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
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/z/
Cantonese does not have /z/, so this phoneme is always replaced
by /s/.
// and /  /
How do your students tend to say these words?
could be the sources of the problems?
Why? What
Thick
Faith
Then
 No such sounds in Cantonese
 substitute either /t/ or /f/ for // 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",
problematic.
"same"
and
"shame"
will be
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 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.
 /  / 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)
whereas simply alveolar in Cantonese (/ts/ and /dz/)
vs
 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/
/dzmp/
=>/tsi:p/
and
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Nasals, Laterals and /r/
Can your students differentiate the words in the following word
pairs?
Ride vs wide
Rick vs lick
Nick vs lick
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
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/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".
/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/.
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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
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.
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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.)
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
pick
it
sound 4~
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
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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
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",
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 What do you notice?
Time intervals (amount of time spent on the syllables?)
The stress pattern?
Which is more rhythmic?
Conclusion:
L1 transfers:
 Transferring the closest sounds when no such
sounds in Cantonese
Unaware of a feature / sound / pattern in English:
 Voicing not that common in Cantonese and
does not constitute a different phoneme
 When the sound does not exist in Cantonese
 When the sound (same or similar in Cantonese)
occurs in final or medial positions
 The stress / rhythm pattern does not
constitute a major communication signal
Overgeneralization:
 Realizations of sounds decoded from
spellings can vary according to situation,
e.g., ‘Apple’ vs ‘about’  not aware of
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this and thus generalizing principles across
words and situations
 Reazlizations of sounds vary according to
the context, e.g., function words get
unstressed in natural, connected speech. 
generalizing pronunciation across all
situations
Implications for teaching?
 Isolated sounds drills to prevent transfers
 Awareness-raising teaching approaches
through the use of metalanguage, visual aids,
(e.g., spreading of lips, articulators,
place of articulation, voicing, candles,
touching throat for vibration, audibility of
sounds, etc.)
 Contextualizing teaching of sounds to raise
awareness of variations across contexts
(presenting segments of natural speech to
raise students’ awareness, etc.)
 Contrastive teaching approaches to show
sounds which can get transferred easily from
the similar L1 sounds; again can be done
using metalanguage, visual aids, etc.
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