Non-native pronunciations of English

Non-native pronunciations of English result from the common linguistic

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

phenomenon in which non-native users of any language

Foreign language

A foreign language is a language indigenous to another country. It is also a language not spoken in the native country of the person referred to, i.e. an English speaker living in Japan can say that Japanese is a foreign language to him or her...

tend to carry the 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...

, 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...

processes and pronunciation

Pronunciation

Pronunciation refers to the way a word or a language is spoken, or the manner in which someone utters a word. If one is said to have "correct pronunciation", then it refers to both within a particular dialect....

rules from their mother tongue into their English speech. They may also create innovative pronunciations for English sounds not found in the speaker's first language.

Overview

The speech of non-native 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 may exhibit pronunciation

Pronunciation

characteristics that result from such speakers imperfectly learning the pronunciation of English, either by transferring the phonological

Phonology

rules from their mother tongue into their English speech ("interference") or through implementing strategies similar to those used in primary language acquisition

Language acquisition

Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce and use words to understand and communicate. This capacity involves the picking up of diverse capacities including syntax, phonetics, and an extensive vocabulary. This language might be vocal as with...

. They may also create innovative pronunciations for English sounds not found in the speaker's first language.

The age at which speakers begin to immerse themselves into a language (such as English) is linked to the degree in which native speakers are able to detect a non-native accent; the exact nature of the link is disputed amongst scholars and may be affected by "neurological plasticity

Neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity is a non-specific neuroscience term referring to the ability of the brain and nervous system in all species to change structurally and functionally as a result of input from the environment. Plasticity occurs on a variety of levels, ranging from cellular changes involved in...

, cognitive development

Cognitive development

Cognitive development is a field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a child's development in terms of information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual skill, language learning, and other aspects of brain development and cognitive psychology compared to an adult's point of...

, motivation, psychosocial states

Social psychology

Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. By this definition, scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation. The terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include all...

, formal instruction, language learning aptitude," and the usage of their first (L1) and second (L2) languages.

English is unusual in that speakers rarely produce an audible release between consonant cluster

Consonant cluster

In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word splits....

s and often overlap constriction times. Speaking English with a timing pattern that is dramatically different may lead to speech that is difficult to understand.

More transparently, differing phonological distinctions between a speaker's first language and English create a tendency to neutralize such distinctions in English, and differences in the inventory or distribution of sounds may cause substitutions of native sounds in the place of difficult English sounds and/or simple deletion. This is more common when the distinction is subtle between English sounds or between a sound of English and of a speaker's primary language. While there is no evidence to suggest that a simple absence of a sound or sequence in one language's phonological inventory makes it difficult to learn, several theoretical models have presumed that non-native speech perceptions reflect both the abstract phonological properties and phonetic details of the native language.

Such characteristics may be transmitted to the children of bilinguals, who will then exhibit a number of the same characteristics even if they are monolingual.

Arabic

Speakers tend to speak with a rhotic accent and pronounce /r/ as a flap or trill. They also have difficulty in pronouncing /p/ and /v/. An Arabic native speaker tends to say 'beer' for 'peer' and 'fan' for 'van'.

French

Because of the phonetic differences between English and French rhotics, speakers may perceive /r/ as /w/-like and have trouble distinguishing between /r/ and /w/.
French speakers have difficulty with /h/ and systematically delete it.
French speakers may pronounce vowels as in their language, making the understanding of some words, such as "bilingual" (which would sound like "bee-leen-gwal"), difficult for a Native.
Some speakers who fail to learn English word stress may pronounce their phrases in the French manner, with the stress on the final syllable of the spoken phrase.

German

Speakers do not velarize
Velarization
Velarization is a secondary articulation of consonants by which the back of the tongue is raised toward the velum during the articulation of the consonant.In the International Phonetic Alphabet, velarization is transcribed by one of three diacritics:...

/l/ in coda positions
Syllable coda
In phonology, a syllable coda comprises the consonant sounds of a syllable that follow the nucleus, which is usually a vowel. The combination of a nucleus and a coda is called a rime. Some syllables consist only of a nucleus with no coda...

as most native speakers do.
German speakers usually give /a/ for the vowel in cup, and a lengthened version /aː/ for the long vowel in father. As most German schools teach Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation , also called the Queen's English, Oxford English or BBC English, is the accent of Standard English in England, with a relationship to regional accents similar to the relationship in other European languages between their standard varieties and their regional forms...

, words like ask, bath usually have /aː/ too (Broad A).
Short a and e are merged into /ɛ/, thus bad and bed are pronounced alike.
The vowel in words like bird, hurt is /œː/ or even a 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...

/œɐ/.
er in sister, baker is usually pronounced /ɐ/ as the same syllable would be in German.
The diphthongs in hope and take may be /oː/ and /eː/ as in Scottish English
Scottish English
Scottish English refers to the varieties of English spoken in Scotland. It may or may not be considered distinct from the Scots language. It is always considered distinct from Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic language....

.
Word-final voiced consonants are devoiced
Devoicing
In phonology, voicing and devoicing are sound changes, whereby a consonant changes its type of voicing from voiceless to voiced, or vice versa, due to the influence of a phonological element in its phonological environment...

, which merges rise/rice and had/hat etc.
The letter w is often pronounced like v; i.e. what becomes vot, since w is pronounced /v/ (or /ʋ/) in German and there is no /w/. Oddly enough, the confusion is as commonly usual the other way round ('vest' becoming 'west', 'visit' becoming 'wisit' etc.), however, it is not quite clear why. One reason may be: When learning English, most German speakers would accustom themselves to using /w/ and then use it for any English v/w sound (their sense of language does not distinguish between a sound represented by w and another one represented by v).
German speakers have traditionally used /z/ for th in this, and /s/ for th in thing. Younger speakers are more likely to pronounce correct th-sounds; otherwise they tend to substitute them for /d/ and /f/ instead, which is less stigmatized because some native speakers do the same, e.g. in Cockney English.
Less educated speakers may use /tʃ/ for j in jungle and /ʃ/ for s in vision.
Some speakers merge word-initial /s/ and /z/ into either of the two.
As the combination ng is always pronounced /ŋ/ in German, speakers often use the same were English requires /ŋg/, e.g. in longer. Contrariwise, hypercorrection may also lead to the pronunciation /ŋg/ in words like singer.
R may be pronounced like German /ʁ/ (or, less frequently, the free-variant allophone
Allophone
In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language...

s /ʀ/, /r/). Most younger speakers, however, are able to say a correct /ɹ/. German accents of English (like contemporary Standard German) are usually non-rhotic, thus no r-sound is heard in words like bird, beer.
As German has a widely phonetic spelling, speakers will have particular difficulties with the pronunciation of words like women or iron, which are irregular to them. They also tend to pronounce silent consonants like p in psychologist or b in thumb. Another spelling-related problem is the combination ch, which is usually /tʃ/ in English but can be /k/ in some words: speakers may therefore say /pɛtɹiaːtʃ/ for patriarch and the like.
In long Romance words, English usually has stress on the antepenultimate syllable; German speakers will sometimes put stress on the penultimate, giving /ɔsɔˈgɹaːfi/ for orthography.

Hebrew

The lack of discrimination in Hebrew between tense and lax vowels makes correctly pronouncing English words such as hit/heat and cook/kook difficult.
Dental fricatives–ð (as in "the") and θ (as in "think") –are often mispronounced.
Hebrew speakers may confuse /w/ and /v/.
In Hebrew, word stress is usually on the last (ultimate) or penultimate syllable of a word; speakers may carry their stress system into English, which has a much more varied stress system. Hebrew speakers may also use Hebrew intonation patterns which mark them as foreign speakers of English.

Hong Kong

Consonants in Cantonese are all voiceless except nasals and approximants, as a result, *d, *z, *dʒ are pronounced t (unaspirated), s, tʃ (unaspirated), for example.
Many people pronounce "three" as "free", "shree" or even "fee".
Most people confuse the endings -d and -t, making "bad" and "bat" homonyms. Same phenomenon also occurs for the pairs -g/-k and -b/-p.
Most people confuse the initials sh with s. That is because in Cantonese there is, in terms of vocalisation, no 'sh' sound. Though this condition does not appear on nearly all the younger, or even the middle-aged Hong Kongers.
Confusion of Tr and Ch often occurs, making "train" sounding like "chain"
Like many places in Britain and the US, Hong Kong English is non-rhotic
Rhotic and non-rhotic accents
English pronunciation can be divided into two main accent groups: a rhotic speaker pronounces a rhotic consonant in words like hard; a non-rhotic speaker does not...

, which means 'r' is not pronounced except before a vowel. However, with the influence of American programmes shown in TV, young people in Hong Kong have started to pronounce the 'r' sound as in General American
General American
General American , also known as Standard American English , is a major accent of American English. The accent is not restricted to the United States...

English.
Some people pronounce "r" as "w", except when followed by consonant other than g and k. e.g. rain -> wayne, free->fee.
'Wh' is read as 'w', as in English English and most American dialects
American English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....

(not /hw/ as in Scottish English
Scottish English
Scottish English refers to the varieties of English spoken in Scotland. It may or may not be considered distinct from the Scots language. It is always considered distinct from Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic language....

and some American dialects).
Many Chinese people cannot pronounce 'v' as native English speakers do, because the 'v' sound has no equivalent in Cantonese, Mandarin, and many other dialects; but in the case of other Chinese dialects, such as Wu and Hakka dialects, there is an equivalent of the 'v' sound, hence speakers of those dialects have little difficulty pronouncing this sound. Some people read 'v' as 'w'. (e.g. 'Vector' and 'Aston Villa'; 'Vince' is read as "Whince"; Louis Vuitton
Louis Vuitton
Louis Vuitton Malletier – commonly referred to as Louis Vuitton , or shortened to LV – is a French fashion house founded in 1854 by Louis Vuitton. The label is well known for its LV monogram, which is featured on most products, ranging from luxury trunks and leather goods to ready-to-wear, shoes,...

, unpronounceable to Chinese, is universally referred to as 'LV', pronounced "E'llo-Wee")
Other 'v' becomes 'w' or 'f' mostly with a consensus yet no obvious pattern. (e.g. 'f' in 'favour', second 'v' in 'Volvo' and either 'f' or 'w' in 'develop' depending on the speaker.)
Often 'n' is changed to 'l' which reflects current usage in the Hong Kong Cantonese; many people in Hong Kong, particularly the younger generation, mix up the initials /n/ and /l/ in English. (In Cantonese the original correct pronunciation of, for example, 女 (Jyutping
Jyutping
Jyutping is a romanization system for Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong in 1993. Its formal name is The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanization Scheme...

neoi5) meaning lady/female/woman is /noi/, but is almost always pronounced /loi/ in modern Hong Kong usage. Also, the correct pronunciation of 你 (you) is nei5, but it is almost always pronounced lei5 in Hong Kong usage.)
Nasals in English are stronger than in Cantonese.
l vocalization is common: final ('dark') l, }, is often pronounced w, as in Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

, e.g. "bell" --> /bew/, "milk" --> /miwk/. This /w/ is sometimes strengthened and becomes like /o/ (e.g., sale becomes SAY-o).
Beginning 'j' and soft 'g' commonly read as 'dz'[ts]. It is less noticeable as there is no contrast in the initial position between /ts/ and /tʃ/ in both Cantonese and English. Many people also merge the sound "dr" with j/soft g.
A speaker of Hong Kong English differentiates the pronunciations of the words affect and effect. In Standard English, both words are pronounced /ə'ˈfɛkt/, with a reduced vowel
Vowel reduction
In phonetics, vowel reduction is any of various changes in the acoustic quality of vowels, which are related to changes in stress, sonority, duration, loudness, articulation, or position in the word , and which are perceived as "weakening"...

"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...

" (/ə/). However, a speaker of Hong Kong English often emphasises the vowel, pronouncing affect as /a'ˈfɛk/ and effect as /i'ˈfɛk/ (or even /ji'ˈfɛk/).
Merging of /æ/ and /ɛ/ to /ɛ/. e.g. 'bad' and 'bed', 'mass' and 'mess'.
The letter “z” is generally pronounced [jiˈsɛt̚] (YEE-zed), a corrupted version (due to various of the above-mentioned reasons) of a very archaic pronunciation /ɪˈzæd/; the usual pronunciations, /zɛd/ (used in UK and most of the Commonwealth nations) and /ziː/ (used in USA), are not understood by some.
Multi-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...

words are often differently stressed. For example, while the word "latte
Latte
A latte is a coffee drink made with espresso and steamed milk. Variants include replacing the coffee with another drink base such as masala chai, mate or matcha...

" is pronounced ˈlɑːteɪ in most variants of the English language, it is usually pronounced [laːˈtɛ] in Hong Kong English, with the second syllable stressed instead of the first.
Omission of entire syllables in longer words. ('Difference' become DIFF-ENS, 'temperature' becomes TEM-PI-CHUR.)
Words beginning with unstressed syllables 'con' are generally pronounced its stressed form /kɔn/ with a lower pitch, e.g. 'connection', 'consent', 'condition'. Words beginning with stressed syllable 'com-' e.g. 'competition', 'common' and 'compromise' are pronounced /kɑm/.
Due to Cantonese phonology, many Hong Kongers have difficulty pronouncing double consonant endings, except when the second element is fricative. e.g. "think" as "thing", "swamp" as "swam", "send" and "sent" as "sen". "Sense" is unaffected.
Finals like /-kt/ is reduced to either -k or -t.
In Cantonese, there is no structure of diphthong+consonant. As a result, /eɪn/ becomes /ɪŋ/, /oʊn/ becomes /ʊŋ/, and /aʊn/ becomes /aːn/. Many people pronounce -ake identically to ick, also -ane identically to -ing.
For the case /aɪn/ or /aɪt/, some speakers omit the ending consonant, resulting in /aɪ/.
When speaking English, many people tend to assign one of the six tones (or nine, if entering tones are included) of the Cantonese language to English sentences, giving it a Cantonese style.
Exaggeration of certain final consonants, for example 's' (to /si/) and 'd' sounds of past-tense form of verbs (to [tət̚]).
Differences or omission in ending sounds. (as the ending consonants are always voiceless
Voiceless
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of...

and unreleased (glotallised
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...

) in Cantonese with the exception of 'm', 'n' and 'ng', similar to Basel German
Basel German
Basel German or Baseldytsch is the dialect of the city of Basel, Switzerland. Among the Swiss German dialects, it is the only Low Alemannic one.- Aspirated plosives :...

)
Producing the 'w', 'h' or 'l' sounds in words like Greenwich
Greenwich
Greenwich is a district of south London, England, located in the London Borough of Greenwich.Greenwich is best known for its maritime history and for giving its name to the Greenwich Meridian and Greenwich Mean Time...

, Bonham, Beckham, and is reflected in the transliteration of the words, for example, Beckham is transliterated 碧咸 .
Merging the contrast of voiceless
Voiceless
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of...

/ voiced
Voice (phonetics)
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...

consonants with aspirated
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 ...

/ unaspirated if any contrast exists in Cantonese. This is because English voiceless consonants are most often aspirated, whereas the voiced ones are always unaspirated. The stop /p/ becomes [pʰ] and /b/ becomes [p]; /t/ becomes [tʰ] and /d/ becomes [t]; /k/ becomes [kʰ] and /ɡ/ becomes [k] (except when preceded by s, where the English consonants are unaspirated).
Merging voiceless / voiced consonants into voiceless if there is no contrast in aspirated / unaspirated in Cantonese. Both [f] and [v] become [f]; both [z] and [s] become [s]; both [tʃ] and [dʒ] become [tʃ] ; both [ʃ] and [ʒ] become [ʃ]; the only exception might be that [θ] and [ð] are never confused, due to difficulty in pronouncing [θ] and [ð]: many pronounce [θ] as [f], [ð], as [d].
Confusion between homographs (words with the same spelling but different meanings), e.g. the noun "resume" (c.v.) and the verb "resume" (to continue).

Hungarian

The dental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/ may be replaced by [s̻] and [d̪]
Since Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....

lacks the phoneme /w/, many Hungarian speakers substitute /v/ for /w/ when speaking in English. A less frequent practice is hypercorrection
Hypercorrection
In linguistics or usage, hypercorrection is a non-standard usage that results from the over-application of a perceived rule of grammar or a usage prescription...

: substituting /w/ for /v/ in instances where the latter is actually correct.

Italian

A study on Italian children's pronunciation of English revealed the following characteristics:

Tendency to replace the English high lax vowels /ɪ/ /ʊ/ with [i] [u] (ex: "fill" and "feel", "put" "poot" are homophones), since Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

does not have these vowels.
Tendency to replace /ŋ/ with [ŋɡ] ("singer" rhymes with "finger") or as [n] (combined with the above tendency makes the words "king" and "keen" homophones) because Italian [ŋ] is an allophone of /n/ before velar stops.
Tendency to replace word-initial /sm/ with [zm], e.g. small [zmɔl]. This voicing also applies to /sl/ and /sn/.
Tendency to add /h/ to some vowel-initial words.
Tendency to replace /ʌ/ with [a] so that mother is pronounced [ˈmadər] or [ˈmaðər], since Italian does not have this vowel.
Italian does not have dental fricatives:
- Voiceless /θ/ may be replaced with a dental [t̪] or with [f].
- Voiced /ð/ may become a dental [d̪].
Since /t/ and /d/ are typically pronounced as dental stops anyway, words like there and dare can become homophones. is replaced with [ɛ], so that bag sounds like beg [bɛɡ].
Tendency to pronounce /p t k/ as unaspirated stops.
Schwa [ə] does not exist in Italian; speakers tend to give the written vowel its full pronunciation, e.g. lemon [ˈlɛmɒn], television [tɛleˈviʒɒn], parrot [ˈpærot], intelligent [inˈtɛlidʒɛnt], water [ˈwɔtɛr], sugar [ˈʃuɡar].
Italian speakers may pronounce consonant-final English words with a strong vocalic offset, especially in isolated words, e.g. dog [dɒɡᵊ]. This has led to the stereotype of Italians adding [ə] to the ends of English words.
Tendency to pronounce /r/ as a trill
Trill consonant
In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr> as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular....

[r] rather than the English approximant
Approximant consonant
Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...

/ɹ/, e.g. parrot [ˈpærot].

In addition, Italians learning English have a tendency to pronounce words as they are spelled, so that walk is [wɒlk], guide is [ɡwid], and boiled is [ˈbɔɪlɛd]. This is also true for loanwords borrowed from English as water, which is pronounced [vatɛr] instead of [ˈwɔːtə]. Related to this is the fact that many Italians produce /r/ wherever it is spelled (e.g. star [star]), resulting in a rhotic accent, even when the dialect of English they are learning is nonrhotic. Consonants written double may be pronounced as geminates

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....

, e.g. Italians pronounce apple with a longer [p] sound than English speakers do.

Japanese

Speakers tend to confuse /l/ and /r/ both in perception and production, since the Japanese language
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

does not make such a distinction. The closest Japanese phoneme to either of these is /ɺ/, though speakers may hear English /r/ as similar to the Japanese /w/.
There is a tendency to end words which do not end in a vowel or 'n' with a vowel sound, as no such words exist in Japanese. The vowel is usually very slight.
Japanese usually pronounce B and V in the same manner.

Russian

There is no /w/ in Russian
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...

; speakers typically substitute [v].
Native Russian speakers tend to produce an audible release for final consonants and in consonant clusters and are likely to transfer this to English speech, creating inappropriate releases of final bursts that sound overly careful and stilted and even causing native listeners to perceive extra unstressed syllables.
There is no hard American English /r/ in Russian. Native Russian speakers usually roll their /r/.
There is no "th" sound in Russian. Native Russian speakers often substitute a /ф/ (f) or /с/ (s) sound. The combination of "r" and "th" sounds make words such as "thirty" especially challenging for Russian speakers learning American English.
The Cyrillic alphabet
Cyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...

's equivalent to the /h/ sound is /х/. The latter has a heavier sound, with a lowered soft palate
Soft palate
The soft palate is the soft tissue constituting the back of the roof of the mouth. The soft palate is distinguished from the hard palate at the front of the mouth in that it does not contain bone....

. Many Russian speakers do not correct the different sounds.

Spanish

Since 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...

does not make voicing contrasts between its fricatives (and its one affricate), speakers may neutralize contrasts between /s/ and /z/; likewise, fricatives may assimilate the voicing of a following consonant.
Speakers tend to merge /tʃ/ with /ʃ/, and /dʒ/ and /ʒ/ with /j/. and /w/ often have a fluctuating degree of closure.
For the most part (especially in colloquial speech), Spanish allows only five (or six) word-final consonants: /s/, /n/, /r/, /l/ and /d/ (plus /θ/ in Castilian Spanish
Castilian Spanish
Castilian Spanish is a term related to the Spanish language, but its exact meaning can vary even in that language. In English Castilian Spanish usually refers to the variety of European Spanish spoken in north and central Spain or as the language standard for radio and TV speakers...

); speakers may omit word-final consonants other than these, or alter them (for example, by turning /m/ to /n/).
In Spanish, /s/ must immediately precede or follow a vowel; often a word beginning with [s] + consonant will obtain an epenthetic vowel (typically [e]) to make stomp pronounced [esˈtɑmp] rather than [stɑmp].
In Spanish, a voiceless dental fricative
Voiceless dental fricative
The voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English speakers as the 'th' in thing. Though rather rare as a phoneme in the world's inventory of languages, it is encountered in some of the most widespread and influential...

/θ/ phoneme exists only in certain Peninsular dialects
Ceceo
In Spanish dialectology, the terms distinción, seseo and ceceo are used to describe the opposition between dialects that distinguish the phonemes and , and those that exhibit merger of the two sounds into either or .Dialects that distinguish the two sounds, and thus pronounce the words casa...

; where this sound appears in English, speakers of other Spanish dialects substitute /t/, /s/ or /f/ for it.
Speakers tend to merge /ð/ and /d/, pronouncing both as voiced dental plosive
Voiced dental plosive
The voiced dental plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is...

unless they occur in intervocalic position, in which case they are pronounced [ð]. A similar process occurs with /v/ and /b/.
The three nasal phonemes of Spanish neutralize in coda-position; speakers may invariably pronounce nasal consonants as homorganic to a following consonant; if word-final (as in welcome) common realizations include [n], deletion with nasalization of the preceding vowel, or [ŋ].
Tendency to replace the English near-high near-front unrounded vowel /ɪ/, and the near-high near-back vowel /ʊ/, with [i] and [u] respectively ("ship" and "sheep", and "full" and "fool" are homophones).

Vietnamese

Note: There are two main dialects in Vietnamese

Vietnamese language

Vietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...

, a northern one centered around Hanoi

Hanoi

Hanoi , is the capital of Vietnam and the country's second largest city. Its population in 2009 was estimated at 2.6 million for urban districts, 6.5 million for the metropolitan jurisdiction. From 1010 until 1802, it was the most important political centre of Vietnam...

and a southern one centered around Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City , formerly named Saigon is the largest city in Vietnam...

Speakers may not produce final consonants since there are fewer final consonants in Vietnamese and those that do exist differ in their phonetic quality:
- Final /b/ is likely to be confused with /p/
- Final /d/ is likely to be confused with /t/
- Final /f/ is likely to be confused with /p/
- Final /v/ is likely to be confused with /b/ or /p/
- Final /s/ is likely to be confused with /ʃ/ or simply omitted
- Final /ʃ/ is likely to be omitted
- Final /z/ is likely to be confused with /ʃ/ or /s/
- Final /tʃ/ is likely to be confused with /ʃ/
- Final /l/ is likely to be confused with /n/
- Final /t/ is likely to be confused with /k/ (by southern Vietnamese)
Speakers also have difficulty with English consonant clusters, with segments being omitted or epenthetic
Epenthesis
In phonology, epenthesis is the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially to the interior of a word. Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence, for the addition of a consonant, and anaptyxis for the addition of a vowel....

vowels being inserted.
Speakers may not aspirate initial /t/ and /k/, making native listeners perceive them as /d/ and /ɡ/ respectively.
Speakers often have difficulty with the following phonemes, which may depend in some cases upon where in Vietnam they are originally from:
- /θ/, which is confused with /t/ or /s/
- /ð/, which is confused with /d/ or /z/
- /p/, which is confused with /b/
- /ɡ/, which is confused with /k/
- /dʒ/, which is confused with /z/
- /ʒ/, which is confused with /z/ or /dʒ/
- /s/, which is confused with /ʃ/ (by northern Vietnamese)
- /tɹ/, which is confused with /dʒ/, /tʃ/ or /t/ (by northern Vietnamese)
- /v/, which is confused with /j/ (by southern Vietnamese)
- /ɪ/, which is confused with /i/
- /ʊ/, which is confused with /u/ or /ʌ/
- /ɛ/, which is confused with /æ/
- /æ/, which is confused with /ɛ/ or /ɑ/
Vietnamese is a tonal language and speakers may try to use the Vietnamese tonal system or use a monotone with English words. They may also associate tones onto the intonational pattern of a sentence and becoming confused with such inflectional changes.

External links

A site collecting recordings of people from different areas reading the same paragraph (most recordings also have an IPA transcription)
International Dialects of English Archive
Articles, Determiners, and Quantifiers

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