The SODA quotient

The most common error that we tend to make as non native speakers of English are errors in sounds. Most of our vowels are clipped sounds – I know I said that in an earlier post, however, I am justified repeating it here because sound errors are the most commonly made errors and are the most difficult to correct. In consonants we make four kinds of errors – Substitutions, Omissions, Distortions and Additions. There! Now you know what I meant with that alluring title. I am not starting to doubt your understanding here, but I would like to explain each with a few examples -

Substitutions – Sometimes, we substitute a consonant sound with another from our regional language. A few examples – gut instead of good ( /t/ for /d/),people ( with the hard L ), money ( with the strong N) and many words that have the /s/ /z/ interchange – MuSic (for Muzic), LiZen ( for listen), proZEdure( for Procedure),perZon ( for Person), serviZes( for services) ExeGutive( for Executive)

Distortions – Sometimes the consonant sound is distorted and that changes the meaning of the word or can make you sound inaccurate. For example – AdminiSHter( for administer),proSHedure ( for procedure), deSHiSHions ( for decisions), Yelp ( for Help)

Omissions- Sometimes we omit sounds where they are required. For example, omitting the / h/ sound where required in words like how, home, however, had, home, half; omitting some sounds in the middle of the word in words like  / picture / which sounds like /pitcher/ etc.

Additions – A few errors are caused because we add an extra sound to words beginning with vowels. Example the sound /y / to words like earth and the sound / v/ to Only .Also sometimes a few of use tend to add a /H/ sound to words beginning with vowels,  like always, all, army, ask, achieve, advance, another, eighteen etc

There are other errors that we make with the /v/ and /w/ sounds which needs a seperate entry in the blog, so I will save it for another time.

The First Language Influence or the FLI

Many of us speak regional sounds in English. By regional sounds I mean, the sounds borrowed from the language that we speak as first language. It is a common misconception among students in India that our first language is English. Here is why – In schools, the medium of teaching is English. Schools offer “second language” that could be Hindi / Tamil / Malayalam/ Telugu/ Sanskrit/ Punjabi /Marati or Kannada depending on the region that we are from originally. So its common to assume that our first language is English. But what do we mean by First language? Its the language that your mother spoke to you when you were a babe in arms. It is the language that your family speaks as ” mother tongue”. It is the language that you think in or use easily when you need to convey your thoughts.

The point I want to make here is, when we speak English, we borrow not only the intonation and the rhythm pattern of our first language but also most of the sounds. It is easy to recognize someone from a particular region just based on the sound errors he/ she makes. Typically, we speak all consonant sounds harder than they have to be spoken and we “clip” all the vowel sounds. These sound errors make us sound Indian or heavily accented with regional sounds.

That is what we mean by the first language influence in English or FLI.

Tip – Importance of stress and intonation in speech

I read an interesting article on the web about why native speakers of English sound different.
Here it is –

English is considered a stressed language while many other languages are considered syllabic.

What does that mean?

It means that, in English, we give stress to certain words while other words are quickly spoken. In other languages, each syllable receives equal importance. English however, spends more time on specific stressed words while quickly gliding over the other, less important, words.

You need to understand which words are generally stressed and which ones are not.

Words that get the stress are the nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs.

Now, log in to some online sources, listen to how native speakers concentrate on the stressed words rather than giving importance to each syllable. You will soon find that you can understand more because you begin to listen for stressed words. All those words that you thought you didn’t understand are really not crucial for understanding the sense or making yourself understood.

Stressed words are the key to excellent pronunciation and understanding of English.