Pronunciations Problems In
china. Most Americans are completely mystified by the sounds of the
chinese language. It is fairly common to hear someone from America imitating verbal
chinese by saying “ching-chong” and some gibberish for example. This is largely because pronunciation is so different between
english and
chinese. As a native
english speaker who has spent a large part of my life learning and speaking
chinese, I can vouch for how different the pronunciation is between the two languages. However, this isn't just an issue that Americans trying to learn
chinese struggle with,
chinese students trying to learn
english have just as hard a time. The most common pronunciation error made by
chinese students in my experience, and the hardest to correct as well, involves the letter “v”. This is because in
chinese pronunciation, there is no “v” sound at all! This is made even more problematic by the fact that most
chinese keyboards do have the letter “v” on them, but use it for a different vowel, “ü”, which doesn't exist in
english! It is very common for
chinese students to pronounce “v” like a “w”, for example, “very” often becomes “wary”. Moreover, if it is not “w” that the students pronounce a “v” like, I have often heard it as an “f” instead. Another common pronunciation error by
chinese students involves the “th” sound. In
chinese there is a “sh”, a “ch” and even a “zh” sound, but no “th” and they often struggle with it. A common example being “thank you” becoming “tank you”. However, unlike “v”, in my experience once they are taught the sound they can usually pronounce it without much trouble. Another common pronunciation error is about tones. In
chinese, there are five tones (even, rising, falling then rising, falling, and what I think of as short), and every word has a tone. These can occasionally change because of the word combinations, but every word still has one, and saying the wrong tone can completely change the meaning of the sentence even if the sound is correct. In
english, there is no tone system like this, although we do have rhythm, and meter. The idea of a verbal language without tones is often confusing to
chinese students as they have usually never experienced or considered a language like that before. As such it's quite common for a
chinese student to add tones to
english words, especially falling tones which can mash severely with
english rhythm and meter. This is also why American stereotypes of
chinese speakers of
english usually portray their pronunciation as short and chopping. Another problem is that in
chinese there aren't really any words that end with the letter “s”. This naturally leads to trouble with plurals, and it is exceedingly common in my experience for students to leave off or mispronounce an “s” at the end of a word. This is only exacerbated by the fact that
chinese has a very complicated measure word system that doesn't really have plurals like
english does. As such getting students to understand what plurals are, and then have them pronounce them correctly is often very challenging. However, in my experience if beginner students can learn this early on they usually remember it very well and don't require further work on it. The final problem that I have seen is from pronunciation differences between
english and Pinyin. Pinyin is a phonetic written version of
chinese that uses a modified Roman alphabet, but has very different sounds for certain letters compared to
english. For example, the common
chinese surname Lee is actually spelled Li in Pinyin. Another major one is the hard A sound in
english is usually spelled with an “ei” in Pinyin. This can all lead to spelling and pronunciation being very confusing to
chinese students. In conclusion, just as
chinese presents some major pronunciation difficulties for
english speakers, so does
english for
chinese speakers. Most of these difficulties are because of a difference between the sounds used for
chinese and
english and are often not noticed by native
english teachers because of that. However in my experience, with a little work – or in the case of “v” a lot of work – they can all be corrected.