THE ROLE OF THE MOTHER TONGUE IN TEACHING ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION

Rastislav Sustarsic

University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

Introduction

The paper examines the main differences between the English and Slovene sound systems, and discusses the influence of the observed differences on the pronunciation of Slovene students of English at tertiary level. Students’ awareness of the systemic and realizational differences between the two languages can, in my view, significantly improve their performance in the field of English pronunciation.

English and Slovene Sound Systems

1. Vowels. The main difference between the two systems is in a greater number of English vowel phonemes. Thus, for each of the English vowel pairs /i: - I, u: - U, A: - V /, Slovene only has a close front and a close back vowel /i, u/, and an open central vowel /a/, which are all relatively long in accented and relatively short in unaccented position [1, 2]. This leads Slovene speakers to neutralise English vowels, e.g. in:

beat vs. bit, pool vs. pull, and fast vs. fussed

The nearest equivalents of English vowels /e-{ / are the Slovene mid-close /e/ (closer than the Eng. /e/) and mid-open /E/ (closer than the Eng. /{/; for both, see the vowel diagram in [2]). While one might expect simple replacement of the two English vowels with the two Slovene counterparts in Slovene speakers' English pronunciation, this is seldom the case. The reason for this is most probably the fact that the Slovene /e/ is (correctly) perceived by Slovene speakers as too close to be applied for the English /e/. Instead, both English vowels are (again correctly) identified as the nearest equivalents of the Slovene /E/, with the degree of opening between the two English vowels. Although they are generally distinguished by Slovene speakers in identification tests based on recognition of vowels in words used in isolation (e.g. pet/pat, Ben/ban etc.), they are very often neutralised in pronunciation.

Although the situation with the back English vowels /O: - Q/ is more or less the same as in the case of /e - {/ (i.e. the Slovene /o/ and /O/ are mid-close and mid-open respectively), neutralisation seldom occurs and, generally, these two vowels do not present a particular problem for Slovene speakers. The same seems to be the case with the remaining, i.e. central vowels (/@/ and /3:/), except that the /3:/ in the pronunciation of Slovene speakers is often too short [3]. This can be explained by the fact that Slovene (again) only has one vowel of this type; while this vowel is longer in accented position, the difference in length is considerably smaller than the one between the English /@/ and /3:/.

With regard to allophonic realisations of vowels, the variation of length (duration) in English (pre-fortis clipping and pre-lenis lengthening) is perhaps the most important difference between the two languages. It should be pointed out that in standard Slovene all obstruents are strong and voiceless in final position [4], so that while vowel length is an important feature in differentiating between e.g. English bat - bad, in standard Slovene words like ped - pet ('span' - 'five') have the same pronunciation. This explains why Slovene speakers tend to neutralise also pairs of English words such as:

rise-rice, badge -batch, bride-bright, etc.

The Slovene diphthongs are generally considered phonemically as combinations of two phonemes, a vowel and /j/ or a vowel and [w] (often written as [ u] . The latter is considered a bilabial realisation of the approximant /P/. The Slovene phonetic diphthongs are [ew, Ew, aw, Ow, ej, oj, Oj, aj, uj] . There are no centring diphthongs in Slovene. The diphthongs [aw] and [aj] can safely be used as equivalents of the English /aU/ and /aI/, while [Ow] differs from the RP /@U/ in the first element. The first element of the RP /OI/ is mid-way between the closer Slovene /o/ in [oj] and the more open /O/ in [Oj].

2. Consonants. In terms of systemic differences, the most important is the lack of the dental fricatives /T, D/ in the system of Slovene consonants. Slovene also has no /N/ as a separate phoneme. This nasal only occurs as an allophone of /n/ when followed by a velar consonant. Slovene also has no labio-velar semi-vowel /w/ as a distinctive sound unit; the sound does occur, however, as one of the realisations of the Slovene /P/ (before consonants). On the other hand, Slovene has three affricates - /ts/ in addition to /tS/ and /dZ/.

The Slovene labio-dental /P/ is an approximant rather than a fricative, so that the Slovene /f/ has no voiced-lenis counterpart on the phonemic level.

The Slovene r is an alveolar tap /4/. While the approximant /£/ in RP is only pronounced before vowels, the Slovene tapped /4/ is always pronounced.

Other differences between the two systems concern the place of articulation. Thus, the nearest equivalent of the English glottal fricative /h/ is the velar fricative /x/. Also, the Slovene /t, d/ and /n/ are dental rather than alveolar.

With respect to some important allophonic realisations of English consonants, Slovene differs from English in that:

• /p, t/ and (questionably) /k/ are always unaspirated,
• glottal reinforcement (i.e. the glottal stop [?]) only occurs before word-initial vowels, never before consonants,
• nasal and lateral release of plosives do not occur in word-final clusters of plosives and nasals/laterals, as e.g. in Eng. written, bottle.
• nasals and approximants are not devoiced by the preceding fortis obstruents

2.1. Voice Assimilation of Consonants.

While voice assimilation is supposedly rare in English [5], it follows a consistent rule in Slovene, according to which a lenis obstruent cannot precede a fortis obstruent and vice-versa [4]. Thus, a sequence of two obstruents (both within a word and on the word boundary) is always either lenis/voiced + lenis/voiced or fortis/voiceless + fortis/voiceless, e.g.: odstraniti 'remove' /ts/, od strahu 'out of fear' /-t s-/; risba 'drawing' /zb/, res bom 'I really will' /-z b-/

OTHER ASPECTS OF CONTRAST

1. Loan-words and international words. On the one hand, the process of 'transphonemisation' of English loan-words in Slovene generally reflects the systemic differences between the two languages explained above. On the other hand, the pronunciation of English loan-words has often been influenced by the spelling and, when borrowed via other languages (e.g. German or Serb and Croatian) by the pronunciation in those languages. A typical example of such influence is the pronunciation of initial st-, e.g. in start, as /St-/

In the same way, the pronunciation of the so-called 'international' words (e.g. conversation - Sl. konverzacija) is influenced by the Slovene equivalents.

2. Influence of American English. One of the aims we consider important in teaching English pronunciation to students at tertiary level is that of achieving consistency within the selected standard accent. In Slovenia, the model is traditionally and still prevailingly that of British English. The majority of textbooks, tapes, dictionaries and other teaching materials used at all levels of English classes are British rather than North American or Australian. On the other hand, outside the classroom, pupils and students are more often exposed to American English accents, in particular by way of television, popular music, computer games and the Internet. Although in most aspects their pronunciation is closer to RP than to General American, they find it difficult to attain consistency in either RP or GA. Once they become fully aware of the differences between the two accents, however, they can gradually overcome this problem. Needless to say, the choice between the existing standard pronunciations should be left entirely to the student, as long as their speech is consistent.

The next section is based on our pronunciation practice materials [6]

SLOVENE SPEAKERS’ PROBLEMS

Error analysis of consonants

Error analysis of vowels

CONCLUSION

It is often argued that non-native speakers of English (or any other language for that matter) can never achieve native-like pronunciation competence and that (in accordance with the communicative approach to foreign-language learning) there is no particular need for them to acquire it, provided that their speech is sufficiently intelligible to other speakers. I strongly believe, however, that a ‘foreign accent’ is only an intermediate stage in the learning process, and that along with improving all other language skills, students can and should continuously develop and improve also their pronunciation. Being aware of the main differences between (in our case) English and their mother tongue is perhaps the most important prerequisite for an ambitious student to advance from the ‘minimum general’ to the ‘high acceptability’ pronunciation standard [5].

REFERENCES

[1] Srebot-Rejec, T. 1988. Word accent and vowel duration in Standard Slovene: an acoustic and linguistic investigation. Verlag Otto Sagner, Munich.

[2] Sustarsic, R., Komar S. and Petek, B. 1995. Illustrations of the IPA: Slovene. - Dublin, Journal of the International Phonetic Association Vol. 25/2. IPA, Dublin.

[3] Petek, B., Sustarsic, R. and Komar, S. 1996. An Acoustic Analysis of Contemporary Vowels of the Standard Slovenian Language. Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing. Vol. 1. University of Delaware, Philadelphia. 996.

[4] Toporisic, J. Slovenska slovnica. 1984. Obzorja, Maribor.

[5] Gimson, A.C. and Cruttenden, A. 1994. Gimson’s Pronunciation of English. 5^th ed. Edward Arnold, London.

[6] Collins, B., Sustarsic, R. and Komar, S. 1996. Present-day English Pronunciation. - Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana.