
In G. V. Rogovas Methods of Teaching English, in the compartment Teaching
Pronunciation we find that the first impact of any language comes from the
spoken word. The basis of all languages is sound, but words are merely
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Some typical mistakes made by Romanians confronted with English Sounds and Intonation
Ligia Alexandra Lucaci (cas. Spiridon)

combinations of sounds. That is absolutely right and yet the acquisition of

good pronunciation depends to a great extent on the learners ability of
listening with care and discrimination. One of the tasks of language teaching
consists in finding ways to help the learners familiarize with the sounds that
are not present in their mother tongue or in previously studied languages. In
order to understand a word, our brain creates an acoustic image of that
word, based on the sounds that form it. Therefore teaching pronunciation is
of great importance in the developing of pupils hearing and speaking habits
and skills.
Teaching pronunciation has a great importance in fostering reading and
writing habits, since while reading we hear in our heads the acoustic
representation of the words that are graphically represented. In reading the
visual images become acoustic images. These are combined with kinesthetic
images resulting in inner speech. Wrong pronunciation often leads to
misunderstanding. For example, when a speaker or a reader replaces one
phoneme with another, they unintentionally use a different word and in this
way the sense of what they wanted to say is altered.
Let us take for example the pronunciation of the th. The th is one of the
hardest consonant sounds to pronounce. It can be pronounced in different
ways, for example as a // as in this, that, these, those, they or them; as
the voiceless // in three, thing, thought, or as a /t/ as in Thai or Thames.
Most Romanians do not have a problem in pronouncing this consonant
sound. However I have many times heard people pronouncing dis or zis
instead of this. Pronunciation of the // is especially difficult for some students often say tree instead of three, tink instead of think or tot instead
of thought.
In order to prevent this problem, the teacher could bring together pair of
words like thick/sick, thank/sank, thing/sing, truth/truce, math/mass,
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Some typical mistakes made by Romanians confronted with English Sounds and Intonation
Ligia Alexandra Lucaci (cas. Spiridon)

than/zen, clothing/closing and work with the students the meaning of the
words.

The

teacher

should

raise

awareness

on

the

fact

that

the

mispronunciation of words like the ones enumerated above not only give
away the fact that the speaker is non-native but also could lead to
misunderstandings.
Another feature of English that is not found in Romanian is that English has
12 vocalic sounds while Romanian has only 7. The 12 vocalic sounds in
English are divided in 2 categories: 5 long sounds and 7 short sounds.
Romanian as a language does not make a distinction between long and short
vowels so it is very important to make students aware of the importance of
the length of the vowels in English. As a starting point for activities teachers
could use pair of words such as

cat/kart, ship/sheep, cops/corpse,

look/Luck, sit/seat, etc.

Another mistake I heard very often is the mispronunciation of the word since
which is often pronounced /sans/. This is probably because the combination
of the sounds /i/ and /e/ in two syllables is commonly pronounced / a / like
in life, vine, fine, vibe.
Romanians may also tend to make words longer in English by dividing them
wrongly into more syllables than normally. For example the word literature is
pronounced /l.tr.tr/ but because in Romanian we have literatur a word
made up of 5 syllables, some students stumble upon it when they meet it
and pronunce it /l.t.r.tr/ . The same happens with vegetable which is
often mispronunced /ve.d.t.bl/ or even /ve.d.te.bl/ and other symilar
words.

The same happens with fashion /f.n/ mispronunced /fe.n/,

police /plis/ mispronunced /polis/, or chocolate /tk.lt/ mispronounced /

tk.lt/.

Some typical mistakes made by Romanians confronted with English Sounds and Intonation
Ligia Alexandra Lucaci (cas. Spiridon)

Nevertheless,

mispronunciation

of

sound

rarely

causes

bad

misunderstandings whereas intonation has the power to change the entire

meaning of a sentence. For this reason, in the following lines we will have a
look at what intonation is and what intonation mistakes are common among
Romanian students.
The English Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary gives the following
definition for the term
intonation - the rise and fall of the voice in speaking, especially
as this affects the meaning of what is being said
(http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/int
onation?q=intonation ).
Pronunciation is often considered to be difficult to teach and, as a
consequence, many teachers avoid teaching it. It is neglected because there
is not a lot of teaching material that deals with it and, at the first sight so
many other issues, such as grammar and vocabulary, seem more important
to tackle. Intonation is interesting though because we do convey a lot of
meaning through how much stress we place in a sentence and which word
the stress is on.
Teaching intonation within the communicative framework means guiding
learners to experience speech as transfer of a message from one person to
another. Doing this helps learners to think about their communication, rather
than as a classroom exercise, and to focus on their listeners perception
rather than on their own production.
When it comes to intonation, some students seem to acquire English
intonation naturally by exposing themselves, consciously or unconsciously, to
the language. On the contrary, others seem to have either a flat intonation
when communicating in English or to apply Romanian patterns of intonation
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Some typical mistakes made by Romanians confronted with English Sounds and Intonation
Ligia Alexandra Lucaci (cas. Spiridon)

to the English language. For this particular reason, we Romanians, tend to

sound rather aggressive, especially when it comes to asking questions. As an
example, many students ask Wh-questions with a falling intonation,
following the Romanian pattern of intonation:
e.g. How are you?
v.s.
Ce mai faci?
Because there is not enough (if at all) emphasis on the intonation when
English is taught, students are not aware that it is the verb which should be
stressed and not the wh-word.
e.g. How are you?
v.s.
Ce mai faci?
Problems regarding intonation would be fewer and less severe if students
were made aware of English pattern of intonation from the beginning of the
learning process. As it is well known, babies learn patterns of intonation long
before they learn to speak, and I do not see a good reason why we, as
teachers, would make things different by switching the stages or worse, by
ignoring them.
In conclusion, I would say that we, the teachers, have an important role to
play in the teaching/learning process, as we can make the difference in our
students development not only by influencing their learning, but also by
making the process enjoyable and easier by providing them with the right
materials and giving them the opportunities to get engaged in pleasant
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Some typical mistakes made by Romanians confronted with English Sounds and Intonation
Ligia Alexandra Lucaci (cas. Spiridon)

activities. Until they succeed in being autonomous it is our responsibility to

guide them so that they can become proficient.

Bibliography

Crystal, D. Prosodic systems and Intonation in English, Cambridge

University Press, 1969
Goglniceanu, C. Cracking English Phonetics and Phonology, 2009
Halliday, M.A.K. Intonation and Grammar in British English, The
Hague, Mouton 1967
Hirst, D., DiCristo, A. Intonation Systems: A Survey of Twenty
Languages, 1999
Rogova, G. V. Methods of Teaching English, 1983

Ligia Alexandra Lucaci (cas. Spiridon)

MA 2nd year