Contrastive Analysis of Consonants in English and Vietnamese

Abstract

Language is an intensely indispensable tool. It has tremendous functions in communication. One is communicating and conveying messages, thoughts and ideas, feelings, insights, and mental treasures and values of a communicative society. Also, it enhances and strengthens fellowships, companionships, relationships and economic and cultural cooperation. However, language is very indistinct, unclear and confusing. This contrastive linguistics analysis will compare the consonants between English and Vietnamese. Thus, the author synthesizes stored information from various sources to compare differences in consonants between English and Vietnamese in comparative points. Then, some implications and discussion would be drawn for teaching English pronunciation, aiming at helping English learners pronounce like native speakers. The findings show that there are significant differences between English and Vietnamese consonants. This paper is intended to help teachers and English learners review English and Vietnamese consonants to minimize mistakes in their pronunciation, accommodating learners to build their confidence to communicate in L2.

Common mistakes in pronouncing English consonant clusters: A case study of Vietnamese learners

“…A possible reason for this could be explained that the learners found it difficult in pronouncing CC clusters; and therefore, they tended to change voiceless plosives with an approximant in CC clusters, such as /t/, /p/, and /k/ in /tr/, /pl/, and /kr/. Another reason for FC to be the most frequent type of mistake could be seen in the interference of learners' L1 in the production of voiceless sounds (Nguyen, 2021). In fact, according to Language and Orientation Resource Center (1981), aspiration in consonants does not commonly occur in Vietnamese phonology.…”

“…Since the Vietnamese approximant /r/ is similar to the English /r/ in terms of pronunciation, the learners had no difficulty pronouncing it. However, the combination with a voiceless plosive preceding tends to be difficult for Vietnamese students (Nguyen, 2021). Those who did not change the voicing feature of the voiceless plosives would opt for deletion in these sounds, creating cluster reduction in the first consonant.…”