The Scotish English The speech of the middle classes in Scotland tends to conform to the grammatical norms of the

written standard, particularly in situations that are regarded as formal.Highland English is slightly different from the variety spoken in the Lowlands in that it is more phonologically, grammatically, and lexically influenced by a Gaelicsubstratum. While pronunciation features vary among speakers (depending on region and social status), there are a number of phonological aspects characteristic of Scottish English: Scottish English is a rhotic accent, meaning /r/ is pronounced in the syllable coda. As with Received Pronunciation, /r/ may be an alveolar approximant [], although it is also common that a speaker will use an alveolar tap []. Less common is use of the alveolar trill [r](hereafter, <r> will be used to denote any rhotic consonant). While other dialects have merged //, //, // before /r/, Scottish English makes a distinction between the vowels in herd, bird, and curd. Many varieties contrast /o/ and // before /r/ so that hoarse and horse are pronounced differently. /or/ and /ur/ are contrasted so that shore and sure are pronounced differently, as are pour and poor. /r/ before /l/ is strong. An epenthetic vowel may occur between /r/ and /l/ so that girl and world are two-syllable words for some speakers. The same may occur between /r/ and /m/, between /r/ and /n/, and between /l/ and /m/. There is a distinction between /w/ and /hw/ in word pairs such as witch and which. The phoneme /x/ is common in names and in SSE's many Gaelic and Scots borrowings, so much so that it is often taught to incomers, particularly for "ch" in loch. Some Scottish speakers use it in words of Greek origin as well, such as technical, patriarch, etc. The pronunciation of these words in the original Greek would support this. (Wells 1982, 408). /l/ is usually velarized (see dark l) except in borrowings like "glen" (from Scottish Gaelic "gleann") which had unvelarized l in their original form. In areas where Scottish Gaelic was spoken until relatively recently (such as Dumfries and Galloway) and in areas where it is still spoken (such as the West Highlands), velarization of /l/ may be absent in many words in which it is present in other areas, but remains in borrowings that had velarized /l/ in Gaelic, such as "loch" (Gaelic "loch") and "clan" (Gaelic "clann"). Vowel length is generally regarded as non-phonemic, although a distinctive part of Scottish English is the Scots vowel length rule(Scobbie et al. 1999). Certain vowels (such as /i/, /u/, and //) are generally long but are shortened before nasals and voiced plosives. However, this does not occur across morpheme boundaries so that crude contrasts with crewed, need with kneed and side with sighed. Scottish English has no //, instead transferring Scots /u/. Phonetically, this vowel may be pronounced [] or even []. Thus pull and poolare homophones. Cot and caught are not differentiated in most Central Scottish varieties, as they are in some other varieties. In most varieties, there is no //-// distinction; therefore, bath, trap, and palm have the same vowel. American English Most North American speech is rhotic, as English was in most places in the 17th century. Rhoticity was further supported by Hiberno-English, West Country English and Scottish Englishas well as the fact most regions of England at this time also had rhotic accents. In most varieties of North American English, the sound corresponding to the letter r is an alveolar approximant [] or retroflex [] rather than a trill or a tap. The loss of syllable-final r in North America is confined mostly to the accents of eastern New England, New York City and surrounding areas and the coastal portions of the South, and African American Vernacular English. In rural tidewater Virginia and eastern New England, 'r' is non-rhotic in accented (such as "bird", "work", "first", "birthday") as well as unaccented syllables, although this is declining among the younger generation of speakers. Dropping of syllable-final r sometimes happens in natively rhotic dialects if r is located in unaccented syllables or words and the next syllable or word begins in a consonant. In England, the lost r was often changed into [] (schwa), giving rise to a new class of falling diphthongs. Furthermore, the er sound of fur or butter, is realized in AmE as a monophthongal r-colored vowel (stressed [] or unstressed [] as represented in the IPA). This does not happen in the non-rhotic varieties of North American speech. Some other English changes in which most North American dialects do not participate:

The shift of // to // (the so-called "broad A") before /f/, /s/, //, //, /z/, /v/ alone or preceded by a homorganic nasal. This is the difference between the British Received Pronunciation and American pronunciation of bath and dance. In the United States, only eastern New England speakers took up this modification, although even there it is becoming increasingly rare.

The realization of intervocalic /t/ as a glottal stop [] (as in [bl] for bottle). This change is not universal for British English and is not considered a feature of Received Pronunciation. This is not a property of most North American dialects. Newfoundland English is a notable exception.

On the other hand, North American English has undergone some sound changes not found in other varieties of English speech: The merger of // and //, making father and bother rhyme. This change is nearly universal in North American English. Exceptions are accents in northeastern New England, such as the Boston accent, and in New York City). The merger of // and //. This is the so-called cotcaught merger, where cot and caught are homophones. This change has occurred in eastern New England, in Pittsburgh and surrounding areas, and from the Great Plains westward. who do not merge caught and cot: The replacement of the cot vowel with the caught vowel before voiceless fricatives (as incloth, off [which is found in some old-fashioned varieties of RP]), as well as before // (as in strong, long), usually in gone, often in on, and irregularly before // (log, hog, dog, fog [which is not found in British English at all]). The replacement of the lot vowel with the strut vowel in most utterances of the words was, of, from, what and in many utterances of the words everybody, nobody, somebody, anybody; the word because has either // or //; want has normally // or //, sometimes //. Vowel merger before intervocalic //. Which vowels are affected varies between dialects, but the Mary-marry-merry, nearermirror, andhurryfurry mergers are all widespread. Another such change is the laxing of /e/, /i/ and /u/ to //, // and // before //, causing pronunciations like [p], [p] and [pj] for pair, peer and pure. The resulting sound [] is often further reduced to [], especially afterpalatals, so that cure, pure, mature and sure rhyme with fir. Dropping of /j/ is more extensive than in RP. In most North American accents, /j/ is dropped after all alveolar and interdental consonant, so that new, duke, Tuesday, resume are pronounced /nu/, /duk/, /tuzde/, /zum/. -tensing in environments that vary widely from accent to accent; for example, for many speakers, // is approximately realized as [e]before nasal consonants. In some accents, particularly those from Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City, [] and [e] contrast sometimes, as in Yes, I can [kn] vs. tin can [ken]. The flapping of intervocalic /t/ and /d/ to alveolar tap [] before unstressed vowels (as in butter, party) and syllabic /l/ (bottle), as well as at the end of a word or morpheme before any vowel (what else, whatever). Thus, for most speakers, pairs such as ladder/latter, metal/medal,and coating/coding are pronounced the same. For many speakers, this merger is incomplete and does not occur after /a/; these speakers tend to pronounce writer with [] and rider with [a]. This is a form of Canadian raising but, unlike more extreme forms of that process, does not affect /a/. In some areas and idiolects, a phonemic distinction between what elsewhere become homophones through this process is maintained by vowel lengthening in the vowel preceding the formerly voiced consonant, e.g., [l] for "ladder" as opposed to [l] for "latter". T glottalization is common when /t/ is in the final position of a syllable or word (get, fretful: [], [ffl]), though this is always superseded by the aforementioned rules of flapping Both intervocalic /nt/ and /n/ may be realized as [n] or [], making winter and winner homophones. Most areas in which /nt/ is reduced to/n/, it is accompanied further by nasalization of simple post-vocalic /n/, so that /Vnt/ and /Vn/ remain phonemically distinct. In such cases, the preceding vowel becomes nasalized, and is followed in cases where the former /nt/ was present, by a distinct /n/. This stop-absorption by the preceding nasal /n/ does not occur when the second syllable is stressed, as in entail. The pinpen merger, by which [] is raised to [] before nasal consonants, making pairs like pen/pin homophonous. This merger originated in Southern American English but is now also sometimes found in parts of the Midwest and West as well, especially in people with roots in the mountainous areas of the Southeastern United States. Some mergers found in most varieties of both American and British English include:
[citation needed]

The merger of the vowels // and /o/ before 'r', making pairs like horse/hoarse, corps/core, for/four, morning/mourning, etc. homophones.

The winewhine merger making pairs like wine/whine, wet/whet, Wales/whales, wear/where, etc. homophones, in most cases eliminating //, the voiceless labiovelar fricative. Many older varieties of southern and western American English still keep these distinct, but the merger appears to be spreading.

Australian English
Australian English is a non-rhotic variety of English spoken by most native-born Australians. Phonologically, it is one of the most regionally homogeneous language varieties in the world. As with most dialects of English, it is distinguished primarily by its vowel phonology. Australian English vowels are divided into two categories: long, which includes long monophthongs and diphthongs, and short, all of which are monophthongs. Australian English long vowels mostly correspond to the tense vowels used in analyses of Received Pronunciation (RP) as well as its centralising diphthongs whereas its short vowels correspond to the lax vowels. A number of vowels differ only by the length. There are two families of phonemic transcriptions of Australian English: revised ones, which attempt to more accurately represent the phonetic sounds of Australian English; and the Mitchell-Delbridge system, which is minimally distinct from Jones original transcription of RP. This page uses a revised transcription based on Durie and Hajek (1994) and Harrington, Cox and Evans (1997) but also shows the Mitchell-Delbridge equivalents as this system is commonly used for example in the Macquarie Dictionary and much literature, even recent.

Diphthongs

Monophthongs

Notes and examples

// for example kit, bid, hid. (M.-D. //.) The target for this vowel tends to be tenser than in other varieties of English, and may also sound almost similar to the /i/ vowel. /e/ for example dress, bed, head. (M.-D. //.) The target for this vowel also tends to be tenser than in other varieties of English, where the /e/may sound like the vowel // in some speakers. For some Victorian speakers this phoneme has merged with // in pre-lateral environments, and thus the words celery and salary are pronounced alike (Cox & Palethorpe, 2003). See salarycelery merger. // for example trap, cat, had. (M.-D. //.) For many speakers, the // sound is flatter than the British //. // for example strut, bud, hud. (M.-D. //.) // for example lot, cloth, body, hot. (M-D. //.) This vowel also forms the first part of the diphthong [] (gold, hold, pole, etc.), though remains distinct from [] before l in words such as [pl] "poll" (dehorned cattle) and so on.
[1]

/u/ for example foot, good, hood. (M.-D. //.) // for example about, winter. (M.-D. //.) As in most varieties of English, this phoneme is used only in unstressed syllables. /i/ for example fleece, bead, heat. (M.-D. /i/.) Includes an onset to the high front vowel, except before laterals (Palethorpe & Cox, 2003). // for example near, beard, hear. (M.-D. //.) This sound is traditionally transcribed with a diphthongal glyph; however, it is usually pronounced as a diphthong (or disyllabically) only in open syllables; in closed syllables, it is distinguished from // primarily by length (Cox, 2006; Durie & Hajek, 1994). It is primarily distinguished from /i/ by the significant onset in the latter. /e/ for example square, bared, haired. (M.-D. //.) // for example bad, man, lad. (M.-D. //.) This sound is traditionally transcribed and analysed the same as the short //, but minimal pairs exist in at least some Australians speech (Blake, 1985; Durie & Hajek, 1994). See the badlad split. For many Australian speakers, nasal words like "man", "stand", "can" and "hand" will contain a vowel that sounds similar to , which is like the vowel in "head". // for example face, bait, hade. (M.-D. /e/.) Includes a significantly lower first element than in many other dialects of English. // for example mouth, bowed, howd. (M.-D. /a/.) The first element may be raised in broad accents. /a/ for example bath, palm, start, bard, hard. (M.-D. /a/.). // for example goat, bode, hoed. (M.-D. /o/.) The onset factually begins somewhere between // and /a/. There is significant allophonic variation in this vowel, particularly a backed one [] before /l/, where the distinction between // and // is usually neutralised.
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FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT THE LINK BELOW.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_English_phonology Indian English

Indian accents vary greatly. Some Indians speak English with an accent very close to a Standard British (Received Pronunciation) accent (though not the same); others lean toward a more 'vernacular', native-tinted, accent for their English speech.

Vowels
In general, Indian English has fewer peculiarities in its vowel sounds than the consonants, especially as spoken by native speakers of languages like Hindi, which in fact has a vowel phonology very similar to that of English. Among the distinctive features of the vowel-sounds employed by some Indian English speakers are: Many Indian languages do not natively possess a separate phoneme // (as in <trap>). Thus, many speakers do not differentiate between the vowel sounds // (as in "dress") and // (as in <trap>), except in cases where a minimal pair such as <bed>/<bad> exists in the vocabulary of the speaker. Such a speaker might pronounce "tax" like the first syllable of "Texas". Speakers of Southern languages andSinhalese, which do differentiate // and //, do not have difficulty making this
[

distinction. Eastern IE languages, notably Bengali does have the // sound for both the vowels (hccothe sneezing

soundpronounced as hcco)and /e/ (henglgreedypronounced as hngla). The vowel a has two sound values in Bengali:as au in aura (tatkl) and as o (Kalikt). It lacks the short vowel value for a (parth). Nowadays most Indian students learn English from childhood which enables them to produce almost all phonetics used in English. Chiefly in Punjab and Haryana states and western Uttar Pradesh, the short [] becomes lengthened and higher to long [e], making <pen> sound like <paenn>. When a long vowel is followed by "r", some speakers of Indian English usually use a monophthong, instead of the diphthong used for many such words in many other accents. Thus "fear" is pronounced [fir] instead of [fi]. Indian English often uses strong vowels where other accents would have unstressed syllables or words. Thus "cottage" may be pronounced [kted] rather than [ktd]. A word such as "was" in the phrase "I was going" will be pronounced [z] or [as] in Indian English: in most other accents it would receive the unstressed realization [wz]. Another example is that many Indian English speakers often pronounce <the> as / /, irrespective of whether the definite article comes before a vowel or a consonant, or whether it is stressed or not. In native varieties of English, <the> is pronounced as [] when it is unstressed and lies before a consonant, and as [i] when it is before a vowel or when stressed even before a consonant. Continuing the above point, the indefinite article <a> is often pronounced by many Indian English speakers as [e], irrespective of whether it is stressed or unstressed. In native varieties of English, <a> is pronounced as [] when unstressed and as [e] when stressed. The RP vowels //, // and // might be realized as // in Indian English. Bengalis often pronounce all these vowels as a, including the <r>-colored versions of these vowels. Thus, <firm> may be pronounced the same as [farm]. "Van" as bhan etc. General Indian English realizes /e/ (as in <face>) and /o/ (as in <goat>) as long monophthongs [e], [o]. Many Indian English speakers do not make a clear distinction between // and //. Unlike British, but like American English, some Indian speakers don't pronounce the rounded // or //, and substitute /a/ instead. This makes <not> sound as [nat]. The phoneme //, if used, is only semi-rounded at the lips. Similarly in South India "Coffee" will be pronounced kaafi, "Copy" will be kaapi etc. Most Indians have the Trapbath split of Received Pronunciation. Those who don't are usually influenced by American accents; not using the trapbath split is often popularly construed as attempting to imitate an American accent.

Consonants
Among the most distinctive features of consonants in Indian English are: Most pronunciations of Indian English are rhotic, but many speakers with higher education are non-rhotic. Standard Hindi and most other vernaculars (except Punjabi & Bengali) do not differentiate between /v/ (voiced labiodental fricative) and /w/(voiced labiovelar approximant). Instead, many Indians use a frictionless labio-dental approximant [] for words with either sound, possibly in free variation with [v] and/or [w]. So wet and vet are homophones. Because of the previous characteristic many Indians pronounce words such as <flower> as [fla(r)] instead of [fla(r)], and <our> as [a(r)] instead of [a(r)]. The voiceless plosives /p/, /t/, /k/ are always unaspirated in Indian English, whereas in RP, General American and most other English accents they are aspirated in word-initial or stressed syllables. Thus "pin" is pronounced [pn] in Indian English but [pn] in most other accents. In native Indian languages (except Tamil), the distinction between aspirated and unaspirated plosives is phonemic, and the English stops are equated with the unaspirated rather than the aspirated phonemes of the local languages.
[4]

The same is true of the voiceless postalveolar afficate /t/.

The alveolar stops English /d/, /t/ are often retroflex [], [], especially in the South of India. In Indian languages there are two entirely distinct sets of coronal plosives: one dental and the other retroflex. To the Indian ears, the English alveolar plosives sound more retroflex than dental. In the Devanagari script of Hindi, all alveolar plosives of English are transcribed as their retroflex counterparts. One good reason for this is that unlike most other native Indian languages, Hindi does not have true retroflex plosives (Tiwari, [1955] 2001). The so-called retroflexes in Hindi are actually articulated as apical postalveolar plosives, sometimes even with a tendency to come down to the alveolar region. So a Hindi speaker normally cannot distinguish the difference between their own apical post-alveolar plosives and English's alveolar plosives. However, languages such as Tamil have true retroflex plosives, wherein the articulation is done with the tongue curved upwards and backwards at the roof of the mouth. This also causes (in parts of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh) the /s/ preceding alveolar /t/ to allophonically change to [ ] (<stop> /stp/ / ap/). Mostly in south India, some speakers allophonically further change the voiced retroflex plosive to voiced retroflex flap, and the nasal /n/ to a nasalized retroflex flap.

Many Indians speaking English lack the voiced postalveolar fricative (//), the same as their native languages. Typically, /z/ or /d/ is substituted, e.g. treasure /tr.zr/, and in the south Indian variants, with // as in <"sh'"ore>, e.g. treasure /tr.r/. All major native languages of India lack the dental fricatives (// and //; spelled with th). Usually, the aspirated voiceless dental plosive [ ]is substituted for // and the unaspirated voiced dental plosive [ ], or possibly the aspirated version [ ]. is substituted for //.
[6]

For example, "thin" would be realized as [ n] instead of /n/.

South Indians tend to curl the tongue (retroflex accentuation) more for /l/ and /n/. Most Indian languages (except Urdu variety) lack the voiced alveolar fricative /z/. While they do have its nearest equivalent: the unvoiced /s/, strangely, it is not used in substitution. Instead, /z/ is substituted with the voiced palatal affricate (or postalveolar) /d/, just as with a Korean accent. This makes words such as <zero> and <rosy> sound as [diro] and [rodi:] This replacement is equally true for Persian and Arabic loanwords into Hindi. The probable reason is the confusion created by the use of the devanagari grapheme (for /d/) with a dot beneath it to represent the loaned /z/. This is common among people without formal English education. Many Indians with lower exposure to English also may pronounce / f / as aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive [p]. Again note that in Hindi (devanagari) the loaned / f / from Persian and Arabic is written by putting a dot beneath the grapheme for native [p]. This substitution is rarer than that for [z], and in fact in many Hindi-speaking areas /f/ is replacing /p/ even in its native words.

Inability to pronounce certain (especially word-initial) consonant clusters by people of rural backgrounds. This is usually dealt with byepenthesis. e.g., school /is.kul/, similar to Spanish. Sometimes, Indian speakers interchange /s/ and /z/, especially when plurals are being formed. Whereas in international varieties of English, [s] is used for pluralization of a word ending in a voiceless consonant, [z] for that ending in a voiced consonant or vowel, and [z] for that ending in a sibilant.

Again, in dialects like Bhojpuri, all instances of // are spoken like [s], a phenomenon which is also apparent in their English. Exactly the opposite is seen for many Bengalis. While retaining // in the final position, Indian speakers usually include the [] after it. Hence /r . / /r . / (ringing). Syllabic /l/, /m/ and /n/ are usually replaced by the VC clusters [l], [m] and [n] (as in button /bu.n/), or if a high vowel precedes, by[il] (as in little /li.il/). Syllable nuclei in words with the spelling er (a schwa in RP and an r-colored schwa in GA) are also replaced VC clusters. e.g., meter, /mitr/ /mir/.

Indian English uses clear [l] in all instances like Irish English whereas other varieties use clear [l] in syllable-initial positions and dark [l] (velarized-L) in coda and syllabic positions.

Spelling pronunciation
A number of distinctive features of Indian English are due to "the vagaries of English spelling". Most Indian languages have a very phonetic pronunciation with respect to their script, and unlike English, the spelling of a word is a highly reliable guide to its modern pronunciation. In words where the digraph <gh> represents a voiced velar plosive (//) in other accents, some Indian English speakers supply a murmured version [], for example <ghost> [ost]. No other accent of English admits this voiced aspiration. Similarly, the digraph <wh> may be aspirated as [] or [w], resulting in realizations such as <which> [t], found in no other English accent (except in certain parts of Scotland). In unstressed syllables, native English varieties will mostly use the schwa while Indian English would use the spelling vowel, making <sanity> sound as [s.ni.ti] instead of [s.n.ti]. Similarly, <above> and <ago> can be heard as [e.bv] and [e.go] instead of [.bv] and [.go]. English words ending in grapheme < a > almost always have the < a > being pronounced as schwa // in native varieties (exceptions include words such as <spa>). But in Indian English, the ending < a > is pronounced as the long open central unrounded vowel /a/ (as in <spa>) instead of schwa. So, <India> is pronounced as /n..a/ instead of /n.d./, and <sofa> as /sofa/ instead of /so.f/. The word "of" is usually pronounced with a /f/ instead of a /v/ as in most other accents. Use of [d] instead of [t] for the "-ed" ending of the past tense after voiceless consonants, for example "developed" may be [dlpd]instead of RP /dvlpt/.
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Use of [s] instead of [z] for the "-s" ending of the plural after voiced consonants, for example <dogs> may be [ds] instead of [dz]. Pronunciation of <house> as [hauz] in both the noun and the verb, instead of [haus] as noun and [hauz] as verb. The digraph <tz> is pronounced as [tz] or [td] instead of [ts] (voicing may be assimilated in the stop too), making <Switzerland> sound like [st.zr.lnd] instead of [swt.s.lnd]. In RP, /r/ occurs only before a vowel. But many speakers of Indian English use /r/ in almost all positions in words as dictated by the spellings. The allophone used is a mild trill or a tap. Indian speakers do not typically use the retroflex approximant // for <r>, which is common for American English speakers.

All consonants are distinctly doubled (lengthened) in General Indian English wherever the spelling suggests so. e.g., <drilling> / r l.l /. English pronunciation of the grapheme < i > varies from [] to [a] depending upon the dialect or accent. Indian English will invariably use the British dialect for it. Thus, <tensile> would be pronounced as [tn.sal] like the British, rather than [tn.sl] like the American; <anti> would be pronounced as [n.ti] like the British, rather than [n.ta] like American

FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT THE LINK BELOW.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_English

Russian
There is no /w/ in Russian; 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 // (f) or // (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's equivalent to the /h/ sound is //. The latter has a heavier sound, with a lowered Soft palate. Many Russian speakers do not correct the different sounds.

Japanese
Speakers tend to confuse /l/ and /r/ both in perception and production, since the Japanese language does not make such a distinction. The closest Japanese phoneme to either of these is //, 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.

Italian
A study on Italian children's pronunciation of English revealed the following characteristics: Tendency to replace the English high lax vowels // // with [i] [u] (ex: "fill" and "feel", "put" "poot" are homophones), since Italian does not have these vowels. Tendency to replace // with [] ("singer" rhymes with "finger") or as [n] (combined with the above tendency makes the words "king" and "keen" homophones) because Italian [] is an allophone of /n/ before velar stops. Tendency to replace word-initial /sm/ with [zm], e.g. small [zml]. This voicing also applies to /sl/ and /sn/. Tendency to add /h/ to some vowel-initial words. Tendency to replace // with [a] so that mother is pronounced [madr] or [mar], since Italian does not have this vowel. Italian does not have dental fricatives: Voiceless // may be replaced with a dental [ ] or with [f]. Voiced // may become a dental [ ].

Since /t/ and /d/ are typically pronounced as dental stops anyway, words like there and dare can become homophones. // is replaced with [], so that bag sounds like beg [b]. Tendency to pronounce /p t k/ as unaspirated stops. Schwa [] does not exist in Italian; speakers tend to give the written vowel its full pronunciation, e.g. lemon [lmn], television [tlevin],parrot [pro ], intelligent [intlidnt], water [wtr], sugar [uar]. Italian speakers may pronounce consonant-final English words with a strong vocalic offset, especially in isolated words, e.g. dog [d ]. This has led to the stereotype of Italians adding [] to the ends of English words. Tendency to pronounce /r/ as a trill [r] rather than the English approximant //, e.g. parrot [pro ].

In addition, Italians learning English have a tendency to pronounce words as they are spelled, so that walk is [wlk], guide is [w ], andboiled is [bld]. This is also true for loanwords borrowed from English as water, which is pronounced [vatr] instead of [wt]. 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, e.g. Italians pronounce apple with a longer [p] sound than English speakers do.

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. Paradoxically, some French speakers may erroneously prefix /h/to words beginning with long vowels. 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.

Spanish
Since Spanish 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 /t/ with //, and /d/ and // with /j/. /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 //in Castilian Spanish); 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 [estmp] rather than [stmp]. In Spanish, a voiceless dental fricative // phoneme exists only in certain Peninsular dialects; where this sound appears in English, speakers of other Spanish dialects substitute /t/, /s/ or /f/ for it. Speakers tend to merge // and /d/, pronouncing both as voiced dental plosive unless they occur in intervocalic position, in which case they are pronounced [].
[22]

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[]. Tendency to replace the English near-high near-front unrounded vowel //, and the near-high near-back vowel //, with [i] and [u]respectively (ex: "fill" and "feel"; as well as, "pull" and "pool" are homophones.

Phonology: Most aspects of the English phonological system cause difficulties for Chinese learners. Some English phonemes do not exist in Chinese; stress and intonation patterns are different. Unlike English, Chinese is a tone language. This means that it uses the pitch (highness or lowness) of a phoneme sound to distinguish word meaning. In English, changes in pitch are used to emphasize or express emotion, not to give a different word meaning to the sound. English has more vowel sounds than Chinese, resulting in the faulty pronunciation of words like ship/sheep, it/eat, full/fool. Dipthongs such as in weigh, now or deer are often shortened to a single sound. Chinese learners find it difficult to hear the difference between l and r, and so may mispronounce rake and rice as lake and lice. Southern Chinese speakers have a similiar difficulty in distinguishing l and n. A major problem is with the common final consonant in English. This feature is much less frequent in Chinese and results in learners either failing to produce the consonant or adding an extra vowel at the end of the word. For example, hill may be pronounced as if without the doublell but with a drawn out i, or as rhyming with killer. The difficulties of pronouncing individual English words, compounded by problems with intonation, result in the heavily accented English of many Chinese learners. In some cases, even learners with perfect grammar may be very hard to understand. Grammar - Verb/Tense: In English much information is carried by the use of auxiliaries and by verb inflections: is/are/were,eat/eats/ate/eaten, etc. Chinese, on the other hand, is an uninflected language and conveys meaning through word order, adverbials or shared understanding of the context. The concept of time in Chinese is not handled through the use of different tenses and verb forms, as it is in English. For all these reasons it is not surprising that Chinese learne rs have trouble with the complexities of the English verb system. Here are some typical verb/tense mistakes:

What do you do? (i.e. What are you doing?) (wrong tense) I will call you as soon as I will get there. (wrong tense) She has got married last Saturday. (wrong tense) She good teacher. (missing copula) How much you pay for your car? (missing auxiliary) I wish I am rich. (indicative instead of subjunctive)