Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology

It is derived from Greek word: φωνή, phōnē, means "sound, voice". It is a branch of linguistics that comprises
the scientific study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech
sounds (phones): their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory perception, and
neurophysiological status.

Phonology

The scientific study of the speech sounds of a particular language is called Phonology.

Branches of Phonetics

There are three main branches of Phonetics named as followed:

1. Articulatory phonetics is concerned with the articulation of speech: The position, shape, and
movement of articulators or speech organs, such as the lips, tongue, and vocal folds.
2. Acoustic phonetics is concerned with acoustics of speech: The spectro-temporal properties of the
sound waves produced by speech, such as their frequency, amplitude, and harmonic structure.
3. Auditory phonetics is concerned with speech perception: the perception, categorization, and
recognition of speech sounds and the role of the auditory system and the brain in the same.
4. Neuro Phonetics is the branch of phonetics in which mental working of mind in articulation studied

Speech Generation

Speech is achieved by compression of the lung volume causing air flow which may be made audible if set into
vibration by the activity of the larynx. This sound can then be made into speech by various modifications of the
speech organs. The speech generation can be divided into three stages named as respiration, phonation and
articulation.

1. Respiration: It is the flow of air from lungs. The lungs provide the energy source in speech
generation.
2. Phonation: The vocal folds convert the energy into audible sound. This process is called phonation.
3. Articulation: In the third phase, the articulators or speech organs transform the sound into
intelligible speech. This phenomenon is called articulation. When sound is produced at the larynx,
that sound can be modified by altering the shape of the vocal tract above the larynx (supralaryngeal
or supraglottal). The shape can be changed by opening or closing the velum (which opens or closes
the nasal cavity connection into the oropharynx), by moving the tongue or by moving the lips or the
jaw.

Articulators

The speech organs or articulators are those physiological parts of human body which direct or redirect the air
flow from the lungs in order to produce different intelligible sounds. The names of those articulators are lips,
teeth, tongue, alveolar ridge, hard palate, velum (soft palate), uvula and glottis. There are two types of
articulators, passive and active.

1. Passive articulators are those which remains static during the articulation of sound. Upper lips, upper
teeth, alveolar ridge, hard palate etc. are the passive articulators.
2. Active articulators move towards these passive articulators to produce various speech sounds, in
different manner. The most important active articulator is tongue. Uvula, lower jaw which include lower
teeth and lower lip are the other active articulators.

1
Phonetic Transcription

Phonetic transcription is a system for transcribing sounds that occur in spoken language or signed
language. The most widely known system of phonetic transcription, the International Phonetic Alphabet
(IPA), uses a one-to-one mapping between phones and written symbols.

Sound and its types

The audible noise produced by the human vocal system meant for speech is called a sound. If
during the production of a sound the air is pulled inwards, it is called an implosive sound. If the
air is pushed outwards the sound is called an explosive one.
The bilabial plosives in Saraiki are implosives. Sounds in English are all explosives.

Phoneme

A unit of sound is called a phoneme. There are 44 phonemes or sounds in English language.
Each phoneme is represented by a symbol.

Consonants

A sound noticeably obstructed during its articulation is called a consonant sound.

There are 20 vowels and 24 consonants in English.

If the airstream is partially or totally blocked, the sound produced is a consonant. That's what distinguishes
consonants from vowels.
There are two distinct types of consonant:

• when the passage of air is fully blocked, and the sound results from the sudden release of this
blockage: the "plosives";
• when the passage of air is restricted but not fully stopped: the continuants, of which the fricatives are
representative.

 Plosives

The plosives require a complete closure of the speech canal, not just a restriction. This distinguishes them
from the continuants. The occlusion is twofold:the airstream is halted by a sudden closure in the speech
canal; the trapped air is freed by abruptly releasing the closure.

 Fricatives

Fricative consonants result from a narrowing of the speech canal that does not achieve the full closure
characteristic of the obstructives. The shape and position of the lips and/or tongue determine the type of
fricative produced. The shape and position of the tongue is not important in the case of the labial and dental
fricatives.

2
  Laterals
Laterals are generally considered to be a special case, since physically speaking they could be grouped
among the fricatives and spirants.

They are called laterals since, during their production, the back of the tongue makes contact with the hard
palate while the front of the tongue sinks down, channeling the air laterally around the tongue, down the
side (or sometimes both sides) of the mouth. (On the other hand, for non-lateral articulations, the back of
the tongue rests against the top molars, and the air flows over the tongue down the center of the mouth.)

There are two distinct types of lateral: Lateral fricatives, where the articulation, requiring a great deal of
muscular tension, resembles that of the fricatives (except for the position of the tongue);
Non-fricative lateral, often called liquids, whose articulation is very close to the spirants'.

The location of the lateral channel through which the air flows is unimportant: whether it is on the left, the
right, or both sides of the mouth, the nature of the sound produced is unchanged.

 Vibrants

These consonants involve one or more tapping or flapping vibrations of the speech organs under pressure
from the airstream. Part of the tongue makes contact with the palate, most commonly at the alveolar ridge,
the soft palate, or the uvula. One or more very brief occlusions occur successively, accompanied by short
resonances.

There are two distinct classes of vibrant: those with only one vibration, called taps; those with multiple
vibrations, called trills.

 Affricates

It is a combination of two processes, Plosion and friction. In this process the sound begins like a plosive
and ends like a fricative. There are two Affricates in English.

 Nasalization

In this process the sound is articulated through the nose. There are 3 nasals in English.

International Phonetic Alphabet: The Consonants

Voiceless (Fortis) consonants on the left, voiced (Lenis) on the right

3
 Palato-alveolar
Post-alveolar
Labiodental

Alveolar
Bilabial

Palatal
Dental

glottal
Velar
Plosive p b t d k g

fricative f v θ s z ∫ 3 h

Affricate t∫ d3

Nasal m n
η

Lateral l

Approxim
w r j
ant

Voice
VL V VL V VL V VL V VL V VL V VL V VL V Unk
status

Vowels

A sound least obstructed during its articulation is called a vowel sound.

A vowel can be an open or close vowel with respect to the closeness or openness of the mouth during its
articulation. It can be strong or weak with respect to the amount of force with which it is articulated. It can be
front, middle or back in terms of the height of the front, central or back part of the tongue at the time of
articulation.

It can be long or short prior to the duration till it continues. Out of the 20 vowels in English 7 are short while 5
are long vowels. The remaining 8 are diphthongs.

4
 Vowel Chart (Monophthongs)

Front Central Back

long short long short long short

Close iː ɪ uː ʊ

Mid e ɜː ə ɔː

Open æ ʌ ɑː ɒ

The primary cardinal vowels

The word ‘cardinal’ means ‘extreme’. Primary cardinal vowels are the standard yardstick to measure the
differences among the vowels of different languages as per how close, open, front or back a vowel can
possibly be as compared to another vowel. The primary cardinal vowels are eight (8) in number and the
positions they stand at stand for the roughly specified areas in the human mouth where different vowels are
articulated.

Allophones

In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds (phones) that belong to the same phoneme.
A phoneme is an abstract unit of speech sound that can distinguish words: That is, changing a phoneme in a
word can produce another word. Speakers of a particular language perceive a phoneme as a distinctive sound
in that language. An allophone is not distinctive, but rather a variant of a phoneme; changing the allophone
won't change the meaning of a word, but the result may sound non-native, or be unintelligible.

Every time a speech sound is produced, it will be slightly different from other utterances. Only some of the
variation is significant to speakers. There may be complementary allophones which are distributed regularly
within speech according to phonetic environment, as well as notable free variants, which are a matter of
personal habit or preference. Not all phonemes have significantly different allophones.

In the case of complementary allophones, each allophone is used in a specific phonetic context and may be
involved in a phonological process.

5
A tonic allophone is sometimes called an allotone, for example in the neutral tone of Mandarin.

Types of Plosion

Plosion is mainly of two types;

a) Implosion

It is the articulation of plosive consonants through ingressive block of the airstream in the vocal system.
Sounds produced this way are the plosives in the articulation of which the airstream is pulled inwards.
Generally the implosives are voiced as the articulation involves a complete closure in the mouth but the air is
not compressed as in /p/ or /t/. It is rather pushed downwards towards the larynx.

The airstream produced thus is called ingressive. As the closure is released air is sucked into the mouth at the
same time as the glottis is released, making the air from the lungs cause a little vibration in the vocal cords.
Thus the sound is produced. Articulation of these sounds creates some resonance.

Therefore they too are included in liquids (consonants having resonance). Sindhi and Saraiki are among the
languages (Saraiki is considered a dialect of Punjabi) rich in implosive consonants. The symbols of these
consonants are identified by a right hook attached to the phonetic symbol of the parent category of plosive
consonant. For instance the voiced alveolar plosive /d/ is shown with a right upward hook /…/ to show the
implosive alveolar voiced plosive (or the implosive).

The four phases of Plosion

The four phases of Plosion

Following are the four phases in which plosion occurs:

a) The closure phase

In this phase two articulators come into contact with each other and form a block to stop airstream
behind.

b) The hold phase

In this phase the airstream released by the lungs is blocked behind the closure made by the contact
between the two articulators.

6
phoneme? Do we consider a sound a phoneme in a language or merely an allophone?

A phoneme is
the minimal individual unit of sound in a language. If we break the pronunciation of a word into segments, the
smallest segment will be called a phoneme. Every phoneme is represented by a symbol. In 1983, almost 37
languages of the world were analysed in terms of the sounds they had. Excluding the repetitions, 124 sounds
were found to be existing distinct from each other universally. Those sounds were collectively called IPA
(International Phonetic Alphabet). Each sound is now attributed to a certain symbol. Each symbol is
considered a separate phoneme (also termed a “phonogram”). Each phoneme is
different from the other in terms of:

a) Place of
articulation

b) Manner of
articulation

c) Voiced,
and

d) Voiceless

In September
2005, a 125th sound was added to the IPA. There are 11 places and 8
manners of articulation, according to IPA. Out of those, there are six manners
and seven places of articulation where English phonemes are found to be

7
produced.

sounds are
articulated at a certain spot in the human vocal system. For example, the sounds

/p/ and
/b/ are articulated at the two lips or by joining to
lips. So these two are bilabial. Yet there still lies a difference.
/p/ is
voiceless whereas

/b/ is voiced. The manner of the articulation is

plosion. So these two sounds are similar in their place and manner of
articulation; yet they are different in terms of voicing.

The
allophone

The allophone
is a variety of the same sound in a language coming with a slight variation. For
example,

/p/ is an English phoneme distinct from others in its

attributes. But in the initial position of a word, it is aspirated; thus it
comes as

/ph/.

As regards
the question how a sound is said to be a phoneme or merely an allophone, there
is a test called a
phonemic test
supported by a theory called the

phonemic theory
.

The phonemic
theory states that only a sound capable of affecting the meaning of a word in a
language can be termed a phoneme. Following this theory, the phonemic test is
carried out to check the status of a sound in a language. The phonemic test
shows whether a sound affects the meaning of a word or not; thus helps us decide
if a certain sound can be called a phoneme or merely a non-phonemic symbol in a
language. For example, let’s check the status of a sound

/p/ in English language. We know that it comes as

/ph / in the initial position of many

English words. Now we are to decide if

/ph / is a separate phoneme or merely an

allophone of the sound

/p/. So we conduct the phonemic test to check this. We

apply both the sounds on different words and check their influence on the
meanings of each word:

8
There are six manners of articulation of
English consonants.
Plosion
In this process the airflow escapes forcibly through a block or stricture formed by two articulators. Sounds
articulated this way are called plosives. There are six plosives in English;

S. # Soun Place
d Voicing status Strength

1 Bilabial Voiceless Fortis

/p/

2 Bilabial Voiced Lenis

/b/

3 Alveolar Voiceless Fortis

/t/

4 Alveolar Voiced Lenis

/d/

5 Velar Voiceless Fortis

/k/

6 Velar Voiced Lenis

/g/

Friction
In this process articulators do not form a block but rather give the airflow a narrow passage to pass through.
Sounds produced so are called Fricatives. There are nine Fricatives in English:

S. # Soun Place
d Voicing status Strength

1 Fortis
/f/ Labiodental Voiceless

2 Voiced Lenis
/v/ Labiodental

3 Alveolar Fortis
/s/ Voiceless

4 Alveolar Voiced Lenis

/z/

5 Dental Fortis
/T/ Voiceless

6 Dental Voiced Lenis

/D/

7 Palato-alveolar Fortis
9
 /S/ Voiceless

8 Palato-alveolar Voiced Lenis

/Z/

9 Glottal Unknown Unknown

/h/

Affriction
It is a combination of two processes – Plosion and Friction. In this process the sound begins like a plosive and
ends like a fricative. There are two Affricates in English;

S. # Sound Place
Voicing status Strength

1 Palato-alveolar Fortis
/tS/ Voiceless

2 Palato-alveolar Voiced Lenis

/dZ/

Nasalization
In this process the sound is articulated through the nose. There are 3 Nasals in English;

S. # Sound Place
Voicing status

1 Bilabial Voiced
/m/

2 Alveolar Voiced
/n/

3 Voiced
/N/ Pharyngeal

The three possible places of a sound in a word

A sound can possibly occur at any of the three mentioned places in a word;
a) The initial position (the beginning)
b) The medial position (the middle), and
c) The final position (the end).
Owing to the variations in the anatomical features of the native speakers (such as the difference in the
proportion between the size of the mouth cavity and the length of the tongue) there are no parameters to
measure the exactness of the mentioned positions in a word. A position may vary from syllable to syllable, or in
some cases, word to word.
The Nasals

/m/ and

/n/ can occur at any of the three places in a word in English. The Nasal /ἠ/ can occur in the medial or final
position in English but not in the initial position.

10
Lateralization
In this process the sides of the tongue come in contact with the sides of the hard palate while the tip of the
tongue comes into contact with the alveolar ridge. Voicing begins and the articulation of the sound completes
when the tongue tip departs from the alveolar ridge. English has only one Lateral consonant.

S. # Sound Place
Voicing status

1 Alveolar voiced
/l/

Approximation
In this process the articulators come very close to each other but rarely establish a contact. There are 3
Approximants (semi-vowels) in English:

Voicing
S. # Sound Place status

Bilabial
1  (rounded) Voiced

2  Alveolar Voiced

3  Palatal Voiced

Important
How approximants ought to be realised as per their placement in certain syllables is a debatable issue. However,
an agreed fact regarding them states that they are produced individually like vowels (no contact between the
articulators is established) and contextually as consonants (a contact is likely to be established). Thus we can
say that they are Phonetically vowels and Phonologically consonants.

Problems Faced by Pakistani English Speakers

It is not difficult at all to find people with mispronunciation of English words in Pakistan. They really go through

tough time when it comes to good and proper pronunciation of English. Some of the major difficulties of

pronunciation are listed below:

Recognition of English Sounds Unluckily, Pakistani students do not get enough chance to go through proper

study of

English speech-sounds. Therefore they do not recognise them properly. Instead they try to match them with

speech-sounds of Urdu which ultimately corrupt their pronunciation.

Speech Organs

The sounds of English and Urdu are certainly different from each other. The Pakistani students mix them up

and try to shape their speech organs according to sounds of Urdu while pronouncing English sounds which

distorts it.

11
Connected Speech

It is a craze to speak fluently among Pakistani students. While attempting fluency is speaking skill, they

become unconscious of the rules of connected speech and make mistakes in pronunciation unwittingly.

Connecting The Sounds

It is evident that a word has many sounds in it and it is completed by joining the sounds properly. Therefore it is

necessary for the students to know how to join them together by clearly understanding how and where to join

the sound to the next sound.

Difference between Spelling and Sounds

There are plenty of words in English language which have silent letters. So the Pakistani students unknowingly

pronounce these silent letters which obviously make them

mispronounce the words.

For example:
Knife, knowledge, knave, kneel have ‘k’ silent which should not be pronounced at all. Multiple Sounds of the
Same Letters
It is also a noticeable difficulty in pronunciation that there are many letters and combinations of letters which
produce numerous sounds at different places. For example: ‘ch’ produces three sounds as ‘ch’, ‘k’, ‘sh’.
Similarly, ‘c’ produces two sounds as ‘s’, ‘k’. Rhythm of Speech

Spoken language has a particular rhythm which includes stress and intonation. Stress is the emphasis placed

on a sound or syllable by pronouncing it more loudly or forcefully than those surrounding it in the same word or

phrase. Intonation is the rising or falling pitch of the voice while pronouncing a word or syllable, or the pattern

of speech.

Factors of Mispronunciation Among Pakistani

Students

Where there is a problem, there is a factor of it as well. Just like the problems, there are many factors of

mispronunciation too. Most of the factors are based on misconception and unawareness pertaining to English

language. Some of the major factors are listed below:

Education System

The education system of Pakistan is the basic factor of mispronunciation among Pakistani students and sub-

standard schooling and many other problems existing in society. Well, there are schools which educate their

students very properly, but they a few in number. On the other hand, there are many academic institutions

which provide sub-standard education.

Therefore the basic problem is the dual education system which privileges some students and others remain

empty-handed.
Untrained and Unqualified Teachers As it is an open secret that there is corruption in education system, they
recruit the
12
teachers who are not qualified enough to teach. Now there is no chance for the students to learn correctly or
rather learn at all. When the teachers themselves would not be aware of the correct phonetics, how could they
teach their students? Now it is obvious that they are going to transfer poor and wrong information to the
students.

Transliteration

Since Urdu is the mother-tongue, they are in the habit of using Urdu sounds. This repetition of pronouncing

English sounds in Urdu style consolidates the mispronunciation.

Impact of Regional Language

Students belonging to different provinces have the strong impact of their regional language as Urdu speakers
have.
‘Got the meaning?’ Group

‘Got the meaning?’ group is consisted of the people who have no serious intention and motivation to learn and

more importantly rectify themselves. They only focus to convey the meaning to the listener. They also consider

learning proper English a waste of time saying that what they have learnt is enough for them to communicate.

They do not pay attention to articulation, but communication.

Influence of Electronic Media

According to the social learning theory, a person learns from its surrounding. What he watches and observes,

he imitates it. The same situation applies in case of learning pronunciation. Media is undoubtedly a great

source of learning. Watching movies, playing games and listening to songs is a common hobby of students,

and many students especially watch movies and listen to songs to improve their English. Here the role of

media becomes negative in their way to learning correct pronunciations. Hollywood has a huge host of

performers who belong to many other non-English countries.

Pronunciation problems in Pakistan

There are many factors involved in poor pronunciation in Pakistani speakers because of psychological,
social, managerial and geographical factors out of them a few are discussed in the following.

Firstly, the absence or exclusion of EFL pronunciation from the curriculum and syllabus is indicative of
the fact that the curriculum and syllabus designer has deliberately or ignorantly overlooked its significance.
Hence, the curriculum and syllabus designer’s qualifications, expertise and honesty could be seriously
questioned.

Secondly, the locally produced materials and the imported overseas ones used to teach and learn EFL
do not usually embody pronunciation components and lessons. This indicates that the local materials
developers are either unaware of the importance of pronunciation or not capable of designing pronunciation
materials or just blindly confined to the syllabus devoid of pronunciation components. Besides, the overseas
materials incorporating no pronunciation tips and lessons attract our teachers and others concerned because
very many of them do not have any formal and adequate training in English phonetics and phonology as well
as EFL pronunciation teaching.

Thirdly, as most teachers do not have useful strategies or techniques for teaching EFL pronunciation and
as they do not know what strategies are appropriate when they meet a specific problem, they simply avoid
pronunciation instruction in the classroom by employing shrewd tricks. Dalton (2002) rightly says:
13
We are comfortable teaching reading, writing, listening and to a degree, general oral skills, but when it comes
to pronunciation we often lack the basic knowledge of articulatory phonetics.

Fourthly Pakistani speakers are unable to distinguish the difference of vowel and consonant sounds in
regional and English language. There is very significant influence of native and mother languages, which is
very much evident especially in pronunciation.

Fifthly Pakistani speakers lack realization of intonation, pitch and stress variations and implications,
which creates a lot of pronunciation in them.

Finally, it is a fact that a substantial number of persons (of course more than fifty percent in Pakistan) currently
working as English curriculum/ syllabus designers, materials developers, educators, classroom teachers and
test writers/ question setters in EFL settings have either literature background or insufficient training in ELT and
hence tactfully avoid and/or consciously exclude EFL pronunciation items from the syllabus, lessons from the
material and instruction from the classroom activities..
3.2 PROBLEMS FACED BY PAKISTANI ENGLISH SPEAKERS
3.2.1 LEARNING STRATEGIES

Pronunciation should be smoothly understood by native and non-native people alike. In other words, it is more

appreciable to take care of pronunciation than just mimicking the accent. But that does not mean that wrong

pronunciation should be overlooked simply because it is understood. The preferable strategy, then, is to

identify and discover where the differences between the 'Standard English' pronunciation and the 'Local

English' pronunciation are unavoidably huge. These areas will vary according to the learners and their mother

tongue interferences. It is appreciable to address these problems of pronunciation with the goal of comfortable

intelligibility in mind. Unluckily, Pakistani speakers especially students do not get enough chance to go through

proper study of English speech-sounds. Therefore they do not recognize them properly. Instead they try to

match them with speech-sounds of Urdu which ultimately corrupts their pronunciation. The sounds of English

and Urdu are certainly different from each other. The Pakistani students mix them up and try to shape their

speech organs according to sounds of Urdu while pronouncing English sounds which distorts it.

This leads to the identification of areas: Not all the areas of pronunciation are worthy to be
addressed in local context. The suitable approach is to leave off the gratuitous areas before adopting any
teaching methodology. It is a common observation that rhotic and non-rhotic distinction is problematic even in
students who learn pronunciation quite easily and given that it does not hinder intelligibility it should not come
in the teaching of pronunciation. Similarly, the

14
 It is also a noticeable

difficulty in pronunciation that there are many letters and combinations of letters which produce numerous

sounds at different places. For example: ‘ch’ produces three sounds as ‘ch’, ‘k’, ‘sh’. Similarly, ‘c’ produces two

sounds as‘s’, ‘k’. There are plenty of words in English language which have silent letters. So the Pakistani

students unknowingly pronounce these silent letters which obviously make them mispronounce the words. For

example: Knife, knowledge, knave, kneel have ‘k’ silent which should not be pronounced at all.
3.2.2 COMMON MISTAKES

All the same, highly problematic habits in pronunciation need to be identified and are worthy to be taught. For

example, the pronunciation of individual sounds often inhibits intelligibility and there are certain words which

are best understood when pronounced in a non-native way, for example, many people pronounce "Therapy" as

"Thraapi", "Nomenclature" as "Nomun-clature" (With double stress) "Modern" as "Modrun" and "Market" as

"Markeet". That does not mean

hat such pronunciations need not to be

corrected towards improvement, most of the time mispronounced words do hamper the meaning altogether.
The fact is, such pronunciation mistakes are not random: They are regular and systematic. For example, EFL
and even ESL students in our country jumble up the long vowel sound of "Saw" and the short vowel sound of
15
"Spot" and "Turn" and "Ton", and it is the task quite laborious for the students to utter correctly the difference
between "Bad", "Bed" and "Bade". Also, the distinction between different stress patterns is important to teach in
order to grasp the complete meaning. For example, CONtent and conTENT as noun and verb, respectively.
Figure 2: Social & Regional Accent Difference with Sound.

If someone asks for a single pronunciation about a word from Pakistan, it usually starts an argument. One will

get 10 different variations because the speaker is someone from northern Pakistan or eastern Pakistan or

western, or one tribe or another. For example, many speakers have apparently switched between saying the

word 'either,' e-i-t-h-e-r, as 'ee-ther' or 'eye-ther.' Similarly, the words 'often' [aw-fen] and ‘schedule’ [schedule]

are also pronounced as 'awf-ten,' and ‘skejual’ which result in confusion on the part of the

Mispronounced & Confusing Words

Table 2: Words with Different Social/Regional Sound Difference

Another jumble up is the inability to discriminate between "emPLOY" and imployEE, as these are pronounced

the same way. Interestingly, "Scold" and "Is called" are mixed-up because of insertion of /i / of "Lip" before /s/

sound, a mistake found almost naturally among people with different Pakistani English dialect.

It is a craze to speak fluently among Pakistani students. While attempting fluency is speaking skill, they

become unconscious of the rules of connected speech and make mistakes in pronunciation unwittingly. It is

evident that a word has many sounds in it and it is completed

by joining the sounds properly. Therefore it is necessary for the students to know how to join
them together by clearly understanding how and where to join the sound to the next sound.
3.2.3 COMFORTABLE INTELLIGIBILITY

Aspirant individuals strive to break the shackles of their mother tongue's interference in English in order to

impersonate the Native American or British accent, ending up with a mock pronunciation and an inarticulate

variety of the English language. Given the medley of languages and inborn mother tongue interferences, the

pursuit of native-like English is a far- fetched and quite unrealistic goal. If one wishes to set realistic and

realizable goals for pronunciation, it is unquestionably "Comfortable intelligibility" in pronunciation and in

accent, which aims at something close enough to the correct. What matters is "Counts of sameness identified

by the listener". Intelligibility is then "Being understood at a given time in a given situation" and in this sense

synonymous to "Understandability". Simply, the more words a listener is able to identify accurately, the more

intelligible the speaker is. Besides, trying to speak in the native-like accent without any consideration of the

non-native people around us may run the risk of desperate breakdowns in communication.
3.2.4 STRESS, SYLLABLES AND TIMING

Spoken language has a particular rhythm which includes stress and intonation. Stress is the emphasis placed

on a sound or syllable by pronouncing it more loudly or forcefully than those surrounding it in the same word or

phrase. Intonation is the rising or falling pitch of the voice while pronouncing a word or syllable, or the pattern

16
of speech. Local languages like Urdu, Sindhi, Pashto, or Chinese and French are altogether different from

English.

The former are spoken in a syllabic-timed language, in which every syllable takes-up roughly the same amount

of time when pronounced and the latter being stressed-timed i.e. only selective syllables take-up more time

than the others, thus creating a different rhythm. Syllabic-timed English can definitely be "Comfortably

intelligible" and easier for locals. But the truth remains: Syllabic-timed English pronunciation is not standard

and the stressed- timed pronunciation is the ambition of many individuals because of the prestige attached to

it.

Table 3: Word Stress with the Change in Length

3.3 FACTORS OF MISPRONUNCIATION AND RESULTING
CONFUSION AMONG PAKISTANI SPEAKERS AND LISTENERS
3.3.1 EDUCATION SYSTEM

The education system of Pakistan is the basic factor of mispronunciation among Pakistani students and sub-

standard schooling and many other problems existing in society. Well, there

are schools which educate their students very properly, but they a few in number. On the other hand, there are

many academic institutions which provide sub-standard education. Therefore the basic problem is the dual

education system which privileges some students and others remain empty-handed.
3.3.2 UNTRAINED AND UNQUALIFIED TEACHERS

Corruption in education system is an open secret. Teachers who are not qualified enough to teach are

recruited. There is less chance for the students to learn correctly. When the teachers themselves would not be

aware of the correct phonetics, they would not be able to teach their students in an effective way, and are more

liable to transfer poor and wrong information to the students.

3.3.3 TRANSLITERATION & IMPACT OF REGIONAL LANGUAGE

Since Urdu or some other regional language is the mother-tongue, people are in the habit of using the mother-

tongue sounds. This repetition of pronouncing English sounds in Urdu, Punjabi, Pushto or some other style

consolidates the mispronunciation which ultimately results in miscomprehension and confusion on the part of

17
the listener. Moreover, students belonging to different provinces have the strong impact of their regional

language as Urdu speakers have.

3.3.4 ‘GOT THE MEANING?’ GROUP

‘Got the meaning?’ group is consisted of the people who have no serious intention and motivation to learn and

more importantly rectify themselves. They only focus to convey the meaning to the listener. They also conside

learning proper English a waste of time saying that what they have learnt is enough for them to communicate.

They do not pay attention to articulation, but communication.

3.3.5 INFLUENCE OF ELECTRONIC MEDIA

According to the social learning theory, a person learns from its surrounding. What he watches and observes

he imitates it. The same situation applies in case of learning pronunciation. Media is undoubtedly a great

source of learning. Watching movies, playing games and listening to songs are a common hobby of students,

and many students especially watch movies and listen to songs to improve their English learning and

pronunciation. It so happens that the role of media becomes negative in the way to learning correct

pronunciations. Hollywood has a huge host of performers who belong to many other non- English countries.

Students are unaware of the real nationality of the very actor and start imitating them. If an actor uses wrong

pronunciation such as Jackie Chan or Salma Hyke, who come from non-English courtiers, their words and

pronunciations imprint on the minds of the students and they fall victim of mispronunciation. Moreover, the

black Americans are notorious for using bad language; students also imitate their accent which utterly brings.

18