ro nu n ci a ti o n o f E ng l i s h

Misp
Mon o p h t h o ng s

m ar & S ab a h Su la im an
Fakhir O
In this presentation:

I. Introduction
II. English Monophthongs
III. Factors Affecting the Pronunciation of English
Vowels
IV. Misuses of Monophthongs by EFL learners
V. Research-based Results
I. Introduction
The pronunciation of speech sounds (consonants and
vowels) is the most important skill of spoken language.
But, mastering the pronunciation of any language is NOT
always an easy task for foreign language learners.

EFL learners from around the world in general and in

Bahdini dialect in particular have a great deal of difficulty
when pronouncing the English vowels.
There is one clear REASON.

In English, words are not always pronounced as they are

written. For instance:

- bridge is not pronounced as /bridge/, but /brɪʤ/

- surface is not pronounced as /su:fasi/, but /sɜːfɪs/
- half is not pronounced as /ha:lf/, but /ha:f/
II. English Monophthongs
As it is known, each language contains its own unique set of
sounds. From the phonetic viewpoint, vowels are sounds "in
which there is no obstruction to the flow of air as it passes
from the larynx to the lips" (Roach, 2000: 10).

As the articulators are not involved, the tongue is floating

freely around the mouth, not touching other parts of the vocal
tract. This makes it harder to describe exactly what is happening
in the mouth.
Monophthongs are simple, stable, non-gliding in nature.
That is why, they are considered vowels of “constant
quality” (Abercrombie, 1967: 68). They are unchanging.

However, the correspondence between these vowels’

qualities and their production is problematic.

/i:/ can be written as -ea (sea)

-ee (bee)
(Ladefoged, 1993: 76)
III. Factors Affecting the Pronunciation of English Vowels

Many linguists and researchers have concluded that the English

pronunciation problems among EFL speakers exist in almost all
languages. These problems are to an extent the same. However,
these problems vary according to some notable factors. They are
explained below:
1. Mother tongue interference: This can be observed from
transferring the pronunciation features of a mother tongue
(L1) into another language (L2).
2. Inconsistency of English Vowels: It is clear that each
English vowel has one or more than just one
pronunciation.
The letter (a) stands for five different vowels:
banana /bәnɑ:nә/
bather /beɪөә/
man /mᴂn/
many /meni/
EFL learners confuse between:

/i/ and /i:/ as in sit/seat

/ɒ/ and /әu/ as in not/note
/ᴂ/ and /ei/ as in mat/mate
/e/ and /ei/ as in let/late

This means that it is not easy to know the exact sounds the
letters stand for.
3. Ortho-phonetic relations: there are differences
between the spelling systems from one language to
another.
In English, many words have letters which are not pronounced. For
example, some words are spelt differently, but sound the same. Words such
as rain, rein and reign are pronounced as /reɪn/.

In Bahdini dialect, learners can easily pronounce a word from a written

text. That is, each letter represents one sound, and the relationship between
the orthography and the phonology is very easy to distinguish.
4. Stress: As it is known, English tends to be a stress-
timed language with rhythmic patterns based on a fairly
regular recurrence of stressed syllables (Ladefoged,
1993: 249).
To predict the place of stress in an English word is not an
easy task. This is what Roach (2000: 87) claimed, stating
that “it is best to treat stress placement as a property of the
individual word, to be learned when the word itself is
learned”.
The Kurdish language tends to give equal weight to each
syllable, making the rhythmic patterns appear to be
more syllable-timed.

Many EFL learners often use the Kurdish rhythmic pattern

when speaking English. As a result, even though they can
pronounce each English sound correctly, their speech does
not sound like English.
5. Intonation: The correctness of pronunciation and
intonation directly affects the appropriate
communication in conversation”.
When listening to English, most EFL learners pay more attention
to sounds, vocabulary, and grammar. Seldom do they attend to
pitch changes. This belongs to two major problems:

(1)misused intonation patterns

(2) lack of sentence focus, i.e., what sentence pattern is used.
In EFL Kurdish settings:

It is no surprise to find that many students speak English

simply by applying the rhythmic structure of Kurdish. The
result is that they sound monotonous.

That is, their voice is rather flat with little or no change

in pitch.
IV. Misuses of Monophthongs by EFL learners
In an attempt to study and analyze the misuses of monophthongs
by Bahdini EFL learners, the methods and procedures below
were followed:

1. Participants: 20 undergraduate EFL learners, English Dept.

UoZ.
2. A sixty-word list of English words: all the monophthongs
included.
3. A smart phone for making audio recordings.
Percentages of mispronunciations by the participants:

/ɜː/ /ɔː/ /ə/ /u:/ /ʊ/ /æ/ /ʌ/ /iː/ /ɪ/ /ɑː/ /e/ /ɒ/

63% 47% 47% 46% 41% 35% 33% 26% 25% 21% 18% 13%

These percentages are presented on the following figure.

V. Research-based Results
According to the different frequencies and percentages, there is
clear mispronunciation of monophthong vowels by EFL learners
in Bahdini dialect with varying degrees.
This problem with English vowels is because of two main
reasons:
1. The phonetic system of Bahdini is different from that of
English.
2. The orthography of Bahdini is different from that of English.
The main points of conclusion are:
1. Bahdini EFL learners, in the first rank, struggle with
central English vowels, /ə, ɜː, ʌ/. Probably, this is due
to their absence in the phonetic system of their first
language, Kurdish.
/ə/ is mostly realized as /æ/
/ɜː/ is mostly realized as /e/
/ʌ/ is mostly realized as /ɒ/ or /æ/
2. Bahdini EFL learners, in the second rank,
mispronounce the high back vowels, /ʊ/ and /uː/.
The sound /ʊ/ is replaced mostly by /uː/ because it is
less commonly found in NK.
/ʊ/ is mostly realized as /uː/
/u:/ is mostly realized as /ɒ/
EFL learners tend to lengthen /ʊ/ because its use is less
widespread than /u:/ in Bahdini.
3. Bahdini learners have challenges pronouncing the flat,
neutral vowels, /æ/ and /ɑː/.

/æ/ is mostly realized as /ʌ/

/ɑː/ is mostly realized as /æ/
For /æ/, it is difficult to pronounce this vowel as very flat and
neutral in Bahdini.

For /ɑː/, EFL learners tend to make this vowel shorter in duration.
4. Bahdini learners have lower percentages of
mispronouncing the front vowels, /ɪ , i: , e/.

/ɪ/ is mostly realized as /e/

/iː/ is mostly realized as /ɪ/ or /e/
/e/ is mostly realized as /ɪ/, /i:/ or /ei/
The reasons behind these mispronunciations:
1. Orthography plays a major role:
The replacement of /ɪ/ with /e/ does not happen randomly;
rather, it happens because in the orthography of Bahdini,
the /ɪ/ sound does not have a symbol; that is, it is pronounced
but not written. When the EFL Bahdini learner sees the letter
“e”, he/she treats it as the phonetic /e/ sound rather than a
letter that may not always represent such a sound.
2. Learners’ lack of practice in English pronunciation.
Citation for this study:

https://hjuoz.uoz.edu.krd/index.php/hum/article/view/561/521

DOI: https://doi.org/10.26436/hjuoz.2019.7.4.561