陕西师范大学外国语学院；西北工业大学明德学院 冯军英
Pronunciation learning is a key factor in second language acquisition, which is also the soul of language. The listeners can understand clearly only when the speakers pronounce correctly. So it is very important for language beginners to learn the correct sounds.
The research is carried out through an experiment designed for 20 college students of the first year who come from local region. Their family members speak the Xi’andialect in daily life. So they can represent the general condition of Xi’an students’ English pronunciation to some extent.
There are 24 consonants phonemes in English and they have voiced and voiceless two types. English plosives and affricative can be divided into two categories: aspirated and not aspirated, but this do not influence the meaning. Such as, in the word ‘star’, /t/ should be not aspirated, but if some people pronounce it as aspirated, the meaning will not change. However, the difference of aspirated and not aspirated of Chinese will influence the meaning. Such as the Chinese Character (gu姑) and (ku哭), they have totally different meanings.
Also a large group of Xi’an dialect speakers read ‘house /′haus/’ as ‘horse /′h?蘅:s/’. Mainly because the mouth open of /?蘅:/ is a little smaller than the sound /au/.
Almost all the participants in the investigation meet problems in pronouncing the long and short vowels. For example, ‘whose /hu:z/, proof / pru:f/, cook /kuk/, put /put/’. It can be concluded that long vowels and short vowels are misused.
Also there are some more common problems come to the Xi’an dialect speaker students when they begin to learn the English pronunciations:
(1)Adding /?藜/ after voiceless consonants.
According to the pronunciation of students, half of them pronounce‘eat’ as /′i:t?藜/, hook as /huk?藜/. It can be seen that when the Xi’an dialect speakers pronounce the sound like /d/, /t/, /k/ and /p/, they prefer to add the vowel /?藜/ after them. Because the sound of them are close to the Chinese Pinyin, like ‘de, te, ke and pe’. Xi’an native speaker students always add /?藜/ at the end of these consonants.
The suggestions for pronouncing these consonants are: In order to avoid the additional sound /?藜/ influenced by their dialect, students should pronounce the consonants quickly and nearly without any ‘interval’.
(2)Dental Fricative /θ/ and /?奁/.
More than 70% of the participants meet difficulties when they read words like ‘thank’, ‘three’, ‘that’ and ‘they’. 90% of the students can tell the main difference among /θ/, /s/, /?奁/, /z/ is that the different use of the tongue tip place. However, they cannot put the correct pronunciation rules into practice. Many students cannot pronounce /θ/ and /?奁/ in a right way, because there is no such counterparts consonants /θ/ and /?奁/ in Xi’an dialect phonetic system. Students are not familiar with these two sounds, they don’t know how to pronounce them or they pronounce it in a wrong way. They often pronounce some similar sounds to replace /θ/ and /?奁/. They usually pronounce /s / and /z / to replace /θ/ and /?奁/.
In English consonant phonetic system, /θ/ and /?奁/ are dental fricatives, /θ/ is voiceless, /?奁/ is voiced. When pronouncing /θ/, tongue tip is brought forward just blow the upper teeth or into slight with the back of the upper teeth to create a construction between tongue and upper teeth. The way of pronouncing /?奁/ is the same as /θ/, but it is voiced. Students should practice more such sounds to make sure they grasp the correct pronunciation.
(3)/v/ and /w/.
According to the research result, the problem of misusing between /w/ and /v/ is very common. The usually read ‘vase /wa:z/ instead of /va:z/’.
All in all, this paper introduces the influence of Xi’an dialect of English articulation by contrasting the different sounds between English and Xi’an dialect. The results of the research will help Xi’an students to know their problems and correct them in the acquisition of English sounds. And it also can help English teachers in this area to facilitate their teaching and learning process.