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English is a complicated language, and most foreign learners are presented with a variety of obstacles and complications in learning English fluently. For some this can be heard through improper intonation, misused modals, or dropped consonants.This essay will present some of the difficulties that specifically Vietnamese speakers encounter while learning and acquiring English as a second language. Even more precisely, Vietnamese speakers struggle with the prosody tones, and voiced consonants of English. The main obstacle that Vietnamese speakers face when approaching English is that Vietnamese is a monosyllabic language that is tightly structured by tone and inflection, while English contains prosody and is more open for tonal and inflected nuances as the speaker decides to include with little alteration to the meaning of the word. Vietnamese stems from the Mon-Khmer (also known as Austroasiatic) branch of the linguistic tree, and over time developed to Proto-Vietic-Muong, and finally to Vietnamese. This heritage passed along certain genes so-to-speak, including iambic measuring of words and phrases and lexical tones. English on the other hand is of Indo-European origin and trickles through the Germanic branch, that lineage left it with a large quantity of vowel qualities and poetic cadences that stretch over it's polysyllabic vernacular and phrasing. This presents as a large challenge for Vietnamese speakers to master in English as it requires them to struggle against their natural tongue and inflections. This is why many Vietnamese- English speakers' phrasing sounds stiff and jilted, unlike a native English speaker who speaks with a coherent lyrical roll through their sentences. The second facet of speaking a monosyllabic language is that the word's meaning is heard through the tones used eliciting the word, whereas an English speaker gains the exact meaning for the word through it's grammatical placement. Vietnamese contains seven tones, while English does not contain any strict tonal inflections. It is common to hear Vietnamese-English speakers incorrectly add tone to words that don't require it. This can make the already stiff and jilted speech sound almost chime-like in nature. Another two features of the English language that are difficult for Vietnamese speakers to master are the fricatives and word-final consonants. Examples of those complicating fricatives including: /f/, /v/, /s/, and /z/. They can pronounce /f/, /v/, and /s/ at the beginning of words without issue, but because Vietnamese does not include any fricative word-final placement, it is difficult for Vietnamese-English speakers to introduce these consonants to their mouths. English consonants often cluster in groups of up to four at the ending of a word, and this proves to be extremely difficult for Vietnamese- English speakers to conquer as it is so foreign to their native tongue. English contains certain obstacles that Vietnamese speakers will have to overcome, including the prosody tonal inflections, fricatives, and word-final consonants. Because Vietnamese is a monosyllabic language, it is difficult for Vietnamese speakers to become comfortable with the cadences and voiced consonants found in English. They may never come across as native English speakers because of these pronunciation factors, mainly because these factors take years for native English speakers to master fluently.
