Why Is The English Language So Difficult To Pronounce And Spell.docx

Sinh viên Nguyễn Hữu Nam Lớp FHCT418 TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC MỞ HÀ NỘI ĐỀ KIỂM TRA TỰ LUẬN MÔN Lịch sử phát triển Tiếng Anh Mã môn EN15 Đề 1 Why is the English language so difficult to pronounce and spell? As[.]

Sinh viên: Nguyễn Hữu Nam Lớp: FHCT418 TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC MỞ HÀ NỘI ĐỀ KIỂM TRA TỰ LUẬN MÔN: Lịch sử phát triển Tiếng Anh Mã môn: EN15 Đề 1: Why is the English language so difficult to pronounce and spell? As everybody who has studied English as a foreign language knows – English is a relatively easy language to learn, up to a point It is easy and quick for most learners to reach intermediate level, as the basic grammatical structures are straight forward, and the vocabulary is simple This is one reason why English has become so popular as an international ‘lingua franca’ – to speak it to a level in which two people can communicate is quite easy But then when students aim for a higher level, things get more difficult The real difficulties in mastering English to a proficient level are firstly spell and pronunciation So why is English language pronunciation so difficult? Why students who speak a high level of grammatical English, make so many mistakes when they actually say their perfectly constructed sentences? In this post, I will explain key difficulties in English pronunciation: a Written vs Spoken English It would be a lot simpler to pronounce English if the written form resembled the spoken form more closely Amongst the most confusing bits are silent letters – r, l, b, h, k, n, p, s, t & w are all silent some of the time Then there are letters that can be pronounced in lots of different ways – ‘s’ can be pronounced as /z/, ‘t’ can be pronounced in at least ways, and an ‘n’ can become /m/ or /ŋ/ And that’s just consonants – English contains 19 vowel sounds, but it only has vowels to spell them with, so who could possibly guess that ‘good’, ‘food’ and ‘blood’ all contain different vowel sounds (/ʊ/, /u:/ and /ʌ/)? Sinh viên: Nguyễn Hữu Nam Lớp: FHCT418 b Sounds English has 19 vowel sounds and 25 consonant sounds Its vowel sounds cover the entire range of mouth positions – front, centre, back, open, close, spread, relaxed and rounded Some vowels are long, others short, but all vowels change length depending on the level of stress on them Many students speak languages with fewer vowels – a lot of modern languages (Spanish, Japanese, Arabic to name a few) have no more than vowel sounds, for most learners, the 19 vowel sounds present an important area of study Consonant sounds are also problematic – nearly everyone needs to learn the ‘th’ sounds /θ/ & /ð/, the approximant ‘r’ sound often requires attention, and other sounds such as /h/, /w/ and /ŋ/ cause a lot of errors All students need to pay attention to accurate consonant production: voicing and placement need to be mastered c Joining Aside from the sounds of English, it is important to join everything together correctly English has various ways of joining words: assimilation (2 sounds change each other), elision (one sound disappears), vowel + vowel joining (we add a /r/, /j/ or /w/ between the sounds) and consonant + vowel joining (a consonant joins the next syllable) Sometimes these are rather bizarre – in the sentence ‘law and order’ only one /r/ would be pronounced – between ‘law_r_and’ – even though it is spelt with a ‘w’ d Weak/Strong Structure English is made of strong and weak sounds The most common sound in English is the schwa sound /ə/ – which should be pronounced roughly one in every three vowel sounds The problem is, the schwa is impossible to see on the written Sinh viên: Nguyễn Hữu Nam Lớp: FHCT418 page In order to hear it – listen and read the passage below, which has the sound written in phonetics: e Intonation & Stress The English are famous for saying one thing and meaning another – using intonation to show meaning These subtleties can be lost on a learner of English English uses a wide pitch range and four patterns – fall, fall-rise, rise & rise-fall The rules of English stress are simple to learn, but impossible to see on the written page If a learner of English is misunderstood, it is more often due to misplaced stress than incorrect pronunciation – for this reason stress is perhaps the most important aspect of clear speech f English is orthographically conservative So, in the 1st century the Romans invaded Britain and brought paved roads, togas, and the Roman alphabet For the next millennium, Latin mixed with the languages of the Angles, Saxons, and Vikings, depending on who was invading or ruling But 1066 rolled around and the Normans (modern day French) invaded Britain as they usually do—with style French became the language of the ruling classes and replaced English, but the common people continued to speak their native language This can be seen in words like sheep and cow which are AngloSaxon, but meat from these animals (mutton and beef) are French French was the longest staying foreigner and is responsible for pushing out hard Old English sounds for softer sounds It also made it next to impossible to spell words as people hear them Though the British later told the French to go home, they decided the language was pretty enough to keep From then on, English began to get new words by gathering different exotic words from its colonies (e.g bungalow, zebra) Sinh viên: Nguyễn Hữu Nam Lớp: FHCT418 Here are five reasons why English language spelling is so difficult: a English words are from all over the place The English language has been heavily influenced by European invaders; art, music and literature; the colonisation of other countries; and immigration Even common-sounding words can originate from far-away places, such as: ‘rucksack’ (borrowed from German) or ‘pyjamas’ (borrowed from Hindi) b There are different ways of spelling the same sound Because English is so full of borrowed language, words that may sound alike when you say them aloud aren’t always spelt similarly The words ‘tall’ and ‘shawl’ rhyme, for example, but the ‘aw’ sound is spelt differently in each c This can sometimes include words that sound exactly the same Words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings are called heterographs The words ‘hair’ and ‘hare’, for example, sound the same, but mean different things Sometimes, to make things even more confusing, words can be heterographs in some accents, but not in others In most American accents the words ‘merry’ and ‘marry’, as well as the name ‘Mary’, are all pronounced the same! d Some words have totally different meanings but are spelt and pronounced the same These words are called homonyms The word ‘ball’, for example, can refer to both a toy and to a formal dance e What about words that are spelt the same but are pronounced differently? Sinh viên: Nguyễn Hữu Nam Lớp: FHCT418 Yes, perhaps unfortunately, these exist too! These words are called heteronyms The words ‘desert’, ‘tear’, and ‘number’, for example, can all mean two different things depending on how they are pronounced