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English language and Chinese language have their own specific phonetic systems. Learners of a second language can not avoid the influence of the phonetic system of their mother tongue. Understanding the differences and similarities between the mother tongue and the second language can provide great help to learners of a second language. This essay looks at some of the differences and similarities between English and Chinese consonant systems, and based on these finds the difficult points for Chinese learners of English language. Plosives and affricates in English can be divided into pairs based on whether they are voiced or voiceless. Chinese also has two sets of plosives and fricatives, but they are both voiceless. Instead they are distinguished by aspiration. Since there are no voiced plosives nor affricates in Chinese consonant system, Chinese students tend to replace them with the respective unaspirated consonant ( e.g. /bit/→/pit/). Drilling and contrastive practise of voiced and unvoiced plosives and affricates can help Chinese learners to distinguish these phonemes. Voiced fricatives /v/ and /z/ are not present in Chinese and many Chinese students use phonemes /w/ or /u/ and /ts/ in their place. Contrasting them with the unvoiced consonants /f/ and /s/ which have the same place and manner of articulation, and instructing students to put two fingers on their Adam’s apple to feel vibrations of their vocal cords can make practice more effective. There are no dental fricatives in Chinese and the pronunciation of English /θ/ and /ð/ causes problems to most Chinese learners. They are often switched for /s/ and /t/ respectively, and clear explanation and demonstration of their pronunciation, as well as drilling are necessary. English glottal fricative /h/ is often confused with Chinese velar fricative /x/, the difference in the place of articulation can be pointed out to students to help avoid confusion. Both English and Chinese consonant systems have the same nasals /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, and lateral /l/. However, some of the southern Chinese dialects do not distinguish between /n/ and /l/ sounds, and extra time for drilling and practice should be allowed. Aside from problems caused by voicing, aspiration, and place and manner of articulation of consonants not found in Chinese, further problems are caused by the fact that in Chinese no consonants except nasals /n/ and /ŋ/ are used at the end of a syllable. The most common errors related to final consonants include omission, and addition of a vowel sound. E.g. when pronouncing “bed” Chinese learners often mispronounce it as [be], [bedə], or [bedu]. Since there are also no consonant clusters within one syllable in Chinese language, Chinese learners are used to follow all of the consonant sounds with a vowel sound. This can cause similar type of errors as the absence of final consonants, i.e. omission of some of the consonants in the consonant cluster, or insertion of a neutral vowel sound in the middle of consonant sequence. As discussed above, errors stemming from voicing, aspiration, place and manner of articulation, final consonants, and consonant clusters are the most common consonant-related errors Chinese learners of English language make. Both teachers and students should be aware of the differences between the two consonant systems and problems that are caused by them. Clear modelling and explanation of pronunciation as well as adequate drilling, contrastive exercises, and tongue twisters should be employed to improve students’ pronunciation.
