Non-native pronunciations of English

Non-native speakers of the English language tend to carry the intonation, accent or pronunciation from their mother tongue into their English speech. (The language spoken by a person before their second language has reached the stage of native speaker or near-native speaker competence is known as an interlanguage.)

Grammar differences (e.g. the lack or surplus of tense, number, gender etc.) in different languages often lead to grammatical mistakes that are tell-tale signs of the origin. Sometimes non-verbal body language also gives away the origin of the speaker.

Another factor is how the English language is taught to young school children. The pronunciation students use will be affected by that used by their teachers. So there may be distinctive features of pronunciation in those from a particular country, such as India, Hong Kong, Malaysia, etc.

Non-native accents by region in alphabetical order:

Table of contents

1 Afrikaans 2 Arabic 3 Black South African languages 4 Cantonese Chinese 5 Czech 6 Dutch 7 East Asia and Southeast Asia (including Vietnamese, Chinese) 8 Persian (Farsi, Iranian) 9 Finnish 10 French 11 German 12 Greek 13 Hebrew 14 The Indian Subcontinent 15 Irish 16 Italian 17 Japanese 18 Korean 19 Malay 20 Mandarin Chinese 21 Philippines 22 Polish 23 Russian 24 Serbian 25 Spanish 26 Swahili 27 Swedish 28 Thai 29 Uganda 30 External links

Afrikaans

The back-trilled "R", also found in Scottish speech patterns, features strongly in Afrikaans. Those with Afrikaans as a mother tongue will pronounce 'k' or 'c' as 'g', 'p' as 'b', and 't' as 'd'.

• Afrikaans --> uffree-gawns
• Cape Town --> guyp-down
• Pretoria --> bri-dorr-ia

Arabic

• Some of the vowels are mispronounced.
• p is often pronounced like b
• v is sometimes pronounced like f

Black South African languages

English as spoken by black South Africans is influenced by intonation and pronunciation of African languages:

• work --> weck
• win --> ween
• car --> kah
• book --> boook
• dirty --> detty
• garden --> gaddin
• fast --> fust
• town --> taun

Cantonese Chinese

• many differences in pronunciation due to the large differences in the sounds used by English and Chinese language, and from the teachers
• 'r', read as 'l' sound and sometimes 'w' sound. (opposite of Japanese accent)
• 'v', read as 'w' sound.
• 'wh', read as 'w' sound.
• 'th', read as 'd' sound.
• 'n' and 'l' often confused (these two sounds are allophones in Cantonese)
• Differences in ending sounds.
• Often drop articles like "the" and "a"
• Difficulty with verb tenses and plurals in general, as they have no direct equivalence in Chinese grammar.
• Confusion of 'he', 'she', and sometimes 'it', as all have the same pronunciation in Chinese.
• trouble with numbers larger than ten thousand, in the Chinese language, ten thousand is read as one myriad, 100 thousand as 10 myriad, one million as 100 myriad etc. Chinese speakers often pause before saying big numbers because of the mental conversion taking place in their head. (Of course, English speakers have the same problem when saying large numbers in Chinese.)

Czech

• Devoicing of terminal voiced consonants
• Lack of distinction between [e] and [æ]
• Above mentioned combined, the following words will all sound like "bet": "bad", "bed", "bat", "bet"
• Frequent voicing of 's' between vowels, and especially after 'n', 'l', and 'r', as in "insert" or "increasing" (becoming "inzert" and "increazing")
• Prevalent mispronouncing of "purple" or "Murphy": the 'u' in these words is mistakenly believed to represent about the same sound as in "but", often prolonged to the quality of "bar"
• 'h' (as in "heart") gets "more voiced"
• Terminal 'l' (as in "bill") of the same quality as the initial 'l' in "lip"
• Frequent lack of aspiration on unvoiced consonants, making "park" and "bark" harder to distinguish
• Difficulty to consistently produce distinction between 'v' and 'w'
• Prevalent misconception of 'oo' as representing a long vowel where it should be short (thus rhyming words as "book", "hook" and "foot" with "loot" instead of "put")
• Frequent pronouncing -ing as "ink", thus rhyming "thing" with "think"
• Some trouble with 'th' sounds

Dutch

• Pronouncing voiced consonants as voiceless (d->t, v->f, z->s), especially at the end of the words; for example, "pod" and "pot" are pronounced the same.
• The 'th' sounds do not exist in Dutch. Most commonly, voiced 'th' becomes 'd' ("though" sounds like "dough") and unvoiced 'th' becomes 's' ("think" sounds like "sink").
• Stereotypically, a Dutch accent makes s sound like something near sh. Usually this indicates that the speaker grew up in or around Amsterdam.
• Pronouncing 'r' either slightly rolling, as in Dutch, or hypercorrecting it to 'w'.
• The pronunciation of vowels differs widely across Dutch dialects. All dialects lack the 'u' in "but", the 'o' in "pot" and the 'a' in "pan", which usually comes out indistinguishable from "pen". Most dialects lack the 'oe' in "toe".
• Speakers from Limburg can often be identified by their intonation, even when speaking English or most any other foreign language. Their native dialect has various tones, and charactistically sentences end in the up-and-down tone.

East Asia and Southeast Asia (including Vietnamese, Chinese)

• Due to the syllabic nature of their native languages, East Asians tend to drop or amplify the ending sound of English words, e.g. "an", "ant", & "and" sound the same.
• When raising the tone at the end of a question "You did what?", often the last syllable is lengthened and sounds almost like it is being sung.

Persian (Farsi, Iranian)

• It's hard to differentiate Persians since they have really no difficulty pronouncing special sounds (excluded from the English alphabet) like:
  • /x/ (like the Spanish: "Juan"),
  • /jh/ (like the French: "Jack"),
  • /ch/ (like the English "child"),
  • /z/ (like "zoo"),
  • /sh/ (like "ship).

  They have a equivalent consonant for all these phonemes in their alphabet.
• Persians tend to have some difficulties, when learning English, to pronounce "th"; both as thing and this, which of course sounds like "ting" and "dis". Also /w/ like the word walk, can sound like "vak".
• Persian can sound very melodic with many variations. It's quite different from the Arabic language, contrary to what one might expect at first.
• They usually "drag" on the last vowel in fairly long words, while the first is "stressed"; the country Andorra might sound like "ahndoraaaa"
• they can trill their R:s if they want to.
• Persion can also sound nasal, hence 'Iran' is pronounced as 'ih-rawnh'.
• Double consonants not in use in Persian are sometimes expanded, sometimes prefixed, eg: "be-room" for broom, or "e-stop" for stop.

Finnish

• Confusion between 'p' and 'b' (in Finnish 'p' is pronounced almost the same as 'b', hence "bank" is pankki).
• Due to Finnish always stressing the first syllable, English words accented on the second syllable are often misstressed. "VOcaPUlary".
• Difficulty with 'z', pronounced as 's'.
• 'th' is often pronounced as 'd' or 't'
• /ch/ as in child, is often pronounced as /sh/ or "shaield"
• [dZ] as in jump is sometimes pronounced as [Z] (pleasure) or even [j] (yes)
• Often mixes he and she, as both are the same word "hän"

French

• 'th' is often pronounced as 'd' or 't' (especially among Quebecois French speakers) or 'z' (especially among speakers from France)
• voiceless 'th' may be pronounced as 'f' or 's'
• /ch/ as in child, is often pronounced as /sh/ as in Charlotte
• /dj/ as in jam, is often pronounced as /j/ as in Jacques
• May drop 'h' sound or insert 'h' sound in front of vowels
• rolled or uvular /r/

German

• th pronounced as s or z. (German lacks both [θ] and [ð].)
• s sometimes also pronounced as z.
• d, g or b at the end of a word may be pronounced as t, k or p (terminal consonant de-voicing).
• Since German adverbs are identical in form to adjectives, Germans often drop the ending -ly from English adverbs.
• Lack of distinction between [æ] and [ɛ]: thus "man" and "men" are pronounced the same.
• Difficulty with the English r. (The German r is the voiced uvular sound [ʀ]. However, the English r is an allophone of German's r.)
• w pronounced like v.
• "qu" may sound like "kv" rather then "ku" (German prounciation of qu); quick becomes kv-vick.

Greek

• Usually rolled /r/
• /sh/ (ship) often becomes /s/ (sip)
• /ch/ as in child, is often pronounced as 'ts'
• /dj/ as in jam, is often pronounced as 'dz'
• /h/ is sometimes pronounced /x/ (like the Spanish: "Juan", German: "Bach")
• 'nt' becomes 'nd' (Indernet)
• 'mp' becomes 'mb', especially if followed by a vowel

Hebrew

• Hebrew has only 5 vowels and generally does not use diphthongs (except for foreign borrowings); Hebrew speakers may therefore mispronounce some of the English vowels.
• th [ð] as in "the" is often pronounced as d (less common as z).
• th [θ] as in "think" is often pronounced as t, s or f.
• Hebrew uses a palatalized ("soft") /l'/, whereas English uses a non-palatalized ("hard") /l/
• Hebrew speakers of European descent usually use an r that is produced in the back, without rolling the tongue, best comparable to the French r.

The Indian Subcontinent

• Fast speech tempo with choppy syllables.
• Rhythmic variation of pitch.
• Questions worded like statements. Detected by native speakers because of stress on verb in case of questions.
• Use of the present continuous ("-ing") rather than present perfect: Instead of "He has a car," "He is having a car."
• Use of the rhotic 'r'.
• English alveolars are perceived by many native Indic and Dravidian language speakers as allophones of retroflex consonants, when Subcontinental dental phonemes are in fact more appropriate equivalents to the English alveolars. This leads to the "hollow" pronunciation of English by many Asian Indians.
• Shaking the head instead of nodding to indicate affirmation.
• The use of the double-positive, "Yeah, right," which in colloquial native English is a flippant way of saying "No" but to an Indian speaker of English is merely a double affirmation of correctness
• Incorrect aspiration.
• Confusing 'p' and 'f' (among North Indians).

Irish

• Words are pronounced in a rhotic fashion - that is, the 'r' sound is almost always pronounced, even where an English speaker with a Received Pronunciation accent would silence the letter, e.g. car, father. This rhoticity is common in many very large Engish populations, most particularly the USA. Thus, it is actually a valid variation within the norms of spoken English.
• The 'th' sound as in 'theme' is rendered as a dental stop, similar to the 't' in Spanish. This can lead to confusion with English 't'. Similarly 'th' as in 'there' is pronounced as 'd'.
• Some older people pronounce the 'v' sound in 'video' as 'w' in 'witch.' This is because neither letter is native to the Irish language, and 'v' was first accepted as a translation for both in loan words. The English 'w' sound (as in washing) is associated with the vocative lenition 'h' in Irish. That is, where h follows some letters like b, the sound changes: bh sounds like 'v'. Speakers subconsiously try to remove this h, causing the difference.
• Aspiration of consonants- pronunciation of 'h' as 'haitch', and 'wh' as in 'why' as 'hw' ('hwy').
• Adding of vowel between consonants- film is pronounced as 'fillum'.

Italian

• Tendency to add soft vowel sounds to English words that end in consonants, e.g. "I like-a the house-a" or "I eat-a chocolate". This happens because most Italian words end in vowels.
• Tendency to say "dee" instead of "the".
• Tendency to lengthen the short "ate" sound in words like "chocolate" (i.e. pronounced chocolut by native speakers) to the "ate" sound in "late".
• The 'r' sound is almost always pronounced, since in Italian the 'r' sound is very strong.
• Tendency to drop aspirated 'h' sounds, e.g. "appy" instead of "happy." This happens because there is no aspirated 'h' in Italian.

Japanese

• trouble with 'l', read as 'r' sound. (opposite of Cantonese accent)
• Might use /fu/ and /hu/ interchangeably as both are the same sound in Japanese. (For instance, "who" might be pronounced as "foo"; "fish" can come out as "whish".)
• Similar to Spanish in the lacking of the /v/ sound. It now has two accepted pronunciations, /b/ and /wh/ (i.e. Video becomes bideo or whideo).
• tend to insert vowels particularly at the end of words ending in a consonant, e.g. sound as soundo.
• often drop articles like "the" and "a"
• don't distinguish between singular and plural
• trouble with numbers larger than ten thousand, in the Japanese language, ten thousand is read as one myriad, 100 thousand as 10 myriad, one million as 100 myriad etc. Japanese speakers often pause before saying big numbers because of the mental conversion taking place in their head. (Of course, English speakers have the same problem when saying large numbers in Japanese.)
• often nod their head when they speak as if they are bowing repeatedly.
• si becomes shi (basic, similar, abc...)
• ti and di often become chi and ji, respectively
• tu and du often become tsu and ju, respectively
• often misrepresent schwa sounds as short a sounds
• tend to speak in Japanese syllables. This is known as "katakana English."
• Some well-educated Japanese people hypercorrect words like "sheet," saying "seat."

Korean

• Difficulty distinguishing 'r' and 'l' sounds.
• 'v' is pronounced 'b'. 'Video' becomes 'bideo'.
• In a few speakers, 'f' is pronounced 'p': 'Fish' becomes 'pish.'
• Unable to distinguish 'j' and 'z'. The names 'Jack' and 'Zack' sound exactly the same to most Koreans.
• Tendency to add schwa sounds to words ending with consonants, due to the way English words are represented in the Korean sound system.
• Short 'a' and short 'e' vowel sounds are pronounced identically.
• Short 'o' sounds are lengthened.
• Short 'i' sounds are lengthened.

Malay

• Difficulty distinguishing between 'i' and 'ee' 'shit' - native Malay speakers pronounce 'sheet' as 'shit'. 'Bit' is pronounced as 'beet'.
• 'Th' is pronounced as 'd', hence 'this' as 'dis'.

Mandarin Chinese

• Trouble with final 'm' sound, as 'm' does not occur at the end of a syllable in Mandarin pronunciation, e.g. "time" read as "tine" or "timo".
• Trouble with two 'th' sounds (θ and ð), as the dental sound does not occur in Mandarin pronunciation, e.g. "this" read as "zis".
• Voiced sounds pronounced as their unvoiced counterparts, eg: "duck" for "dog", "root" for "rude". Mandarin does not distinguish /p/ vs. /b/, /t/ vs. /d/, /k/ vs. /g/, etc. (these letters represent aspirated pairs, not voiced pairs, in pinyin)
• Confusion of 'he', 'she', and sometimes 'it', as all have the same pronunciation in Mandarin Chinese.
• Often drop articles like "the" and "a"
• Difficulty with verb tenses and plurals in general, as they have no direct equivalence in Mandarin grammar.
• trouble with numbers larger than ten thousand. In the Chinese language, ten thousand is read as one myriad, 100 thousand as 10 myriad, one million as 100 myriad etc. (See Chinese numerals) Chinese speakers often pause before saying big numbers because of the mental conversion taking place in the head. (Of course, English speakers have the same problem when saying large numbers in Mandarin.)

Philippines

• Tagalog and many other native languages do not have a number of phonemes present in English and so there is a tendency to substitute these phonemes especially if the speaker in not fluent in English: /f/ as /p/ and /v/ as /b/. In addition, the following sounds are often interchanged: /dZ/ [j] as /dj/ [diy] or [dy], /S/ [sh] as /sj/ [siy] or [sy], and /tS/ [ch] as /tj/ [tiy] or [ty].
• Tagalog also has only five vowels so the many vowel sounds in English are usually mapped to the nearest-sounding existing vowel.
• tendency to add the 'i' sound before words that start with s+consonant (e.g., sport becomes is-ports)
• often use "he" for females due to lack of gender in personal pronouns in the Filipino language.

Polish

• Trouble with 'th', pronounced as 'd', 't' or - less commonly - 'v', 'f'. (Polish lacks both [θ] and [ð].) Examples: think --> fink, the --> de.
  There also existed an "old school" of pronouncing th as 's' or 'z', like brother --> "brozzer", smith --> "smiss".
• Voiced stops ('d' , 'g', 'b' or 'v') at the end of a word or before voiceless stops may become voiceless ('t', 'k', 'p' or 'f'). Examples: Paddington --> "paddinkton".
• Trouble differentiating similar vowels like /i:/ and /I/ or /E/ and /æ/. Example: both "man" and "men" are pronounced /mEn/.
• A few commonly used false friends, most prominently "actually" with intended meaning of "at present".
• Generally all sounds are very audible: The Beatles --> /dE bitEls/

Russian

• 'R' may be pronounced as an alveolar trill, absent in English.
• 'W' may be pronounced like 'v'.
• Consonants d, t, n may be pronounced as dental, rather than alveolar
• Consonants d, t, n (both in alveolar and dental rendering) and 'r' may be palatalized before front vowels [i], [e]. Sometimes it may happen before [u], especially when in the corresponding borrowed Russian word the letter Yu is used (cf.: dune, дюна (dyuna)).
• Voiced consonants at the end of the words may be pronounced as voiceless (for example, "made" is pronounced as "mate").
• Lack of differentiation between /x/ (as in "Jose") and /h/ (as in "hot").
• General failure to differentiate between many vowels that are neighbors in the vowel space.
• "He"/"she" may be used when referring to any larger animals.
• Lack of articles.

Serbian

• often a palatalized dental /r'/ is used before vowels, which is absent in English.
• lack of differentiation between /x/ (as in "Jose") and /h/ (as in "hot")
• often pronounce 'w' as 'v'
• sound 'th' is often pronounced as 't' or even 'd'
• no diphthongs
• sometimes "he" or "she" could be used where "it" should; on the other hand, ships could end with "it"
• articles may lack
• in writing, adjectives (english music, serbian language) and multi-word proper names (Spanish empire, United states of America) may not be capitalised

Spanish

• Spanish lacks many vowels present in English, often causing the following changes:
  • [æ] becomes [E]
  • [I] becomes [i]
  • [@u] (British) or [oU] (American) becomes [o]
• unaspirated 't', 'k', and 'p'
• trouble with /Z/ and /dZ/, which don't exist in Spanish.
• pronunciation of /v/ as /b/, as the letter "v" is pronounced /b/ in many Spanish dialects.
• if a word begins with /s/ + consonant, adding an /E/ to it: Espanish. #/s/+consonant does not exist in Spanish.
• voiced 'th' is often pronounced by as 'd' (Speakers of Castilian Spanish rarely have this difficulty)
• in some places, voiceless 'th' may be pronounced as 'f'

Swahili

Stress is often placed on the penultimate syllable: newspaper is newspaper.

Swedish

• Sing-songy intonation. Swedes often speak English with a melodic intonation, ending sentences on an up-note, much parodied (The Swedish Chef from The Muppet Show is a well known example and a Usenet institution.)
• 'th' is often pronounced as 'd' or 't'
• as Swedish lacks a [z], it is often pronounced [s]
• /ch/ as in child, is often pronounced as /sh/ or "shaield"
• [dZ] as in jump is sometimes pronounced as [Z] (pleasure) or even [j] (yes)
• Frequently use the wrong person of verbs (e.g. "they is"). Swedish verbs do not inflect for person.
• Difficulty with the Rs (southern parts of Sweden), sounds more like "gh".

Thai

(presented in IPA phonemes)

• /r/ is trilled instead of retroflexed
• /l/ at the end of a word is pronounced as /n/ or /w/
• /tʃ/, /ʃ/, and /ʒ/ are indistinguishable and pronounced as /cʰ/
• /dʒ/ is pronounced as /j/ or /c/
• /g/ is pronounced as /k/ (devoiced)
• /z/ is pronounced as /s/ (devoiced)
• /v/ is pronounced as /w/ at the beginning of a word
• /v/ is pronounced as /p/ at the end of a word
• /θ/ is pronounced as /t/
• /ð/ is pronounced as /d/

Uganda

• Confusion of 'ir' or 'er' sound with 'ar' - 'birth' sounds like 'barth'

External links

• A site collecting recordings of people from different areas reading the same paragraph (most recordings also have an IPA transcription)