The following is a list of common non-native pronunciations English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

-speakers make when trying to speak foreign languages. Much of it is due to transfer of phonological

Phonology

Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...

 rules from English to the new language as well as differences in grammar

Grammar

In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...

 and syntax

Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....

 that they encounter.

This article uses International Phonetic Alphabet

International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...

 pronunciation. See Help:IPA pronunciation key and IPA chart for English

IPA chart for English

This concise chart shows the most common applications of the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent English language pronunciations.See Pronunciation respelling for English for phonetic transcriptions used in different dictionaries....

 for an introduction.

Arabic

• Speakers may omit the glottal stop
  Glottal stop
  The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
  
   /ʔ/.
• English has no pharyngeal consonant
  Pharyngeal consonant
  A pharyngeal consonant is a type of consonant which is articulated with the root of the tongue against the pharynx.-Pharyngeal consonants in the IPA:Pharyngeal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet :...
  
  s and speakers are likely to have difficulty with the both the voiced and voiceless pharyngeal fricatives.
  • The voiceless pharyngeal fricative
    Voiceless pharyngeal fricative
    The voiceless pharyngeal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is h-bar .-Features:Features of the voiceless pharyngeal fricative:...
    
     (/ħ/) may be pronounced as the voiceless glottal fricative
    Voiceless glottal fricative
    The voiceless glottal transition, commonly called a "fricative", is a type of sound used in some spoken languages which patterns like a fricative or approximant consonant phonologically, but often lacks the usual phonetic characteristics of a consonant...
    
     ([h])
  • The voiced pharyngeal fricative
    Voiced pharyngeal fricative
    The voiced pharyngeal approximant or fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents it is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ?\....
    
     /ʕ/ has no clear equivalent in English and speakers may simply omit it, or may pronounce it as a glottal stop if they have learned how to produce it.
• English has no voiced velar fricative
  Voiced velar fricative
  The voiced velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in various spoken languages. It is not found in English today, but did exist in Old English...
  
   /ɣ/ and speakers may replace it with [ɡ].
• Arabic distinguishes certain emphatic
  Emphatic consonant
  Emphatic consonant is a term widely used in Semitic linguistics to describe one of a series of obstruent consonants which originally contrasted with series of both voiced and voiceless obstruents. In specific Semitic languages, the members of this series may be realized as pharyngealized,...
  
   (pharyngealized) consonants (mostly alveolar) with non-emphatic ones; English makes no such distinction and speakers are likely to pronounce them as their English equivalents.
• Speakers have difficulty with gemination
  Gemination
  In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. Gemination is distinct from stress and may appear independently of it....
  
   of consonants, which is contrastive in Arabic (i.e. /darrasa/ 'taught' vs. /darasa/ 'studied') but not in English.

German

There are several German vowels that create problems for English speakers:

• One of the most difficult is German /eː/ as it is further forward in the mouth than in varieties of Standard English so that speakers may pronounce German Geht as if it were English gate.
• Similarly, /a/ is very similar to the accent of northern and central England. Hall (2003) suggests that the vowel in English hut is closest.

Japanese

• Speakers may have trouble distinguishing between long and short vowels
  Vowel length
  In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
  
  . They may also pronounce short vowels closer to English lax vowels:
  • Short /i/ may become [ɪ]
  • Short /ɯ/ may become [ʊ]
  • Short /e/ may become [ɛ]
  • Short /o/ may become [ɔ]
  • Short /a/ may become [æ]
• Speakers may pronounce long /ɯː/ with full lip rounding (i.e. [uː]).
• May use stress accent, as is normal in English, rather than the standard Japanese pitch accent
  Pitch accent
  Pitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or mora within a word. The placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to otherwise similar words...
  
  , and may replace /a/ with a schwa
  Schwa
  In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...
  
   when making syllables unstressed.
• Standard Japanese postalveolars (the sounds spelled with sh, ch and j) are alveolo-palatal
  Alveolo-palatal consonant
  In phonetics, alveolo-palatal consonants are palatalized postalveolar sounds, usually fricatives and affricates, articulated with the blade of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, and the body of the tongue raised toward the palate...
  
   and English speakers may pronounce them as [ʃ], [tʃ] and [dʒ] instead of [ɕ], [tɕ] and [dʑ] respectively.
• May have difficulty producing geminated consonants
  Gemination
  In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. Gemination is distinct from stress and may appear independently of it....
  
  .
• Speakers may fail to pronounce an utterance-final [ɴ] as uvular and, instead, may pronounce it as a velar nasal
  Velar nasal
  The velar nasal is the sound of ng in English sing. It is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is N....
  
  .

Mandarin Chinese

• English speakers have difficulty with the 4 lexical tones
  Tone (linguistics)
  Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...
  
   of Mandarin Chinese.
• Chinese initials also cause a problem.
  • The aspiration
    Aspiration (phonetics)
    In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...
    
     is stronger in Chinese and the English voiced consonants have voiceless Chinese counterparts: /d/, /b/, /g/ are missing in Chinese and are pronounced as unaspirated /t/, /p/, /k/, English speakers often pronounce them as /d/, /b/, /g/.
  • Distinguishing between /tʂ/ (zh) and /tɕ/ (j), or /tʂʰ/ (ch) and /tɕʰ/ (q) is often difficult for English speakers.
• Final /y/ (ü) is often mispronounced [u].
• Final [ɨ] (in zhi, zi, chi, ci, shi, si, ri) is often substituted with [i] by English speakers.

Portuguese

IPA note: Portuguese diphthong

Diphthong

A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...

s contain one of two glides (semivowels). Final and are represented as /j/, and final and are represented as /w/. The IPA /x/, which is sometimes associated with Portuguese <r>, is similar to English , but more dorsal

Dorsal consonant

Dorsal consonants are articulated with the mid body of the tongue . They contrast with coronal consonants articulated with the flexible front of the tongue, and radical consonants articulated with the root of the tongue.-Function:...

 (like ).

• Although Portuguese
  Portuguese language
  Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
  
   and Spanish
  Spanish language
  Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
  
   have a similar written language, the oral language is substantially different. Phonetically, Portuguese is closer to Catalan
  Catalan language
  Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
  
   and French
  French language
  French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
  
  . Thus, it has a much larger phonemic inventory than Spanish, while, on the other hand, the written language does not automatically indicate all of these pronunciation changes. Speakers may not know the rules, or overlook them, resulting in many mispronounced words.
• Many Brazil
  Brazil
  Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
  
  ians have great difficulty understanding those from Portugal
  Portugal
  Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
  
   due to phonemic changes. An Anglophone speaker who learns some European Portuguese (i.e. still has a strong English accent) will hardly be understood in Brazil.
• Speakers may have difficulty with nasal vowel
  Nasal vowel
  A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. By contrast, oral vowels are ordinary vowels without this nasalisation...
  
  s, especially in the nasal
  Nasal vowel
  A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. By contrast, oral vowels are ordinary vowels without this nasalisation...
  
   diphthongs /ɐ̃w/ (as in João, pão etc.) and /ɐ̃j/ (as in Magalhães, mãe etc.). They also may not fully understand the complex rules as to where nasal vowels exist in words. For example, um /ũ/ (a/an/one masculine) is a nasal vowel, but neither vowel in uma /uma/ (a/an/one feminine) is nasalized. The nasalization of is left completely unmarked on muito /ˈmũj.tu/ (all variations), mui /mũj/ (archaic muito), and ruim /xũj/ (Brazil only), causing more confusion. Following a nasal vowel, and are not fully pronounced, though beginning Anglophone speakers will often over-enunciate these two nasal consonant
  Nasal consonant
  A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
  
  s.
• Although rare, speakers may forget that orthographic is always silent in Portuguese (as in French and Spanish). Example: humano /uˈman.u/ (human). However, it is part of three digraph
  Digraph
  Digraph may refer to:* Digraph , a pair of characters used together to represent a single sound, such as "sh" in English* Typographical ligature, the joining of two letters as a single glyph, such as "æ"...
  
  s: /ʃ/ (see below), /ʎ/, and /ɲ/.
• As with French, Portuguese represents the equivalent of English . English (and Spanish) speakers may commit a spelling pronunciation error and say /tʃ/ instead of /ʃ/. The letter (but not ) is also commonly (but not always) pronounced as /ʃ/. Examples: chuva /ˈʃu.va/ (rain), baixo /ˈbaj.ʃu/ (low, short). On the other hand, the in and (but not or initial ) does sound as English in many Brazilian dialects. Examples (Brazil only): teste /ˈtɛʃ.tʃi/ (test), artigo /axˈtʃi.gu/ (article), tipo /ˈtʃi.pu/ (type).
• Speakers may not realize the acute accent
  Acute accent
  The acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
  
   changes not only which syllable is stressed, but also the pronunciation of the vowels <á>, <é>, and <ó>. Thus, nós (we) is /nɔs/, but nos (us) is /nus/. (See below for diphthongs)
• Speakers may have trouble distinguishing between two or three similar pairs of Portuguese diphthongs:

} vs. /ɔj/   Example: coisa" /ˈkoj.za/ (thing) and herói /eˈrɔj/ (hero)
} vs. /ɛw/   Example: museu /muˈzew/ (museum) and chapéu /ʃaˈpɛw/ (hat)

• • /ej/ vs. /ɛj/   (Brazil only)   Example: queijo /ˈkej.ʒu/ (cheese) and idéia /iˈdɛj.a/ (idea)
• Speakers may have difficulty with stressed vowel alternations such as novo /ˈno.vu/ (new, masc. singular) versus novos /ˈnɔ.vuʃ/ (new, masc. plural) and nova /ˈnɔ.va/ (new, fem. singular). Open and closed vowel alternations can also be a problem, such as avó /aˈvɔ/ (grandmother-open) and avô /aˈvo/ (grandfather-closed). The circumflex
  Circumflex
  The circumflex is a diacritic used in the written forms of many languages, and is also commonly used in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus —a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη...
  
   (ˆ) in Portuguese indicates both a closed and stressed vowel which is subject to possible nasalization
  Nasalization
  In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth...
  
  .
• Similar to French where the preposition "à" combined with the definite article "le" forms the contraction "au," Portuguese combines "a" with the definite article "o" to form a contraction. However, this Portuguese contraction is spelled "ao" instead of "au." Speakers may not realize "ao" is pronounced the same as the diphthong "au" /aw/ in Brazil, or distinctly /ɐu/ in Portugal, and break it into two syllable
  Syllable
  A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
  
  s instead.
• As "ai" is a diphthong /aj/ in Portuguese, speakers may mispronounce words such as saída /saˈi.da/ (exit) with two syllables }** instead of three. (The accent breaks the diphthong.) This can even extend to Portuguese-origin words in English, where typesetting
  Typesetting
  Typesetting is the composition of text by means of types.Typesetting requires the prior process of designing a font and storing it in some manner...
  
   limitations may preclude accent marks. Example: açaí /a.saˈi/ (South America
  South America
  South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
  
  n fruit
  Fruit
  In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...
  
  ), not }**.
• Speakers may have difficulty with Portuguese and its diagraph
  Digraph (orthography)
  A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
  
   . The various sounds can differ between English, Spanish, European Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, and even among different dialects within Portugal and Brazil. Examples (using standard dictionary IPA, as noted, these can vary): raro /ˈxa.ru/ (rare), ferro /ˈfɛ.ʁu/ in Portugal or /ˈfɛ.xu/ in Brazil (iron), nadar /naˈdax/ (to swim--infinitive
  Infinitive
  In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives...
  
  ). If the word following an infinitive begins with a vowel sound, the terminal /x/ changes to /r/. See also Guttural R in Portuguese.
• Without an accent mark, Portuguese words ending in letter are stressed on the last syllable. However, in English, many cognate
  Cognate
  In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...
  
  s (via French and Latin
  Latin
  Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
  
  ) are stressed on the first or middle syllable--even if spelled identically. Examples: Portuguese normal /noxˈmaw/ vs. English normal /ˈnɔr.məl/, and Portuguese hospital /oʃ.piˈtaw/ vs. English hospital /ˈhɔs.pi.təl/.
• Since many Anglophone speakers learning Portuguese have previously studied Spanish (but are not fluent), subtle, yet obligatory differences in pronunciation may be overlooked. Examples: Spanish dos /dos/ (two) instead of dois /dojʃ/, Spanish no /no/ (no) instead of não /nɐ̃w/ , and Spanish año /ˈaɲo/ (year) instead of ano /ˈanu/. In addition, both the Spanish diphthong and the final stressed vowel <ó> have affinity to the Portuguese monophthong
  Monophthong
  A monophthong is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation....
  
    . However, only Spanish <ó> is pronounced similarly. Thus, they may mispronounce Portuguese words such as sou /so/ (I am), as the Spanish equivalent soy /soi/.
• As with Italian, but notably absent in Spanish, the final syllable in words ending with the vowels or is stressed (assuming no accent mark elsewhere). Speakers with a stronger background in Spanish may stress the wrong syllable. Furthermore, in Brazilian Portuguese
  Brazilian Portuguese
  Brazilian Portuguese is a group of Portuguese dialects written and spoken by most of the 190 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a few million Brazilian emigrants, mainly in the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Canada, Japan and Paraguay....
  
  , words ending with the vowel or , take the sound of or respectively, but without affecting the stress. Examples: comi /koˈmi/ (I ate), comeu /koˈmew/ (he/she ate), breve /ˈbɾɛ.vi/ ("brief" in Brazil) or /ˈbɾɛ.v(ɨ)/ ("brief" in Portugal), o bolo /u ˈbo.lu/ (the cake).
• Though technically not incorrect, in most popular dialects (including Brazil) the -am ending on third person plural -ar verbs is pronounced as "ão" /ɐ̃w/, rather than the expected "ã" /ã/. This extends the ending of são /sɐ̃w/ and estão /ˈiʃ.tɐ̃w/ (English: "they are," from the irregular verbs ser and estar "to be") and vão /vɐ̃w/ (English: "they go" from the irregular verb ir) to virtually all third person plural -ar verbs. Examples: cantam /ˈkã.tɐ̃w/, usam /ˈu.zɐ̃w/, jogam /ˈʒo.gɐ̃w/, etc.
• In a similar manner as above, the -em ending on third person plural -er and -ir verbs is pronounced as "ãe" /ɐ̃j/ in European Portuguese, and as an "imaginary" <ẽi> /ẽj/ in Brazil, rather than the expected /ẽ/. Example: vivem /ˈvi.vɐ̃j/ (Portugal) or /ˈvi.vẽj/ (Brazil).
• As with English, Portuguese uses rising intonation
  Intonation (linguistics)
  In linguistics, intonation is variation of pitch while speaking which is not used to distinguish words. It contrasts with tone, in which pitch variation does distinguish words. Intonation, rhythm, and stress are the three main elements of linguistic prosody...
  
   to indicate a question. However, the initial inverted question mark (as in Spanish) "¿" is not used, nor (in most cases, especially Brazil) is the subject and verb reversed (e.g. Is he coming? vs. He's coming?). Furthermore, no Romance language uses the equivalent of the English auxiliary verb
  Auxiliary verb
  In linguistics, an auxiliary verb is a verb that gives further semantic or syntactic information about a main or full verb. In English, the extra meaning provided by an auxiliary verb alters the basic meaning of the main verb to make it have one or more of the following functions: passive voice,...
  
   to do (e.g. "Did she leave?" vs. "She left?"). Therefore, in Portuguese, a question without an interrogative
  Interrogative word
  In linguistics, an interrogative word is a function word used for the item interrupted in an information statement. Interrogative words are sometimes called wh-words because most of English interrogative words start with wh-...
  
   is usually formed the same way as a statement. Anglophone speakers reading aloud from unfamiliar Portuguese text might not know to scan ahead looking for question marks before it is too late to use rising intonation.

Russian

• Speakers are likely to have difficulty with Russian's
  Russian language
  Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
  
   extensive palatalization
  Palatalization
  In linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
  
   system. Instead of palatalized sounds they may produce a C+[j]:
  • Speakers of English dialects that have undergone yod-dropping may have more difficulty with /tʲ/, /dʲ/, /sʲ/, /zʲ/, and /nʲ/ (coronal consonants) than other speakers.
  • Most speakers have little difficulty with /fʲ/ and /vʲ/.
• Some speakers have difficulty with the trilled [r] in Russian, especially the palatalized [rʲ] since neither are sounds of English.
  • Non-rhotic speakers, even after learning the rolled-r, are prone to omit /r/ in such Russian words as удар [uˈdar] ('blow') and горка [ˈɡorkə] ('hillock').
• Depending on the speaker's dialect, they may have difficulty with "dark l" (that is, velarized /l/, which in Russian contrasts with a palatalized /lʲ/) in positions other than in the syllable coda.
• Speakers may have trouble with consonant clusters that do not exist in English such as тьма [tʲma] ('darkness'), ждать [ʐdatʲ] ('to wait'), ткнул [tknul] ('prodded'), всегда [fsʲɪɡˈda] ('always'), мной [mnoj] ('me', instrumental), and взморье [ˈvzmorʲjə] ('sea-shore'). Most likely, they will insert an epenthetic schwa.
• Difficulty with Russian vowels:
  • Most English speakers have no [ɨ] (although it is an allophone in some dialects) and speakers generally have difficulty producing the sound. They may instead produce [ɪ].
  • Speakers may replace /e/ with the diphthong in day. e.g. [ˈdeɪlə] instead of /ˈdʲelə/ дело ('affair').
  • Speakers are likely to diphthongize /u/, making сижу /sʲɪˈʐu/ ('I sit') sound more like [sɪˈʒʊu]. Some speakers may also universally front it to [ʉ].
  • Speakers may also diphthongize /i/ in a similar fashion, especially in open syllables.
  • Speakers may have difficulty with Russian /o/, pronouncing it as either [ɔ] or the diphthong in boat.
  • It is likely that speakers will make the second element of Russian diphthongs insufficiently close, making them resemble English diphthongs (e.g., [druzʲeɪ] instead of [druzʲej]) or pronounce it too long.
  • Speakers may pronounce /a/ as [æ] in closed syllables так ('so') and [ɑ] in open syllables два ('two').
• Speakers may also have difficulty with the Russian vowel reduction system as well as other allophonic vowels.
  • Tendency to reverse the distribution of [ɐ] and [ə]. English speakers tend to pronounce [ə] in the pretonic position, right where [ɐ] is required in Russian, while they pronounce [ɐ] in pre-pretonic positions, where [ə] occurs. Thus, speakers may say голова ('head') as [ɡɐləˈva] instead of [ɡəlɐˈva] and сторона ('side') as [stɐrəˈna] instead of [stərɐˈna].
• There are no cues to indicate correct stress in Russian. Speakers must memorize where primary and secondary stress resides in each word and are likely to make mistakes.
• Speakers tend to forget to geminate double consonants.

Spanish

• Some speakers may fail to distinguish between the trilled /r/ and the tapped /ɾ/, making word pairs like ahorra ('save') and ahora ('now') homophones.
• Non-rhotic speakers often omit /ɾ/ in words like carne ('meat') and tercer ('third').
• Speakers may not pronounce voiced stops (/b/ /d/ /ɡ/) as fully voiced. They may also fail to pronounce them as approximants or fricatives between vowels and word-finally (in such positions, /b/ is realized as [β], /d/ as [ð], and /ɡ/ as [ɣ].
• Speakers may pronounce orthographic B as [b] and orthographic V as [v]; or, in an attempt to imitate native speakers, pronounce both as /b/ initially and /v/ between vowels. In most dialects of Spanish, these two letters represent a single /b/ phoneme with an allophone [β]; /v/ does not exist in Spanish.
• English speakers frequently split diphthongs into two distinct vowels, pronouncing words like tienes ('you have') as [tʰiːˈɛnɛs] instead of [ˈt̪jenes] and jueves ('Thursday') as [huːˈɛvɛs] instead of [xweβes].

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