1-~

aG

197

THE PHONOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF

CHINESE STUDENTS OF ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE
BERTHA

HENSMAN

The members of the Committee on Second Level Goals of the American Language
Institute of -New York University express in their Report published in the current issue of
English Teaching Forum their concern that
the Oriental student seems to experience particular difficulties in learning
English under our present methods. `What this is due to - whether it is a
question of materials, sequencing, or some other factor-is not clear to
us . These questions need to be explored and the need is urgent .l
Long years of experience in teaching English as a second language to Chinese students
in a Chinese language environment makes it clear to the writer that these intractable difficulties are particularly great for the Cantonese student, far greater than for Chinese students
whose mother tongue is the national language, Kuoyu . The obstacles which the Cantonese
student has to overcome in his efforts to acquire a mastery of English, particularly in respect
of (1) phonology, (2) lexis-including differences in the semantic division and `semantic
stretch' of vocabulary items- (3) syntax-with particular reference to the different methods
employed in the two languages to denote tense, aspect and mood of verbs, and to those functional structures of English which have no grammatical equivalent in Chinese- and (4)
the distinctive cultural concepts which underlie the vocabulary and grammatical structure
of the two languages .
This article is restricted to a synopsis of factors connected with the first of these categories :
to the Cantonese student's problems 'in acquiring a mastery of the phonology of English.2

op. cit., Vol. II, No. 1 (January-February 1969), p .7 .

2 University English-Language teachers from Japan and Korea who attended the Leverhulme Conference
on English Teaching held at the University of Hong Kong in December 1966 expressed to the writer the
view that the problems of their students in mastering the speech-sounds of English were almost identical
whit those of Cantonese students .
1

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-- A

198

/j_\

A * _,_, ._

Generally speaking the characteristics of Cantonese speech which strike the ear of the
new-comer to Hong Kong are its lack of resonance, its staccato rhythm, and the limited
range of sounds used in which /a :/ and /aa :/ predominate.
Such observations provide a useful point of entry into the topic under consideration,
for Cantonese is a monosyllabic language of which any given word is composed of an initial
consonant (which may be `zero') and one of fifty-one syllabic finals. Apart from the seven
tones which operate as primary phonemes in single words, Cantonese has only five pure vowels,
twelve diphthongs and the two semi-vowels /j/ and
in contrast to twelve pure vowels,
twelve diphthongs, five triphthongs and the two semi-vowels, /j/ and / . ti/ of English . Also, in the
area of consonantal phonemes, Cantonese has twenty consonants used in an initial position,
six only used in a final position, and no consonant clusters, whereas English has twenty-five
consonant phonemes, all of which, with the except of ; / and %h/ are used in initial, medial
and final positions and abounds in consonant clusters which occur not only in isolated words
but in the junctures between words . (A /does not occur initially and j}1/ does not occur finally
in the English phonemic system). Thus, apart from any consideration of the consonant
clusters of English and of the patterns of stress and intonation as secondary phonemes, the
English language has fifty-six phonemes whereas Cantonese has only thirty-nine of which six
are stopped consonants used only in final positions and in a very limited number of combinations with vowels to form syllabic finals .
Some of the more serious phonological problems which Cantonese students have in
acquiring a mastery of spoken English may be conveniently surveyed under the following
heads .
I.

Consonantal Phonemes
1.

Initial Consonantal Phonemes

a. /b/, /d/, /g/ and /z/
The absence of initial /b/, /d/, /g/ and /z/ from the range of Cantonese consonantal phonemes, and the fact that their voiceless equivalents are very lightly aspirated,
as in French, creates difficulty for the Cantonese student in hearing and producing
a distinction between such pairs of words as `pin and bin', `tied and died', `card and
guard', `fine and vine', `sink and zinc' even apart from difficulties over unfamiliar
vowels and final consonants.

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b . /vl and /w/

The absence of the voiced consonants /v/ and /w/ from the range of Cantonese
consonants produces a complex pattern of problems because the substitutions
are not necessarily the voiceless equivalents of either. Occasionally a student
substitutes initial /f/ for initial /v/, but by far the commonest substitution for both
is the voiceless counterpart of /w/ in pronouncing such words as 'vain', `vast',
`vest', `vine' and `vow', and the substitution of /v/ for /w/ in such words as `we',
`want', and `Wednesday' .
c . / 6 /, /s/ and

If I

Because of the absence of / 0 / from the range of Cantonese speech sounds,

and because the one Cantonese sibillant is a spirant which bridges the contiguous
marginal allophones of the English consonantal phonemes /s/ and /J'/, the average
Cantonese student has considerable difficulty in differentiating between these
three consonantal phonemes of English both in speech and in aural comprehension .
The confusion between `said and Shed', `same and shame', `suit and shoot', theme
and seem', `thinking and sinking' is at times worse confounded by the substitution
of /f/ for

before /r/ so that `three gifts', for example, are rendered in speech and
in writing as `free gifts' and `throw' as either `frow' or `flow' . This complicating
substitution of /1/ for /r/ is discussed later in this article in connection with the
/1-n-r/ problem .
d. / 6 /

The commonest substitution for the initial 6 ;` of English is a very lightly

aspirated dental /t/ pronounced as in the initial consonants of the French words
`tasse' and `the'. This particular substitution persists long after other sounds have
been reasonably well mastered ; but as the mispronunciation does not seriously
impede effective communication when the words concerned are used in a situational
or grammatical context, a student's concentrated efforts are better deployed in trying

to master more significant differences between the sound systems of English and
Cantonese .
2.

Final Consonantal Phonemes of Cantonese Syllabic Finals

The six final consonantal phonemes of Cantonese already referred to are the
stopped consonants /t/, /P/, /k/, /n/,
and /9/ which occur in the following syllabic
finals :-

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200

A Table of the Syllabic Finals of Cantonese

Vowels -1- Consonants

a.

o
+ ~n
ooj
i~

b.

~k

}t

zeroo
n

zero

Diphthongs + Consonants

al
aai
au
aau

c.

o :

zero

zero

zero

zero
? n

Isolated Phonemes

The two phonemes /m/ and A/ occur as isolated `words' in Cantonese and
may be considered either as
.
zero -~m
- or
or as m or r~

zero

From these diagrams, it is evident that final /p/ is the least frequent of the
consonantal finals and that /t,l and /k/ are next i . order of infrequency as finals.
Awareness of this fact helps the teacher to understand why the Cantonese student
experiences very great difficulty in mastering final voiced consonants /b/, /d/ and /g/

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of English, and why he not only substitutes for them the stopped form of their
voiceless equivalents but occasionally substitutes /t/ or /k,/ for /b/ after /o/ . When the

Cantonese student also substitutes /o/ for /ou/ and so reproduces `cot' for `coat' and
`jokes' for `jobs', the problem of assessing aural comprehension on the basis of

written responses presents a problem is one which almost defies solution .

The final consonant /m/, next in order of infrequency in the syllabic finals of
Cantonese, constitutes a problem of a different kind and extent .

Fifteen percent

of the three hundred students whose language habits in English as a second language
were analysed as the basis of this study, freely interchanged final /mi and /n/ after
while an additional fifty per cent freely interchanged In/ and /

' after

/a/

and /e/ .

Furthermore, /'J / provided an additional difficulty when it occurred in a

medial position or in a consonant cluster and was almost invariably reduced to a
nasalization of the preceding vowel. For example, `ink' was reproduced as /ik/,
`sank' as /s,~e'k/, `ancestors' as /0sestns/.
The absence of /s/ and /z/ from among the final consonants of Cantonese, and the
absence of /z/ from the range of Cantonese consonantal phonemes creates another
big difficulty for Cantonese students of English, a language in which !s/ is retained
as one of the few remaining inflections and in which /s/ and /z/ are phonemes which
function, for instance, in minimal pairs such as `peace,'piece and peas', `does and
doze', `juice and Jews' .
A contingent problem arises with words in English which end in /st/ preceded by /i/ - a
vowel which does not occur in Cantonese . The Cantonese student usually drops the final /t,/
and/or substitutes /i :/ for /i/, with the result that `first' becomes either `feast' or `fees', and
`list' becomes `least' or `lease' .

Another such problem occurs in the pronunciation of and differentiation between words
ending with a voiced consonant followed by `s', as in the third person singular of the present
tense of English verbs, and in the plural and possessive form of some nouns of high frequency :

pairs of words such as `packs and bags', `pecks and begs', `sights and sides' . If drill materials
on such sounds include consonant clusters and the intractable problem of the confusion of
/1/, /n/ and /r/ in Cantonese (dealt with below), the mistakes in the incidentals outweigh the
value of the drill on the special point.

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20 2

3.

Interchangeable Initial Consonants

In Cantonese the initial consonants /h/ and /f/ are interchangeable, so that the words signifying `fire' and `flowers', for example, may be pronounced either ,/ho :/ and /fo :/ or /h :~w :/ and
/fa :/ respectively . In addition, /h/ and /f/ are interchangeable before a back voNvel so that,
for instance, the word signifying `lake' may be pronounced either /hu :/ or ,/fu :/ ; but the
converse transposition is not made .

This interchangeability, a sign of language drift, does not constitute a major problem
because the spelling of the English words concerned reinforces the pronunciation . The same
does not hold of the relationship between the written and spoken form of Chinese words where
the written form exists.

A point of incidental interest is that a similar transposition of sounds has taken place in
a limited number of English words, so that, for instance, the eighteenth century, 'wherry' has
become the twentieth century `ferry' .

4.

The `/1/, /n/, /r/' Problem

For Cantonese students this is a major problem in phonology which involves /1/, /n/
and /r/ in initial, medial and final positions and in consonant clusters and so merits particular and separate consideration . The roots of the problem for the Cantonese student
a.

are complex and include the following contrastive features of Cantonese and English :
a)

in Cantonese, /1/ and ;n/ are largely interchangeable as initial consonants, so

that a speaker may refer to `\an-King' as `Lan-King' or 'Hu N-an' as `Fu Lan' with
no loss of comprehensibility,

b)

Cantonese has no /r/ consonantal phoneme and no final /1/,

c)

the final /n/ of Cantonese is not a continuant,

d)

there are no consonant clusters in Cantonese,

e)

three allophones of /l/ are used in English, viz. :(1)

voiceless /1/ as pronounced in words such as please /pli :z/, clip /klip/,
flop /flop/ and splendid /splendid/`,

(ii)

the light /l/ as used initially in words such as limbs /limz/, light /lait/, lucky
/lnki/ and look /luk/ and

(iii) the dark /1/ which is use'" at the end of the words and syllables in words
such as fill ,lfil/, heel /hi :l/, call /ko :l/ and plentiful /plentiful/,

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f)

two allophones of /r/ are used in English, viz . :-

(i)

in medial position in words such as carry /kxri/, and berri-berri /beri beri/ and

(ii) in initial consonant clusters in words such as brim /brim./, press /pres/, crowd
/kraud/ and frugal /fru :gal/,
g)

the initial /1/ of Cantonese is articulated with the rounded tip of the tongue flattened behind the upper front teeth and the blade of the tongue humped up to
the alveolar ridge. The bulked-up tongue largely obstructs the passage of air
through the mouth, so that the sound produced is an amalgam of /1/ and /n/,

h)

the final /n i-somcaimes replaced by I'm," or ,/ 9 / of Contonese, is produced with

the tip of the tongue spread and pressed against the back of the upper front
teeth-in many- cases with the tip of the tongue protruding .

In the light of these factors alone, taken either singly or in combination, the possible
substitutions for the two allophones of /r/ and the three allophones of /1/ in initial, medial, final
and cluster positions are manifold and variable . The major substitutions made by the students
who provided the live materials of this study may be classified as follows :
b.

The Jr/ Allophones of English and Cantonese Substitutions for Them

(i) /r/ in an initial position

The students tested had no difficulty in pronouncing /r/ in an initial position when
followed by a front vowel but in connected speech /1/ many students substituted /l/
for /r/ in words such as `ready' and `left' . However, the substitution even more
frequent in reverse : that is, `lent' was reproduced as `rent', `leads' as `reads', laughter'
as `rafter' and `rubber' as 'rubber' . Further enquiry revealed that the students
who had the severest problem in mastering this particular differentiation had either
Hokkien or Shanghainese as their mother tongue.

(ii)

JrJ in a medial position

The dominant substitution for /r,l in a medial position and /m/ or /1/ before a
high front vowel but /1/ before middle or tower or back vowel so that `very' became
either /ve.Ai/ or /veli/ but `tarry' became `tally' and `borrow' became `bollow' in
both spoken and written contextual reproduction .

(iii) /r/ in a final position

As /r/ as a final consonant has disappeared from Southern English pronunciation,

Cantonese students do not encounter the problem of /r/ in a final position except

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where elision occurs as in phrases such as `the author and his book' . In such cases
the pronunciation problem is of the same nature as that of /r/ in an initial position .
(iv)

/r/ in consonant clusters

The dominant and persistent problem experienced by the majority of Cantonese
students in pronouncing /r/ in combination with another consonant is bound up
with the students' inability to distinguish between the sounds /1/ and /r/, and so
is included in the following analysis of substitutions for /1/ in consonant clusters .

c.

The /1/ Allophones of English and Cantonese Substitutions for Them

/1/ in an initial position
The interchangeability in Cantonese of /n/ and the light /l;! before front vowels,
of /1/ and /r/ before middle and back vowels, and of the substitution of /r/ for /1/ and
/n/ by Hokkien and Shanghainese students has already been touched upon in
the preceding evidence .

(ii)

/1/ in initial consonant clusters

An almost insurmountable problem of pronunciation for Cantonese students is
the dual one of distinguishing between /r/ and voiceless /1/ when preceded by //p/,
/k/, /f/, and between /r/ and voiced /1/ when preceded by /b/, /g/ . The student's dif
ficulty in distinguishing, in hearing and reproduction, between groups and pairs of
words such as `plead, bleed and breed', `played, prayed, blade and braved', `bloom
and broom', `climb, crime and ,grime', `crows, close, crows and glows', `class, glass
and grass', `flight and fright' demands ceaseless practice and endless persistence and
patience . The magnitude of the problem is set by the high frequency of this particular combination of consonants in English : the Shorter Oxford Dictionary

lists more than 500 common head words beginning with /pl/ and over 300 beginning with /pr/ apart from an almost equal number of those formed with the prefixes
`preter', `pro', `proto' and `pre'.

(iii)

/1/ as a final consonant and in final consonant clusters

The pronunciation of the dark /1/ in a final position presents to the Cantonese
student a problem identical with that of pronouncing /1/ in a final consonant cluster,
largely because /1/ does not occur as a final in Cantonese . Almost without exception,
the students tested substituted /u/, /u :/, /o/ or / :A/ for dark I1/ as a final, so that
`help' was pronounced /heA-,p/, `field' as /fijud/ or /fi :u .Ad/, `gulf' as /guenf/ and
`film' as /fi :um,/ or /fi :u .~&m/.

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aE

% -7205

One extension of the pronunciation problem arises when final /1/ is followed by
/z/ as exemplified in an American intonation-pattern drill which includes the
sentence :
In 1800 there were no railroads
which was pronounced by Cantonese students as
/in eity huntlat dea wa : lou neil rous/.
(iv)

/n/ as a final consonant

The final /n/ of Cantonese is a stopped consonant which lacks resonance. The
Cantonese student requires intensive drill on the voiced-continuant and tonal
qualities of the /n/ of English. When ,/n/ occurs at the end of English words,
particularly in past participles, the Cantonese student either subtitutes for it the stopped /n/ of his own language or a nasalization of the preceding vowel . Such a substitution gives an indistinct, thick quality to his spoken English but does not seriously
hinder intelligibility. Serious misunderstandings arise, however, in connection
with the pronunciation of the English numerals of the series thirteen to nineteen and
thirty to ninety. The apparent dropping of the final /n/ and the substitution of
/i :/ for /i/ causes very frequent confusion between the pairs `thirteen and thirty',
`fourteen and forty', etc .

II. Vowel Phonemes

The following four tables summarize the vowel system of English and Cantonese and
the substitutions which Hong Kong Cantonese-speaking students make in their speaking
of English pattern drills :Table I : The 27 Vowel Phonemes of Cantonese
Front Vowels
Pure Mixed

NOVEMBER

hfid-Vowels
Pure Mixed

is

ji :
iu

a
a:

e:

ei
eu

aa :

1969

ai
au
a :i
a :u
aa :1
aa :u

Back Vowels
Pure -Mixed
u
u:
o
00
o:

ii
ui
ju :
u :e
ou
of
ooi

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20 6

Talbe II : The 32 Vowel Phonemes of English

Front Vowels
Pure Mixed

Middle Vowels
Pure Mixed

Back Vowels
Pure Mixed

a
i (I)
e
ae
a:

i ju
iu
ei
ea
eia
al
aia

au(ou)
aua(oua)

u:

ua
ui

ju :
jiu
j iua
ai

a
a
a

au
au;)

(ou)
(oua)

The narrower divisions of vowel phonemes in the sound system of English make great demands
upon the Cantonese learner. Until by ear-training and articulation exercises he has
learned to hear and to reproduce the finer distinctions of the new language he will group the
vowels phonemes of English into the phonemic range of his own language. The problem for
him is further complicated by the fact that in Cantonese the three vowels /1 :/ /e/ and /a/ are
variants when followed by any one of the six unreleased consonantal endings.
Table III :
English Vowels

Vowel Substitutions
Cantonese Vowels

a-a :-aa
u
u:
ju .

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Table IV :

Diphthong Substitutions

Front Vowels
English
Cantonese

Back Vowels
English
Cantonese
ua

el)
ea)

~ e:

-o Substitutions

as

al
au
au - ou

() :
(aa :
aa :

The difficulty which Cantonese-speaking students experience in learning to speak English is

increased by two other features of the Cantonese language as spoken in Hong Kong. First the
intrusive semi-vowel %j/ before
and secondly the changes of Cantonese /, a :,/ when followed by a final consonant . These changes may be called variants in Cantonese but in English
they are changes from one phoneme to another. The vowel changes which appear to be a
marked feature of Cantonese are as follows

/, a :l

lengthened to ;'aa :l before in!

Via :'' change to ;''e :~` before final ti and ;'nl
/a :, changed to e i or /i/ before final
;; k ;',
, '
jichanged to ji :,, in an initial position .

III.

Stress and Tones as Primary and Secondary Phonemes

The tone of each monosyllabic word in Cantonese is an interval of sounds, related
to the voice-range of the speaker . This pitch, or musical quality or tone is an intrinsic
part of the meaning of the single word spoken. It is generally accepted that, in
practice, there are seven tones in Cantonese, one of which, the high level tone, is seldom
used. The following is a schematization of the seven tone-phonemes :

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20 8

The Seven Tones of Cantonese

High Level Tone

AIid Level Tone

Low Level Tone

English, by contrast, is a tonal language in which the phrase is the rhythmic unit
of utterance and in the phrases of which four major stress and intonation and their
variants and combinations are employed as secondary phonemes which modify the meaning of the unit of utterance as a whole.
Moreover, the basic ryhthm of spoken Cantonese is staccato similar to that of French,
with the strong stress of a sentence falling on the final or on the penultimate monosyllabic
unit, whereas a long unit of utterance in English is composed of related word-groups
each of a different verbal length but each requiring the same length of time for speaking,
so that the different word-groups of a longer utterance are spoken at different speeds
while the unit of utterance as a whole is controlled rhythmically by the succession of
primary and secondary stresses and by the intonation pattern which provides an additional phonemic value.
Even a cursory statement, such as this, of the major features of the contrasts between
the Stress, Intonation and Rhythmic of English and Cantonese and their primary and
secondary phonemic significances draws attention to be paid to the provision of adequate
stress, intonation, and rhythmic pattern drills for the Cantonese student of English.
N.

Resonance and Physiological Factors as a Possible Cause of the English Pronunciation Problems of some Cantonese Students'

1 The substance of this Section was first given as part of an address to the 1963 Chung Chi Conference for
Teachers of English as a Second Language, Chung Chi Conference Report, 1965, pp . 25-31 .

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The fact that the spoken English of highly competent Chinese speakers of English
lacks the resonance of the speech of a native speaker of English led me to enquire into
the possibility of underlying factors-particularly in physiological differences between
the speech apparatus of Cantonese students and that of students of Western European
origin,
Granted that no non-native speaker finds it intrinsically impossible to reproduce
the unfamiliar sounds of a foreign tongue, it is not unreasonable to suppose that physiological differences, however slight, between one racial group and another have led to the
choice each group has established for one range of phonemes rather than another. In this
sense the sounds of a given language are a deeply ingrained part of the physio-cultural
heritage of the people who speak it.
Mr. Jack Hobbs, Secretary of the Chung Chi 1962 and 1963 Conferences and
formerly Officer-in-Charge of the Special Classes Centre was also interested in this
problem and so procured from the Schools Service dentist a plaster cast of a typical
Chinese (Cantonese) mouth and one of a typical European mouth . A comparison of
the ttivo revealed that
i.

the alveolar ridge of the European mouth was well defined and rose sharply towards
the roof of the mouth while the alveolar ridge of the Cantonese mouth was almost un
defined. Instead, there was a gradual glide outwards from the roof of the mouth
to the teeth,

ii.

the roof of the mouth shown in the European cast was comparatively highly arched
whereas that of the Cantonese mouth was a shallow, flatter arch .

Thus the Cantonese mouth lacked the resonance chamber of the European mouth
and also gave considerably less space for tongue movement .
I next consulted another dentist of the Schools Service who confirmed my observation that at adolescence, whereas the lower jaw, the maxillary, of a European child
develops downwards, producing the square jaw of the adult, the maxillary of a Chinese
child at adolescence develops forward.
XIv third line of investigation arose from the observation that the average Oriental
student does not have the high nose-bridge characteristic of the typical European. To

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209

pursue this observation in relationship to the size of the nasal resonance chambers and the
air passages leading to them I consulted a surgeon friend who is currently investigating
the reasons why cancer of 'he throat has a higher incidence among Cantonese adults
than among comparable groups of other racial stock. From him I gathered that the
air passage between throat and nose in a Cantonese adult is narrower and more restricted
than that in a typical European adult.
These three factors may throw new light on the `1-n-r' problem of Cantonese speakers
of English and on the lack of resonance in Cantonese speech generally, for it follows that
the tongue of a Cantonese person has less room to move in than that of a European
has, and consequently the native Cantonese speaker has a difficult task in making the
fine distinctions between the tongue positions needed to differentiate between the
English /1/, /n/ and /r/ . His physiological heritage also makes it difficult for him to use
habitually the nasal cavity to produce resonant English speech sounds and so to acquire the
sonority which is characteristic of native spoken English.
V.

General Conclusion
The contrasts in phonology alone between Cantonese and English, apart from
significant differences in lexis, syntax, cultural patterns of thought and deficiencies in vocabulary items, especially in the area of abstract terms, pose serious questions concerning
the suitability and value of the pronunciation, substitution and transformation drill
currently obtainable from American sources for use with tape-recorders and in language
laboratories in South-East Asian countries. The currently available supply of such
materials tend to transfer the Cantonese students' native speech habits indelibly into
his pronunciation of English . A large percentage of Cantonese teachers of English in
Hong Kong have not acquired a mastery of spoken English and so are unable to produce
the recordings which tivould meet the needs of their students . A prime need is the provision of suitable recorded pronunciation drills and a body of pattern drills for verbpatterns, sentence-structures and intonation in which the main purpose of the drill
is not heavily out balanced either by the interference of phynological problem or by a
vocabulary range beyond the language-learner's powers of immediate comprehension .

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