English and Cantonese Phonology in Contrast:

Explaining Cantonese ESL Learners’ English

Pronunciation Problems
Alice Y.W. Chan and David C.S. Li
Department of English, City University of Hong Kong, 83 Tat Chee Avenue,
Kowloon, Hong Kong

It is argued that most if not all of the pronunciation problems encountered by Cantonese
learners of English may be adequately accounted for by the contrastive differences
discussed in this paper. The phonological differences between the two languages are
examined, ranging from their phoneme inventories, the characteristics of the phonemes,
the distributions of the phonemes, syllable structure, to the function of tones and their
respective rhythmic patterns. At the segmental level, substitution by a related sound in
the native language, deletion and epenthesis are by far the most common strategies
Cantonese speakers employ when speaking or reading English. Pronunciation problems
are also found at the suprasegmental level, that is, in connected speech and rhythm,
resulting in the impression of a somewhat unnatural, “flat and boring” foreigner accent.

The transfer of L1 phonological features in L2 pronunciation in the process of

learning a second language has long been attested (e.g. Lado, 1964). English and
Chinese are two typologically distant languages. Whereas English is a Germanic
language within the Indo-European language family which includes German,
Danish, Swedish, etc. (Yule, 1985:168), Chinese, together with other languages like
Tibetan and Lolo-Burmese, belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family (Li and
Thompson, 1981:2). There are seven major dialects in Chinese (Norman, 1988,
Ramsey, 1987), of which Cantonese is widely spoken in Hong Kong and which
serves as the lingua franca among Hong Kong Chinese (Li, 1996, 2000; Luke &
Richards, 1982). Partly due to the considerable typological distance between
English and Cantonese, Cantonese speakers tend to find it difficult to master
standard English pronunciation. In this paper we will examine the differences
between the RP (Received Pronunciation) English and Cantonese phonological
systems1 as a prelude to a systematic account of problems and difficulties
encountered by Cantonese speakers in the process of learning English
pronunciation.

Consonants
Consonants can be classified according to manner of articulation, place of
articulation and the state of the glottis when the consonants are produced (Roach,
1991). There are 24 consonants in English and 19 consonants in Cantonese.

0790-8318/00/01 0067-19 $10.00/0 © 2000 A.Y.W.Chan & D.C.S Li

LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CURRICULUM Vol. 13, No. 1, 2000

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68 Language, Culture and Curriculum

Table 1 An overview of English and Cantonese consonants

Method of Place of articulation
articulation Bilabial Labio- Dental Alveolar Palatal- Palatal Velar Labio- Glottal
dental (post-) velar
alveolar
E
Plosives/
Stops
C
E
Fricatives
C
E
Affricates
C
E
Nasals
C
E
Lateral
C
E
Approxi-
mants
C

Plosives/stops
In both English and Cantonese, there are six plosive stops: bilabial plosives
/ /, alveolar plosives / /, and velar plosives / /. In English,
/ / are voiceless whereas / / are voiced. In Cantonese,
however, there are no voiced plosives; all plosives are voiceless. The feature that
distinguishes between / / and / / is aspiration, that is,
‘whether or not a burst of air is emitted immediately after oral release in the
process of articulation’ (Matthews & Yip, 1994:13-14), where the former are
aspirated and the latter are unaspirated.2 Table 2 contains some examples with the
six plosives in word-initial position.3
In terms of distribution, all the plosives in English may occur in initial or final
position of a syllable. In contrast, only / / in Cantonese may occur in
syllable-final position, as illustrated in Table 3. It should be noted that unlike
plosives in English, Cantonese plosives in word-final position are unreleased. For
example, in the word (‘duck’, / /), the lips are closed in the formation of
/ / but not opened again, so no air can be released; in the word (‘prosper’,
/ /), the tongue tip touches the alveolar ridge in the formation of / / but
clings to the alveolar ridge without air being released; and in the word
(‘house’, / /) the back of the tongue touches the velum in the formation of / /
English and Cantonese Phonology 69

but remains there without air being released. Such an articulation, in effect,
neutralizes the contrast between aspirated and unaspirated plosives, since
unreleased plosives will not be aspirated.4

Table 2 Examples with plosives in word-initial position

Plosives English Cantonese
/ / pin / / ‘frightened’ / /
/ / ten / / ‘he’ / /
/ / cold / / ‘obstacle’ / /
/ / bin / / ‘father’ / /
/ / den / / ‘hit’ / /
/ / gold / / ‘family’ / /

Table 3 Examples with plosives in word-final position

Plosives English Cantonese
/ / rope / / ‘duck’ / /
/ / lit / / ‘prosper’ / /
/ / back / / ‘house’ / /
/ / robe / / —
/ / lid / / —
/ / bag / / —

Cantonese has two other stops which are non-existent in English, namely
/ /. They are both voiceless labio-velar stops, with the former being
aspirated and the latter unaspirated. They are coarticulated consonants because the
velar sound / / or / / is articulated simultaneously with the bilabial / /, that
is, the back of the tongue is held against the velum for the production of / / or
/ / and at the same time the lips are rounded for the production of / /.5 Table 4
shows a minimal pair containing these two stops.

Table 4 Examples with labio-velar stops

Labio-velar stops Cantonese
/ / ‘boast’ / /
/ / ‘melon’ / /

Fricatives
English makes much more use of fricatives than Cantonese. There are nine
fricatives in English but only three in Cantonese. The English fricatives are:
labio-dental / /, dental / /, alveolar / /, palato-alveolar or
post-alveolar / /, and glottal / /. Of these, / / are
voiceless whereas / / are voiced. The Cantonese fricatives are:
labio-dental / /, alveolar / /, and glottal / /, respectively. Being all
voiceless, they are articulated in ways very similar to their English
counterparts. Since there are no voiced fricatives nor dental and palato-
70 Language, Culture and Curriculum

alveolar fricatives in Cantonese, the inventory of Cantonese fricatives is much

smaller than that of English.
In terms of distribution, all English fricatives may appear in syllable-initial
position, though words which begin with / / tend to be lexical borrowings
from French (e.g. genre). In syllable-final position, all English fricatives except
/ / can be found. By contrast, Cantonese fricatives may only occur in
syllable-initial position. In other words, no Cantonese syllables end with a
fricative. Table 5 shows some examples of fricatives in word-initial position.

Table 5 Examples with fricatives in word-initial position

Fricatives English Cantonese
/ / fan / / ‘flower’ / /
/ / van / / —
/ / thin / / —
/ / this / / —
/ / sip / / ‘sand’ / /
/ / zip / / —
/ / ship / / —
/ / genre / / —
/ / hat / / ‘shrimp’ / /

Affricates
Both English and Cantonese have a pair of affricates. The English affricates
/ / are palato-alveolar, with the former being voiceless and the latter
being voiced. Their production is characterized by lip-rounding. The
Cantonese affricates / /, in contrast, are alveolar and are characterized
by lip-spreading. Like plosives in Cantonese, both Cantonese affricates are
voiceless. The difference between the two is again one of aspiration, with the
former being aspirated and the latter being unaspirated.
In terms of distribution, both English affricates may appear in syllable-
initial and syllable-final positions whereas the Cantonese affricates are
restricted to syllable-initial position. Table 6 shows some words in English and
Cantonese beginning with an affricate.

Table 6 Examples with affricates in word-initial position

Affricates English Cantonese
/ / ‘church’ / / —
/ / ‘George’ / / —
/ / — ‘fork’ / /
/ / — ‘residue’ / /
English and Cantonese Phonology 71

Nasals and lateral

Both English and Cantonese have three nasal consonants: bilabial / /,
alveolar / /, and velar / /. The productions of the English nasals are very
similar to those of the Cantonese nasals. All Cantonese nasals may appear in
both syllable-initial and syllable-final positions, whereas the English velar
nasal / / cannot appear in syllable-initial position. Tables 7 and 8 contain
some examples with nasals.

Table 7 Examples with nasals in word-initial position

Nasals English Cantonese
/ / mouse / / ‘mother’ / /
/ / nurse / / ‘take’ / /
/ / — ‘I’ / /

Table 8 Examples with nasals in word-final position

Nasals English Cantonese
/ / Some / / ‘heart’ / /
/ / Son / / ‘new’ / /
/ / sing / / ‘life’ / /

There is only one lateral in both the English and Cantonese phonological
systems, namely the voiced alveolar lateral / /. In English, / / has two
allophones in complementary distribution: the clear [ ] which occurs before
vowels (e.g. live / /) and the dark [ ] which occurs after vowels (e.g. ‘dull’
/ /). Clear [ ] has a quality rather similar to that of an [ ] vowel with the
front of the tongue raised, while dark [ ] has a quality rather similar to that of
an [ ] vowel with the back of the tongue raised.6 In Cantonese, however, only
the pre-vocalic clear [ ] exists; there is no dark [ ] as no laterals may occur in
post-vocalic or syllable-final position. Some examples showing the lateral in
word-initial or word-final position are shown in Table 9.

Table 9 Examples with laterals in word-initial or word-final position

Lateral English Cantonese
/ / live / / ‘come’ / /
dull / / —

There is a tendency for Cantonese speakers, especially younger ones, to

substitute the clear [ ] for an initial / / in a Cantonese word, thereby
neutralizing their opposition. Thus, for example, the initial / / of (‘take’,
/ /) is often pronounced as [ ], making [ ] and [ ] free variants of
this lexical item. Such variations, however, rarely give rise to communication
problems, for the intended meaning may usually be disambiguated by the
context.
72 Language, Culture and Curriculum

Approximants
There are three approximants in English: / /. The post-alveolar
approximant / / is formed by having the tongue approaching the alveolar
area but not making contact with any part of the roof of the mouth. The palatal
approximant / / and the bilabial approximant / / are also commonly
known as semi-vowels because the articulations of / / and / / are
practically the same as those of the close front vowel / / and the close back
vowel / /, respectively, except that the approximants are very short. In
Cantonese, / / is non-existent, whereas / / and / / are articulated in much
the same way as their English counterparts. A few words containing an
approximant are shown in Table 10.

Table 10 Examples with approximants in word-initial position

Approximants English Cantonese
/ / run / / —
/ / yes / / ‘also’ / /
/ / warm / / ‘cloud’ / /

As can be seen from the above contrastive description, English and

Cantonese consonants differ not only in their inventories, but also in terms of
their articulatory features and distribution within a syllable. In particular,
English consonants are subject to relatively fewer distributional restrictions,
whereas in Cantonese, only the nasals / / and the plosives
/ / may occur in syllable-final position.

Vowels
The foregoing section gives a brief overview of the differences between the
English and Cantonese consonant systems. In this section, we will explore the
differences between the English and Cantonese vowel systems.

Pure vowels
Vowels can be classified according to tongue height (i.e. whether the body
of the tongue is high or low), frontness or backness of the vowel (i.e. whether
the front or the back of the tongue is raised) and the shape of the mouth (i.e.
whether the lips are rounded or spread) (Roach, 1991:14). There are twelve
and eight pure vowels in English and Cantonese, respectively, including both
short and long ones. The twelve English vowels comprise seven short vowels
/ / and five long vowels / /.
Of these twelve vowels, the schwa / / is by far the most frequent. The eight
Cantonese vowels include / /, of which only
/ / is long in contrast to / /. Figures 1 and 2 give an overview of English
and Cantonese vowels.
English and Cantonese Phonology 73

Front Back

Close

Open

Figure 1 Overview of English vowels

Front Back

Close

Open

Figure 2 Overview of Cantonese vowels

English has two close front vowels, the long / / and the short / /; two
close back vowels, the long / / and the short / /; and two open back
vowels, the long / / and the short / /. In contrast, Cantonese has only one
close front vowel, / /, one close back vowel, / /, and one open back vowel,
/ /, which lie somewhere between the respective long and short
corresponding vowel pairs in English.7
74 Language, Culture and Curriculum

The English / / and / / are rather similar in articulation, except that the
former is less open than the latter. In Cantonese, however, there is only the
/ / which is similar to the English / /, with the mouth not widely open. The
English central vowel / /, which is articulated with neutral lip position, has
a similar counterpart in Cantonese, / /, which is articulated with lip-
rounding. The English vowels / / and / / are similar in articulation to the
Cantonese / / and / /, respectively, in that the English / / and the
Cantonese / / are both centralized vowels, while the English / / and the
Cantonese / / are both back vowels.
It should be noted that although there are only eight vowel phonemes in
Cantonese, there are altogether thirteen vowel allophones.8 The vowels / /,
/ /, / /, / /, and / / all have long and short allophones depending on the
contexts in which they appear. For example, the two allophones of / / are
[ ] and [ ], respectively. The former occurs before labials and alveolars such
as / /, / /, / /, or / /, while the latter occurs before velars such as / / or
/ /. The two allophones of / /, [ ] and [ ], occur before alveolars such as
/ / or / /, and velars such as / / or / /, respectively. Tables 11 and 12
show some examples with different vowels.

Table 11 Examples with different English vowels

/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /
sit bed bad foot cot cup about seat food caught car bird
/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

Table 12 Examples with different Cantonese vowels

/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

‘silk’ ‘pretty’ ‘book’ ‘husband’ ‘descend’ ‘sing’ ‘new’ ‘hill’

/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

Diphthongs
Diphthongs are “sounds which consist of a movement or glide from one
vowel to another” (Roach, 1991:20). There are eight diphthongs in English:
/ /, and ten diphthongs in Cantonese:
/ /. In both English and
Cantonese the second element of a diphthong denotes the direction towards
which the tongue moves, but the tongue seldom reaches the position specified
by the second element.
There are three possible final elements for diphthongs in both languages. In
English, the three elements are / /. Since / / is a central vowel and
/ / are close vowels, diphthongs gliding towards / / are termed
‘centring diphthongs’ while those gliding towards / / or / / are termed
‘closing diphthongs’. For Cantonese diphthongs, the three possible final
elements are / /.9 Tables 13 and 14 illustrate some words containing
the diphthongs under discussion.
English and Cantonese Phonology 75

Table 13 Examples with different English diphthongs

/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /
peer pear poor bay buy boy cow go
/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

Table 14 Examples with different Cantonese diphthongs

/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

‘four’ ‘west’ ‘well- ‘vege- ‘cup’ ‘enough’ ‘teach’ ‘jump’ ‘good’ ‘water’
behaved’ table’
/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

Another significant difference between English and Cantonese is that

Cantonese diphthongs are not followed by any of the final consonants
/ /, whereas English diphthongs can be followed by
many different final consonants.

Other Differences
Syllable structure
English has a relatively complex syllable structure. There can be a
maximum of three consonants before a vowel and a maximum of four
consonants after a vowel (Abercrombie, 1967: 75), viz.:

(C) (C) (C) V (C) (C) (C) (C)

One such example is ‘strengths’ / /.10 The syllable structure of

Cantonese, in contrast, is rather simple; the possible combinations of sounds are
severely restricted (Bauer, 1995). Unlike English, there are no consonant clusters in
Cantonese. The maximal syllable structure is as follows:

(C) V (C)

Thus, in terms of possible configurations of V and C, English clearly outnumbers

Cantonese, the latter being limited to V, CV, VC, and CVC as exemplified in Table
15.

Table 15 Examples showing all possible configurations of C and V in Cantonese

Syllable structure Examples
V / / ‘exclamation showing surprise’
CV / / ‘husband’
VC / / ‘late’
CVC / / ‘prosper’
76 Language, Culture and Curriculum

Tone
Chinese is a tone language. This means that “every morpheme-word unit in
its citation form has a lexical tonal pattern” (Fok, 1974:1). In addition, tones are
distinctive: a change in tone will result in a change in lexical meaning. The
Cantonese dialect is well-known for being relatively rich in tones. According
to the traditional Chinese classification system, there are a total of nine basic
tones in Cantonese. The first six tones (tones 1-6) capture words ending with
no consonants or with any of the three nasal consonants / /, whereas
the last three tones (tones 7-9, also known as ‘entering tones’) capture words
ending with the unreleased plosives / /.
More recent works on Cantonese phonology, however, regard tones 7, 8
and 9 as carrying the same tone (or distinctive pitch level) as those of the three
level tones 1, 3 and 6, respectively. Seen from this perspective, Cantonese is
analyzed as having six instead of nine tones (e.g. Matthews & Yip, 1994;
Zhang & Zhang, 1987). Table 16 shows some examples of words with different
tone levels and their tone contours.

Table 16 Examples of Cantonese words with different tone levels

Tone Tone Example Tone Tone Example
Level Contour Level Contour
1 high-level / 1/ ‘silk’ 7 high-level / 1/ (/ 7/)
2 high-rising / 2/ ‘history’ ‘colour’
3 mid-level / 3/ ‘try’ 8 mid-level / 3/ (/ 8/)
4 low-falling / 4/ ‘time’ ‘kiss’
5 low-rising / 5/ ‘market’ 9 low-level / 6/ (/ 9/)
6 low-level / 6/ ‘thing’ ‘eat’

Unlike Cantonese, English is an intonation language. This means that a

change in tone will not result in a change of lexical meaning (Roach, 1991:144),
but may show a difference in attitude. For example, saying the word “yes”
with a fall-rise tone may show limited agreement or response with
reservations, while a rise-fall tone may signal rather strong feelings of
approval, whereas a level tone tends to indicate a feeling of boredom.
Since every syllable in a Chinese sentence carries a tone, a sentence with
five syllables such as / / (‘He is a
boy.’) has five independent tones; each word is regarded as an independently
variable item (Roach, 1991:144). In English, on the other hand, tones can only
be identified on one prominent syllable in a tone group, which can be as short
as a monosyllabic word, but can be as long as a phrase or even a whole
sentence. The whole tone group has only one tone, or more precisely, one
intonation pattern. For example, in the sentence ‘He is a diligent student’,
there is only one tone group — the whole sentence itself — so there can only
be one syllable which carries the tone, and the tone will probably fall on the
word diligent or student, depending on the speaker’s intended meaning.
English and Cantonese Phonology 77

Rhythm
English has stress-timed rhythm. This implies that stressed syllables will
tend to occur at relatively regular intervals whether they are separated by
unstressed syllables or not. All the unstressed syllables that come between
stressed ones have to be squeezed into the allotted time (Forbes, 1993:21).
Cantonese, in contrast, has syllable-timed rhythm. This means that all syllables,
whether stressed or unstressed, tend to occur at regular intervals, and the time
between stressed syllables will vary in proportion to the number of unstressed
syllables (Roach, 1991:121). Thus, in English, unstressed syllables will be
spoken much faster and shorter when compared with stressed syllables,
whereas in Cantonese, there is practically no reduction in terms of vowel
length during the pronunciation of each syllable. For example, in the English
word international, only the first and third syllables (the underlined ones) are
stressed, while the unstressed syllables are weaker and spoken faster. In
contrast, in the corresponding Cantonese expression / /, the
two syllables are spoken with more or less equal duration.

Strong and weak forms

Many English words have both a strong and a weak form. These words are
called function words — words that do not have a dictionary meaning in the
way that we normally expect nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs to have.
These function words are auxiliary verbs (e.g. ‘have’, ‘is’), prepositions (e.g.
‘of’, ‘from’), conjunctions (e.g. ‘and’, ‘but’), etc. Table 17 contains some English
function words which exhibit strong and weak forms.

Table 17 Common English Function Words and their Strong and Weak Forms
Function Words The A, An And But
Strong forms / / / / and / /, respectively / / / /
Weak forms / / before / / before consonants, / / / /
consonants
/ / before / / before vowels
vowels

When spoken in isolation, function words such as the above are normally
pronounced in their strong forms. In connected speech, these words tend to be spoken
in their weak forms. This phenomenon of reducing the pronunciations of function
words to their weak forms in connected speech has no parallel in Cantonese.

Linkage
In English connected speech, words are sometimes linked together. This
often happens when two vowels occur next to each other across word
boundaries. A ‘linking r’ is often introduced for this purpose. For example, the
words ‘four’ and ‘far’ do not have an / / sound when they are spoken in
isolation,11 but when they occur before another word which begins with a
vowel, an [ ] is introduced to link the two words together, for example, ‘four
eggs’ [ ] and ‘far away’ [ ].
78 Language, Culture and Curriculum

In English, if two words are in the same tone group and the first ends with
a consonant while the second begins with a vowel, the consonant is simply
carried forward to the next syllable. Thus the preferred pronunciation pattern
of the phrase ‘pick it up’ should be [ ]. In contrast, neither of these
linking phenomena is found in Cantonese.

Learner Difficulties
The foregoing sections examine the major differences between the English
and Cantonese phonological sub-systems. We have shown that English and
Cantonese differ not only in their phoneme inventories, but also in the
characteristics of the sounds, the distributions of phonemes, and the
permissible syllable structures and rhythm. In this section we will explore
common pronunciation problems and difficulties encountered by Cantonese
speakers when learning English.12 In accordance with established research
findings that the learner’s prior linguistic experience has an influence on his or
her learning of other languages (e.g. Corder, 1983; Hung, 1993), most of the
English pronunciation problems encountered by native speakers of Cantonese
may be attributed to systematic phonological differences between the two
languages. The problems outlined below are essentially based on the authors’
actual observations teaching Cantonese-speaking learners of English in Hong
Kong — observations which are largely corroborated by a substantial body of
empirical findings in earlier studies (e.g. Anderson, 1983; Avery et al., 1987;
Bolton & Kwok, 1990; Brown, 1989; Chen, 1976; Forbes, 1993; Han & Koh,
1976; Jones, 1980; Kenworthy, 1986; Lee, 1976; Tay, 1973). Below, we will
briefly outline pronunciation problems and difficulties by taking each of the
following in turn: consonants, vowels, diphthongs and rhythm.

Plosives
Since there are no voiced syllable-final plosives in Cantonese, learners of
English from a Cantonese-speaking background tend to substitute
/ / for / / when pronouncing words such as ‘robe’
(/ /) and ‘maid’ (/ /). What is more, they tend to transfer the
articulatory habits of not releasing final plosives to English, giving thereby the
impression that the final plosives are "swallowed", that is, for / / the lips
remain closed, for / / the tongue tip clings to the alveolar ridge, and for / /
the back of the tongue clings to the velum (Kenworthy, 1986:128). For
example, the word ‘step’ is pronounced as [ ] and ‘not’ is pronounced as
[ ]. Consequently, minimal pairs such as ‘rope’ and ‘robe’, ‘maid’ and
‘mate’, etc. are practically indistinguishable.13 For these learners, therefore, one
indication of sub-standard pronunciation is their inability to actualize the
systematic contrast between voiced and voiceless final plosives.
Cantonese learners of English also have problems with English voiced
plosives in the syllable-initial position. Thus, / / in words such as
‘because’ / /, ‘divide’ / / and ‘goal’ / / are often devoiced.
English and Cantonese Phonology 79

Fricatives
The gap between the inventories of English and Cantonese fricatives creates
much difficulty for Cantonese learners of English. Substitution by a near sound in
the native language seems to be the most common strategy used, especially when
they come across a difficult or unfamiliar sound.
Voiced labio-dental fricative / /
At the end of a word, learners tend to substitute / / for / /, hence the word
‘live’ / / is indistinguishable from ‘life’ [ ].14 At the beginning of a word,
learners tend to substitute / / for / /, and so ‘van’ / / is pronounced as
[ ].
Voiced alveolar fricative / /
Cantonese does not have / /. This helps explain why this phoneme tends to
be replaced by its voiceless counterpart / /. In effect, no contrast is made
between minimal pairs such as ‘zip’ / / and ‘sip’ / /; ‘seal’ / / and
‘zeal’ / /.
Dental fricatives / / and / /
Cantonese does not have either of the “th” sounds. This may be the reason why
Cantonese learners of English tend to substitute either / / or / / for /… / in
words like ‘thin’ / /, and either / / or / / for / / in words such as ‘they’
/ / or ‘with’ / /.
Voiceless palato-alveolar fricative / /
Cantonese learners of English commonly substitute / / for the sound / /, so
pairs of words like ‘save’ / / and ‘shave’ / /, ‘sip’ / / and ‘ship’
/ / tend to present problems. Before the / / sound, which is produced with
lip-rounding as in ‘moon’ / /, the situation is even more complicated as
learners tend to substitute / / for / /, that is, incorrectly rounding the mouth in
the production of the onset, so for example ‘soup’ / / will be pronounced as
[ ].
Voiced palato-alveolar fricative / /
Cantonese learners of English find it hard to master the English / / probably
because it does not exist in Cantonese. The learning difficulty is further
compounded by the defective distribution of this sound: it rarely occurs in word-
initial position, and is seldom found in word-final position. This phoneme occurs
most often in word-medial position, such as ‘measure’ / / and ‘pleasure’
/ /. Cantonese speakers tend to replace this sound by either / / or / /.

Affricates
Cantonese speakers of English tend to have problems with the two English
affricates / / and / / as found in the words ‘cheap’ / / and ‘jump’
/ /. As mentioned, they are different from the Chinese affricates / /
and / / not only in terms of place of articulation, but also in the shape of the
mouth. This may help explain why Cantonese speakers tend to treat English
affricates as being the same as their Cantonese counterparts, that is, using
/ / for / /, and / / for / /. For example, even advanced Cantonese
80 Language, Culture and Curriculum

learners of English may pronounce the affricate in the word ‘China’

/ / with lip-spreading rather than lip-rounding.

Nasals, Laterals and / /

Cantonese speakers of English often have problems distinguishing / /
from / / or / /. In words like ‘ride’ / / or ‘road’ / /, where the
/ / is in word-initial position, they tend to substitute an / /-like sound for
the / /. Consequently, these two words will sound like ‘lied’ [ ] and
‘load’ [ ], respectively. Other speakers may substitute / / for / /, saying
‘wide’ [ ] for ‘ride’ / /.
In syllable-initial position / / and / / are often in variation. In words like
‘nine’ / / and ‘knife’ / /, Cantonese speakers of English tend to
substitute / / for / /, confusing thereby the target words with similar
sounding words ‘line’ / / and ‘life’ / /. Alternatively, initial / / as
in ‘love’ / / may sometimes be pronounced with some “ ” quality, giving
the impression of a nasalized / / sound, viz. [ ].
In final position, / / and / / also present problems. The / / in final
position in words containing a diphthong, such as ‘mine’ / / and ‘line’
/ /, is often deleted, while the dark [ ], being non-existent in Cantonese,
is either dropped or replaced by a sound with an [ ] quality, probably because
both the dark [ ] and [ ] are produced with the back of the tongue raised
towards the velum. Thus, words like ‘will’ / / or ‘fill’ / / tend to be
pronounced as [ ] and [ ], respectively, with unnecessary lip-rounding.

Pure vowels
Many Cantonese learners of English are unaware of the major difference
between / / and / /, that is, the lips are more open for / / than for / /.
They tend to substitute the latter for the former, thus mispronouncing ‘man’
and ‘sat’ as [ ] and [ ], respectively. On the other hand, some Cantonese
speakers would overuse the open / /, thus mispronouncing words like ‘men’
and ‘set’ as [ ] and [ ], respectively.
Many Cantonese speakers may pronounce the central vowel / / as in
‘bird’ / / and ‘fur’ / / with lip-rounding, which may be accounted
for by the fact that Cantonese has a similar-sounding vowel / /, which is
articulated with lip-rounding.
Long and short vowel pairs
Cantonese learners tend to underdifferentiate the distinction between the
long and short vowel pairs / / and / /, / / and / /, and / / and / /.
Hence they tend to have difficulties distinguishing word pairs such as ‘cheap’
/ / and ‘chip’ / /, ‘food’ / / and ‘foot’ / /, and ‘caught’
/ / and ‘cot’ / /, where the former in each pair is pronounced with a
long vowel and the latter a short vowel. Although Cantonese / /, / / and
/ / all have long and short allophones which are distinguished by vowel
length, the length difference is not distinctive, and there are restrictions
governing which consonants can follow which allophones. This may help
explain why Cantonese speakers tend to find it hard to distinguish the long
and short vowel contrasts in English. Depending on individual learners, some
may use a short vowel for a long one, others a long vowel for a short one; still
English and Cantonese Phonology 81

others may produce a vowel sound which is somewhere in between the long
and short vowels when pronouncing either one.
Consonantal glide before / / and / /
When / / or / / occurs in the word-initial position such as ‘easy’
/ / or ‘industry’ / /, Cantonese speakers tend to insert a short
consonantal glide / / before the vowel, viz. [ ] and [ ]. Thus,
the words ‘east’ / / and ‘yeast’ / / would sound very much the
same to native speakers of English. This feature may be analyzed as transfer
from Cantonese to the extent that the Cantonese vowel / / in the syllable-
initial position is consistently preceded by the semi-vowel / / (e.g. / /,
‘medical’).

Diphthongs
Cantonese speakers have problems in articulating certain diphthongs and
tend to replace them by a similar pure short vowel. For instance, the word
‘point’ / / tends to be pronounced as [ ], with the short vowel / /
substituting for the diphthong / /. Similarly, the word ‘pair’ / / is often
pronounced as [ ] or [ ], with the short vowels / / or / / substituting for
the diphthong / /.
Another pronunciation problem is illustrated by words such as ‘main’
/ /, ‘claim’ / / or ‘fail’ / /, which are often pronounced as
[ ], [ ] and [ ], respectively, with the pure vowel / / substituting
for the diphthong / /. This problem is most marked when the diphthong is
followed by a nasal or a lateral as shown in these examples.
Still another problem is that some diphthongs in English are pronounced as
a combination of two discrete vowels separated by a glottal stop. For example,
the word ‘pair’ / / may be pronounced as [ ], ‘ear’ / / as [ ], and
‘poor’ / / as [ ].

Consonant clusters
Unlike English, Cantonese has no consonant clusters. In trying to cope with
consonant clusters, Cantonese learners will tend to use deletion or epenthesis.
Deletion simplifies a consonant cluster by reducing the number of consonants
which occur together, while epenthesis breaks up consonant clusters by the
insertion of a vowel, thus creating an extra syllable in which the onset contains
only one consonant (Hung, 1993:252). Deletion is commonly found in both word-
initial and word-final positions, but epenthesis is more often found in initial
position or across word boundaries.15
Word-final consonant clusters
Cantonese learners of English tend to overcome word-final consonant clusters
by deleting one or more of the consonants. The consonants most often deleted are
the alveolar sounds / /. Thus the word ‘bold’ / / may be
pronounced as [ ] or [ ], while ‘list’ / / is typically realized as [ ].
It is probable that due to the avoidance of consonant clusters, Cantonese learners
of English tend to have problems pronouncing the past tense marker. A large
number of students drop the / / or / / sound in words like ‘touched’ / /
or ‘begged’ / /. As English verbs are obligatorily marked for tense, a
82 Language, Culture and Curriculum

sentence like ‘He touched it’, pronounced as [ ], would be perceived

as ungrammatical (in subject-verb agreement) by native speakers of English.
Apart from deletion, epenthesis is also used to overcome word-final consonant
clusters, though sparingly. For instance, the word ‘film’ / / may be
pronounced as [ ].
Word-initial consonant clusters.
Deletion and epenthesis are both commonly used to simplify word-initial
consonant clusters. / / is frequently deleted when it follows a plosive, so
‘produce’ / / may sound like [ ] with / / deleted. (Since / /
itself is also a problem for Cantonese learners, instead of deleting the consonant,
some Cantonese learners may tend to replace / / by / /, producing something
like [ ].) On the other hand, words like ‘clutch’ / / would be
pronounced as [ ], with an extra vowel added to produce an extra open
syllable, which is preferred in most languages including Cantonese.

Words in connected speech

Since no Cantonese syllables are reduced to a weak form, Cantonese
speakers of English tend to pronounce English function words in their strong
forms even in connected speech, giving an unnatural and foreign-sounding
impression. For example, while a native speaker of English will say
[ ] for “I can make it”, a Cantonese speaker may be heard
saying [ ] whether or not the intended meaning is emphatic.
The phenomena of linkage are often ignored by Cantonese speakers.
Cantonese students tend to separate words through the use of pauses instead
of linking the sounds together, giving a very staccato rhythm to their speech
(Avery et al., 1987:100). The words in phrases such as ‘pick it up’ [ ]
and ‘far away’ [ ] thus tend to be spoken with a pause at word
boundaries rather than being linked together.

Rhythm
Because native speakers of Cantonese are accustomed to pitch changes within
syllables only, whereas in English pitch changes are found over larger stretches
such as phrases or clauses (Tay, 1973:7), Cantonese speakers have problems in
learning English rhythm. For example, in the noun phrase ‘international
airport’ / /, and in the sentence ‘John
has learned French before’ / /, each of
the syllables is given more or less the same amount of time. In contrast, the
English equivalents, international airport and John has learnt French before, are
usually spoken only with the underlined syllables stressed. The syllables that are
not underlined are normally spoken with a much faster rhythm and a weaker
intensity, resulting in a more or less equal interval between the stressed syllables.
There is evidence that Cantonese learners of English often transfer the Cantonese
rhythm into English. One symptom is that each of the syllables in the phrase
‘international airport’ is given the same amount of stress (in-ter-na-tion-al air-
port), that is, each syllable being treated as if it were a separate word (Forbes,
1993). Similarly, the sentence ‘John has learnt French before’ would be spoken
with all the syllables having the same stress and occupying more or less the same
amount of time. No wonder native speakers of English, and even Cantonese
English and Cantonese Phonology 83

speakers of English like the present authors, would sometimes perceive such an
English pronunciation pattern as “flat and boring”.

Conclusion
Based on a detailed comparison and contrast of the major differences
between the English and Cantonese phonological sub-systems in this article,
we have explored the main difficulties that Cantonese speakers may have
when learning English pronunciation. It is argued that most of the Cantonese
ESL learners’ difficulties with English pronunciation may be accounted for by
reference to fundamental differences between the phoneme inventories of the
two languages, the characteristics and distribution of the phonemes, the
permissible syllable structures and the rhythmic patterns of the two languages
in question. This has clear implications for the teaching of English
pronunciation to Cantonese speakers. A heightened awareness of the
contrastive differences between the two phonological systems will be helpful
at least to some extent in facilitating the overcoming of the pronunciation
problems. To help learners overcome such difficulties, ESL teachers should be
informed of the sources of the problems and design remedial teaching
programmes accordingly. Teachers should also determine the relative gravity
of various pronunciation errors and set up a system of teaching priorities. We
believe that pronunciation errors which affect intelligibility or create
communication problems should be given priority in remedial teaching.

Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Alice Y.W. Chan, Department of
English, City University of Hong Kong, 83 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong
Kong (enalice@cityu.edu.hk).

Notes
1. In the rest of the paper, the term “English” will refer to RP (Received
Pronunciation) English. Cantonese, which is commonly regarded as a Chinese
dialect spoken in the province of Guangdong, parts of Guangxi, Hong Kong and
Macau, is linguistically speaking a language (albeit non-standard) on a par with
Putonghua (or Mandarin), the national language of the People’s Republic of China.
The description of the Cantonese phonological system in this paper is essentially
based on norms of pronunciation in Hong Kong.
2. Because no Cantonese plosives are distinctively voiced, some linguists prefer to
use the symbols / / or / / to represent the aspirated
plosives / /, and preserve the symbols / / to represent the
unaspirated plosives / / (e.g. Bauer and Benedict, 1997, Lee, 1976).
3. Since the cognitively salient phonetic unit in all Han-Chinese varieties is a syllable,
which often but not always has morphemic status, this unit is variously referred to
as ‘syllabo-morpheme’ or ‘morpho-syllable’. Put in another way, a Cantonese
syllable has more than chance probability of being a word, but it may also be sub-
morphemic. For the sake of convenience, in this paper we will give illustrations of
Cantonese syllables which have morphemic status wherever possible (cf.
DeFrancis, 1984, 1989, Bauer, 1995).
4. English word final-plosives tend to be unreleased in many dialects, so the
voiced/voiceless distinction is not clear either.
5. There is some disagreement as to whether / / and / / should be analyzed as
consonant phonemes or consonant clusters. In this paper, they are treated as
unitary consonants since they are coarticulated sounds with simultaneous
84 Language, Culture and Curriculum

articulation at both the velar and the labial regions. Furthermore, these two sounds
are sometimes classified as semi-vowels instead of stops (e.g. Fok, 1974) because
they consist of the semi-vowel / /.
6. [ ] and [ ] are primary cardinal vowels instead of vowels of a particular language.
[ ] is defined as “the vowel which is as close and as front as it is possible to make a
vowel without obstructing the flow of air enough to produce friction noise”, while
[ ] is “fully close and back” (Roach, 1991:13).
7. Strictly speaking, the English / / and the Cantonese / / are not open vowels, as
they lie between the half-open and half-close regions. In this paper they are treated
as open vowels to facilitate discussion.
8. The description of Cantonese vowels has received different treatments because
there is more than one way of analyzing vowel contrasts. Alternative analyses
reduce the number of vowel phonemes to seven (e.g. Benedict, 1942; Chao, 1947).
Others argue that there should be 14 vowel allophones instead of 13 (e.g. Zee,
1993).
9. The description of Cantonese diphthongs has also received different treatments.
Some linguists (e.g. Bauer & Benedict, 1997) argue that they comprise a nuclear
vowel followed by either / / or one of the final approximants / /, so they are
not described as sequences of two vowels as diphthongs in English are. In this
paper Cantonese diphthongs are treated as sequences of two vowels (cf. Fok, 1974).
10. Depending on the speaker, the words ‘strength’ and ‘strengths’ may be
pronounced with or without the / / sound.
11. In American English and some accents of British English, words like “four” and
“far” are pronounced with / / at the end.
12. In the discussion of the typical pronunciation problems encountered by native
speakers of Cantonese, we focus on the production side, but it should be borne in
mind that Cantonese speakers may also encounter problems in perceiving the
exact sounds of English.
13. Because of the shortening effects of final voiceless consonants, the vowels in words
with a final voiceless plosive, such as ‘rope’ and ‘mate’, should be shorter than
those in words with a final voiced plosive, such as ‘robe’ and ‘maid’. However,
since most Cantonese speakers are unaware of this length difference, when the
final plosives of these words are unreleased, the pronunciation of the word with a
voiceless plosive is practically the same as that of the corresponding word with a
voiced plosive.
14. Final voiceless fricatives also have a shortening effect on preceding vowels, but
most Cantonese speakers are also unaware of this length difference (see note 3
above).
15. Consonant clusters occurring across word boundaries are termed word-boundary
sequences in Anderson (1983).

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