On the Effect of Negative Transfer of Da Tong Dialect Phonetics to English Pronunciation

摘 要：方言是我们自幼长大就非常熟知的一门语言，我们称它为第一语言。在学习第二语言的时候，我们通常会运用已有的第一语言的知识去影响第二语言的学习。本文作者的方言为大同话，第二语言为英语，在英语学习中，常常遇到英语发音不标准，口音中夹杂一种大同味道的英语。究其原因，则要提到一种语言学习中的迁移理论。本文主要研究的是大同方言发音对英语发音的负迁移影响。

关键词：大同方言语音；英语发音；负迁移

Abstract：The dialect is the language we are so familiar with since we were born，we call it the first language.We will always use the knowledge of the first language what we have already known to study the second language.As a Da Tong dialect speaker，my second language is English.In English learning，I always encountered in the nonstandard pronunciation，which has a tone of Da Tong dialect.If we want to know the reason，we will introduce a theory called Transfer Theory.Here we mainly study the effect of negative transfer of Da Tong Dialect phonetics to English pronunciation.

Key words：DaTongDialect；phonetics；Englishpronunciation；negativetransfer

When learning English，people who have their own dialect will be fiddly and affected by the first language they knew.It is called the negative transfer on the first language to the second language.The article will discuss the pronunciation of Da Tong Dialect about the initial（sheng mu）and final（yun mu）of Da Tong Dialect and the pronunciation principles of it，and the pronunciation of English including the vowels and consonants and articulation of English.

1 The Initial（ShengMu）of Da Tong Dialect（Compared with Mandarin）

There are differences on the initials between Da Tong Dialect and mandarin.The initial of Da Tong Dialect doesnt have retroflex consonant（blade palatal）of mandarin，for example，zh[t]、ch[t‘]、sh[‘]、r[z].So if a Da Tong Dialect speaker want to say“睡覺”（shui jiao）、“吃饭”（chi fan）、“喝粥”（he zhou），he will say“sui jiao”、“ci fan”“he zou”.

2 The Final（Yun Mu）of Da Tong Dialect（Compared with Mandarin）

When we talked about the comparison between Da Tong dialect and mandarin，we will find that when Da Tong dialect speakers meet the vowel final[o]and[e]，they will mixture the pronunciation and pronounce[e]，so when they say the words like“活泼”（huo po），they will say（hue pe）.And for Da Tong dialect，there will also be a confusion of[ai]and[ei]，which will cause the wrong pronunciation like雪白（xue bai）to be（xue bei），The third mixture pronunciation is between[ian]and[ie]，they will say“大连”（da lian）to be（da lie）.

the Effect of Negative Transfer of Da Tong Dialect to English Pronunciation：

2.1 The Initial Vs.The Consonant

In Da Tong Dialect，there is no‘[w]，so we will always read the words‘where[wε?]”like[vε?]；‘watch[w ? t?]like[v ? t?]，because we cannot fix out[w]and[v].

In Da Tong Dialect，we dont have[θ][ ?] [?][t?][ tr][ r][d?][dr]，so we will read the words“thank[θ ? ? k]”like [s ? ? k]，this[? i s]like[z is]，and we are always not easy to read the retroflex consonant， because we dont have any retroflex consonant.So we will also mistake the word“fish[f i?]”into [f i s]，“sheep[?i： p]”into[s i： p].

2.2 The Final and Vowel

Through the comparison in finals of Da Tong dialect and mandarin，now it will be not difficult for us to conduct a comparison in phonetics between English and Da Tong Dialect.The English vowel[?：]，[?]will be mixed with the final[e]，so‘watch[w?：t?]will be read into[v?：t?].and the vowel[u]will be pronounced like[?u]，so‘lookwill be read like[l?uk].Besides，the vowel[?]will be read like[an]by a Da Tong dialect when he said the verb‘said.And for the negative transfer on the diphthong，we will always read[ai]to be[ei]，but sometimes[ei]to be[ai]，like the verb‘like，but we always will read it into[leik].

The article will be benefit to uplift the interest to learn English and encourage leaners to produce English correctly and natively like the local people and avoid the circumstance that the pronunciation sounds like‘not-so-professionaland‘not-so-native.

References

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作者简介

肖悦琴（1992—），女，汉族，山西大同，硕士，山西财经大学，2015级，外国语言学及应用语言学，英语教学方向。