Non-native pronunciations of English

Non-native speakers of the English language tend to carry the intonation, phonological processes and pronunciation rules from their mother tongue into their English speech. They may also create innovative pronunciations for English sounds not found in the speaker's first language.

Grammar differences (for example the lack or surplus of tense, number, gender etc.) in different languages often lead to grammatical mistakes that are tell-tale signs of their native language. Sometimes non-verbal body language cues also give away the origin of the speaker.

Another factor is how the English language is taught to foreign students. The pronunciation students use will be affected by that used by their teachers. Thus, there may be distinctive features of pronunciation in those speakers from a particular country, such as India, Hong Kong, or Malaysia.

Non-native accents by region in alphabetical order:

Afrikaans

• Afrikaans has a voiced /ɦ/ rather than English’s voiceless /h/, this may carry over when speaking English.
• Non-rhotic accent. Typically, r may be otherwise trilled.
• [p t k] are unaspirated, which may sound like [b d g]
• Final obstruent devoicing.
• Interdental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/ become labiodental [f] and [v] respectively.

Arabic

• Trouble with many English vowels, since Classical Arabic has only long and short forms of three vowels: [a i u]. Depending on the speaker's original dialect, the ease of learning English vowels may be facilitated by allophones of these three vowels.
• /p/ is often pronounced like b - Arabic doesn't have [p].
• /v/ is sometimes pronounced like f, the word vitamin is faytamin in Arabic - Arabic doesn't have [v].
• Arabic has only [ʒ] (although in Egypt, the same sound has not undergone the same palatization as most other dialects and retains the archaic [g]). As a result, [ʒ] and [dʒ] may be confused.
• Final obstruent devoicing.
• [r] is trilled, as it is in Arabic.

Bulgarian

• /ð/as in "the" or "then" is often pronounced as [d].
• /θ/ as in "thong" or "thorough" may be pronounced as [t].
• Sometimes "he" or "she" is used where "it" should; on the other hand, ships could be referred to as "it."
• Overuse of definite articles, especially in phrases whose Bulgarian equivalents require articles, like "the Bulgarians usually..." instead of "Bulgarians usually..."
• Pronunciation of English /h/as the velar fricative [x](as in Spanish "Jose").
• Voiced consonants at the end of the words may be pronounced as voiceless, like "bat" instead of "bad."
• Tendency to pronounce [ʌ] as [ə] in words like "sun", "up", "under."
• /r/ may be pronounced as an alveolar trill, absent in English, or with a hard rhotic accent at the end of words (like "car", "fire" etc.)

Cantonese Chinese

see also Hong Kong English

• /r/, pronounced as [l] or sometimes [w].
• Non-rhotic (more common if schooled in Hong Kong because of British influence).
• /v/, pronounced as [w].
• 'wh', pronounced as [w](this is the case for many native speakers of English as well).
• /θ/, pronounced as [f].
• [n] and [l] often confused (these two sounds are allophones of one sound in Cantonese).
• Differences in ending sounds.
• Devoicing of final /b/, /d/ and /g/, making 'nip'/'nib', 'rot'/'rod' and 'flock'/'flog' indistinguishable.
• Tendency to epinthesize [i] after word-final 'sh', 'ch', or 'j'.
• Often dropping or not distinguishing articles like 'the' and 'a'.
• Difficulty with verb tenses and plurals in general, as they have no direct equivalence in Chinese grammar.
• Confusion of 'he', 'she', and sometimes 'it', as all have the same pronunciation in Chinese.
• Marked conversion of accents into tones, as Cantonese is a tonal language.
• Introducing end-of-sentence particles that are non-existent in English (this occurs primarily in writing rather than in speech).

Czech

• Devoicing of word-final voiced consonants.
• Trouble distinguishing between /ɛ/ and /æ/.
  • With the two above combined, the following words will all sound alike: "bet": "bad", "bed", "bat", "bet"
• Frequent voicing of /s/ between vowels, and especially after /n/, /l/, and /r/, as in "insert" or "increasing" (becoming "inzert" and "increazing")
• Prevalent mispronouncing of the 'u' in words such as "purple" or "Murphy" as a [ʌ]: the 'u' in these words is mistakenly believed to represent about the same sound as in "but", often prolonged to the quality of "bar"
• 'h' (as in "heart") is voiced, as it is in Czech.
• Word-final /l/ (as in "bill") is not velarized, as it is for a number of native English speakers, making it of the same quality as the initial 'l' in "lip."
• Frequent lack of aspiration on unvoiced consonants, making "park" and "bark" harder to distinguish.
• Difficulty in distinguishing between /v/ and /w/ since the latter does not appear in Czech phoneme inventory.
• Prevalent misconception of 'oo' as representing a long vowel where it should be short (thus rhyming words as "book", "hook" and "foot" with "loot" instead of "put").
• Frequent pronouncing -ing as "ink", thus making "thing" and "think" homonyms
• Some trouble with /ð/ and /θ/.

Dutch

• Pronouncing voiced consonants as voiceless (d->t, v->f, z->s), especially at the end of the words; for example, "pod" would sound like "pot."
• The 'th' sounds do not exist in Dutch. Most commonly, /ð/ becomes [d] ("though" sounds like "dough") and /θ/ becomes [s] or [t] ("think" sounds like "sink" or "tink").
• Stereotypically, a Dutch speaker from around Amsterdam may make s sound more like sh.
• Pronouncing /r/ either slightly rolling, as in Dutch, or hypercorrecting it and sounding more like 'w'.
• The pronunciation of vowels differs widely across Dutch dialects. All dialects lack the /ʌ/ in "put", the /ɒ/ in "pot" (although American English speakers lack this sound as well) and the /æ/ in "pat." The latter of the three is usually realized as /ɛ/.
• Speakers from Limburg can often be identified by their intonation, even when speaking English or most any other foreign language. Their native dialect has various tones, and charactistically sentences end in the up-and-down intonation.

East Asia and Southeast Asia (including Vietnamese, Chinese)

• Due to the syllabic nature of their native languages, East Asians tend to drop the ending sound of English words, e.g. "an", "ant", & "and" sound the same.
• When raising the tone at the end of a question "You did what?", often the last syllable is lengthened and sounds almost like it is being sung.

Finnish

• An absence of the English tonal variation. Finnish is a particularly monotonous language, where the tone is typically falling, and it has no meaning-distinguishing effect at all. Thus, speakers usually have difficulty with the meaning-distinguishing rising tone of a question. The tempo of general speech is usually slower, which is how Finns typically speak.
• There may be an absence of the word "please", because there is no direct equivalent in Finnish.
• In Finland, the traditional teaching policy focuses on writing with correct spelling and grammar, but pronunciation or usage gets less attention. This might lead to pronunciations imitating the spellings, e.g. "font" pronounced as [font], unlike the native English [fɒnt], or "count" becomes [kount] instead of [kaʊnt].
• Voicing (p vs. b, etc.) is not phonemic in Finnish, and due to this, voiced consonants may be devoiced. This includes:

• Variation of voicing inside a long word shows the problems, even if short words are correctly pronounced. For example, bed, pet and bet may be distinct, but probably becomes propably or even propaply.
• Devoicing of /b/ into [p], or confusing them when they appear in the same word. This is because in native Finnish pronunciation, 'b' is often pronounced identically to 'p', e.g. both baari (bar, pub) and paari (par) are pronounced paari. The mispronunciation bubi "pub" is found in Finnish.
• Sometimes, /k/ and /g/ are both pronounced 'k', e.g. inkredient, where the "k" is a devoiced "g".
• The English voiced sibilant /z/ becomes the unvoiced [s], e.g. roses ['rəυzi:z] becomes [rousiːs]. When the spelling is 's', it is always pronounced 's'. When the spelling is 'z', attempts at voicing might be observed e.g. with haze vs. hays, but usually these are identical with the latter.
• As in German, the letter 'z' is used to write /ts/ in the Finnish alphabet. This may carry over to English, especially word-initially so that zealous might be pronounced [tselos]. It may also be pronounced [dʒelos] since Finnish speakers may confuse /z/ with the voiced affricate [dʒ]. This would make zealous and jealous indistinct.
• Difficulty with both voiced /ð/ (as in the [ðə]) and unvoiced /θ/ (as in thin [θɪn]) dental fricatives. Usually the pronunciation is not a fricative, but more like a dental /t/ or /d/. For example, thick might be pronounced [t̪ik]. While those speaking with other foreign accents may do so, Finnish speakers do not typically replace dental fricatives with alveolar fricatives ('s' or 'z').
• Difficulty distinguishing between voiced [ʒ] and unvoiced [ʃ] postalveolars, e.g. pleasure [pleʒɚ] is pronounced with either [s] or [ʃ]. The affricate [dʒ] as in "jump" typically becomes unvoiced i.e. [tʃ], or even alveolar [ts].

• The sound [ʃ] does not exist as a native phoneme in Finnish. While speakers typically have no trouble producing the sound, slip ups may occur.
• The Finnish set of vowels is extensive enough to contain the relevant English vowels, and results in little vowel confusion. However, of English pure vowels, Finnish recognizes only "tense" vowels [a: e: i: o: u: y: æ: ø:], but does not recognize lax vowels [ə ɜ ʌ ɒ ɑ ɪ ɔ ʊ]. They are replaced by short "tense" vowels instead, thus there is no vowel quality contrast; in this respect, the Finnish accent works like Australian English. Thus, we have tick as [tik] and teak as [ti:k], unlike in native English, where the former is a lax vowel.
• In Finnish, there is no vowel reduction as there is in English. As a result, Finnish speakers put in non-reduced vowels in place of vowels that are typically reduced in native pronunciations. Examples:

• There is no schwa in Finnish; typically the rounded cardinal vowel [ø] replaces it. The [ə] and [ɜ] may be transformed into Ö [ø] or Ä [æ]. The word "baker" might be [beikkør] instead of [beikəɹ], or "bird" [bɜːd] may become [bøːd].
• Similarly, when there is an 'a' in spelling but a schwa [ə] in pronunciation, it is pronounced [æ]. The word "American" might be pronounced ['æmerikæn] instead of [ə'merɪkən].
• The back vowels/ʌ/ and /ɑ/ (the u in 'cut' and the ar in 'cart') both merge into become the latter[ɑ]. They do contrast in length, so that "cut" [kʌt] is pronounced [kɑt] while "cart" [kɑ:t] remains as is. In contrast, [æ] remains as is, as it is a different phoneme from the /ɑ/ in Finnish.

• Vowel length allophony is reproduced reliably, as the difference is phonemic in Finnish.
• Finnish speakers never use the glottal stop [ʔ] as an allophone of /t/ like many English speakers do.
• The English "tense" and "lax" (i.e. vowels contrasted by quantity and advanced tongue root) are completely replaced with their respective quantity-contrasted vowels (short and long vowels), which differ only by length, not by quality like in English. E.g. "bit" is pronounced [bɪt] by native speakers but Finns typically say [bit]. Thus, the only difference between "bit" and "beat" is vowel length [biːt]
• Aspiration does not exist in Finnish and it is not heard, i.e. "top" [t^hop] and "stop" [stop] are differentiated only by the 's'. However, sometimes Finnish-speakers pronounce a geminate instead in the medial position. (Finnish phonetics do not allow initial or final geminates.) Geminates might also be used incorrectly, due the "generic gemination", e.g. Inttöönet ['inttøːnet] instead of ['ɪntənet].
• The English approximant R /ɹ/ is usually pronounced rolled [r] as in Finnish, or imitated in some innovative, but incorrect way, e.g. using a creaky voice instead of actual rhoticity. However, many speakers are able to produce the English R.
• The sounds V and W are both reduced to the Finnish approximant V [ʋ], which is something between them, i.e. a [v] without any fricative quality.
• Due to Finnish always stressing the first syllable, English words accented on the second syllable are often misstressed, e.g. "vocabulary" is ['ʋokæbulæri] instead of the correct [və'kæbjυləri].
• In Finnish, there is only one pronoun for "he" and "she," and needing to remember to distinguish the two can cause slip-ups. There are also no articles like "the" and "a" and Finns may have difficulty remembering to include them when speaking.

French

• The dental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/ are not phonemes in French:
  • Speakers of Quebecois French often pronounce them as [t] [d] respectively.
  • Speakers of Continental French tend to pronounce them as [s] and [z].
  • French speakers may also pronounce them as [f] and [v].
• [tʃ] as in child, is often pronounced as [ʃ] as in Charlotte
• [dʒ] as in jam, is often pronounced as [ʒ] as in Jacques
• May drop 'h' sound or insert 'h' sound in front of vowels.
• Rolled or uvular /ʀ/

German

• th pronounced as s or z. (German lacks both [θ] and [ð].)
• s sometimes also pronounced as z or vice versa. Hochdeutsch (Standard German) lacks initial [s]; some dialects, however, such as Bavarian, have only [s] and lack [z] entirely.
• Word-final voiced stops /b d g/ may be devoiced to sound like [p t k]. This is usually the hardest to overcome.
• [dʒ] as in jam, may be devoiced (especially by speakers from southern Germany), being pronounced as [tʃ].
• Since German adverbs are identical in form to adjectives, Germans often drop the ending -ly from English adverbs.
• Lack of distinction between [æ] and [ɛ]: thus "man" and "men" are pronounced as the latter.
• The German rhotic consonant varies from region to region so speakers from different areas will pronounce the English /ɹ/ differently:
  • Many German dialects, including Hochdeutsch, have a uvular [ʀ], [χ], or [ʁ] as in French and Danish. This is pronounced at the back of the throat, and in the case of the latter two may seem harsh or grating to native speakers of English.
  • German speakers may use an alveolar [r] as in Italian or Scottish. The German metal rock band Rammstein can be heard to use this in their music.
  • Several German dialects are non-rhotic, this may carry over into a speaker's English pronunciation. British English and some North American dialects in the Northeast are also non-rhotic and this is less noticeable. Large number of German speakers also have a rhotic accent.
  • Some German dialects use the same [ɹ] as native English speakers.
• German speakers may pronounce /w/ as [v], and /v/ as [f]. However, Bavarian lacks /v/, and Bavarians usually learn /w/ more easily than /v/.
• "qu" may sound like "kv" rather than "kw" due to the German prounciation of qu; quick then becomes kvick.
• Inappropriate use of "he/she" pronouns for animals and inanimate objects. (German nouns have grammatical gender, so a foot is a "he", a child an "it", and a newspaper a "she".)
• Difficulty in correct stressing of syllables; in most German words, the first syllable is stressed. Exceptions include words beginning with be-, ge-, er-, ver-, zer-, ent-, (and a few other prefixes); compound adverbs with her, hin, da, or wo; and loanwords to German from other languages. The stress normally falls on the second syllable in the former two examples.

Greek

• Usually rolled [r]
• [ʃ] (ship) often becomes [s] (sip)
• [tʃ] as in child, is often pronounced as 'ts'
• [dʒ] as in jam, is often pronounced as 'dz'
• [h] is sometimes pronounced [x] (like the Spanish: "Jose" or German: "Bach")
• intervocalic g often pronounced as y
• voicing of prenasalized stops
  • 'nt' becomes 'nd' (Indernet)
  • 'mp' becomes 'mb', especially if followed by a vowel

Hebrew

• The most common Hebrew dialect has only 5 vowels (though some distinguish between an additional four, normally pronounced the same) and generally does not use diphthongs (except for foreign borrowings); Hebrew speakers may therefore mispronounce some of the English vowels.
• /ð/ as in "the" is often pronounced as d (less commonly as z).
• [θ] as in "think" is often pronounced as t, s or f.
• Native English speakers typically velarize /l/ in words like "mill" [mɪɫ]. Hebrew speakers don't do this and their /l/ is always "soft" or "clear."
• Historically, the Hebrew /r/ was an alveolar flap as in Spanish. Influence from European languages has led to Hebrews of European descent using a uvular [ʀ], [χ], or [ʁ] as in French or German.

The Indian Subcontinent

Note: There are many different languages and language families in India such as Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Urdu, Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi, and Tamil. Because of dominance by the British Empire for so long (See History of India) English is a commonly spoken language in India, especially in administration and as a Lingua Franca. Attempts at describing an "Indian" accent will naturally oversimplify variation that appears from one Indic language to another.

• Fast speech tempo with choppy syllables.
• Rhythmic variation of pitch.
• Use of the present continuous/progressive ("-ing") rather than simple present: "He has a car" becomes "He is having a car."
• The rhotics /ɻ/ or /ɽ/ may be used instead of English /ɹ/.
• The English alveolar stops /t/ and /d/, are likely to be perceived by many native Indic and Dravidian language speakers as the retroflex consonants /ʈ/ and /ɖ/ respectively. /l/ may also be retroflex. This leads to the "hollow" pronunciation of English by many Asian Indians.
• Dental fricatives may be pronounced as dental stops.
• The use of the double-positive, "Yeah, right," which in colloquial native English is a flippant way of saying "No" but to an Indian speaker of English is merely a double affirmation of correctness
• Possible incorrect aspiration. Many Indic languages have distinct aspirated and plain pairs of consonants in addition to voicing; speakers may have difficulty with correctly identifying or producing allophones of /p t k/ when they are unaspirated.
• Confusing 'p' and 'f' (among North Indians).
• Difficulty with /v/ and /w/. /w/ is not a common phoneme in Indic languages and speakers may produce both as /v/. /ʋ/, a labiodental approximant, is another possibility.
• Use of "isn't it?" in place of all other tag questions: "He is tall, isn't it?"
• Vocabulary variations: "stay" instead of "live" (in a particular place), "cabin" instead of "office", "sit with" for "have a meeting with".

See also Indian English.

Icelandic

• Difficulty with /w/ and /v/.
• Icelandic doesn't have /ʃ/ or /ʒ/ and speakers may pronounce them as [s] and [z] respectively.
• Devoicing of the voiced consonants [b d g] in word-final position.
• /r/ is trilled in Icelandic. Speakers may have difficulty with the English [ɹ].

Italian

• Old-fashioned pronunciation of past tenses such as flipped as two syllables instead of the modern pronunciation "flipt".
• Tendency to pronounce the English high lax vowels /ɪ/ /ʊ/ as [i] [u] (ex: "fill" and "feel", "put" "poot" are homonyms), since Italian doesn't have these vowels.
• Tendency to pronounce /ŋ/ as [ŋg] ("singer" rhymes with "finger") because Italian [ŋ] is an allophone of /n/ before velar stops.
• Tendency to pronounce /sl/ /sm/ /sn/ as [zl zm zn]. In English, the second consonant would assimilate the voicelessness of 's' but in Italian the process is reversed and /s/ assimilates the voicing.
• Tendency to pronounce [ʌ] as [a] or [ɔ] so that "hut" may sound like "hat" or "hot."
• Tendency to pronounce [ɒ] (British English) as [ɔ] ("cot" => "caught"). This is not as significant in North America since the two sounds have merged in many places (see Cot-caught merger). However, while in North America the phoneme has [ɑ] and [ɔ] as allophones, in Italian it is always an [ɔ], except when speakers deliberately try to have an American accent, where an [a] is often used.
• Italian does not have dental fricatives:
  • Voiceless /θ/ may be replaced with a dental [t̪].
  • Voiced /ð/ may become a dental [d̪].
• Since /t/ and /d/ are typically pronounced as dental stops anyway, words like "there" and "dare" can become homonyms.
• /æ/ pronounced as [ɛ]. This and the above three tendencies, make many Italians unable to pronounce death and that differently.
• Tendency to pronounce [p t k] as unaspirated stops.
• Schwa [ə] does not exist in Italian and speakers may pronounce an 'i' or 'a' instead.
• Due to the high prevalence of words ending in vowels in Italian, speakers may epenthesize vowels at the end of English words that end in consonants. This has led to the stereotype of Italian speakers adding an –a to every word ending in a consonant. In reality, this feature is more reminiscent of an occasional slip-up.
• Tendency to pronounce words as they are spelled so that "aren't" is more like [a.rɛnt], "tomb" as [tɔmb] and "chocolate" as [tʃɔ.ko.leit].
• In the diphthongs [aɪ eɪ ɔɪ aʊ] the second vowel is tense and lasts almost as long as the first. Sometimes they are pronounced as two syllables so that "toy" is [tɔ.iː] and "cow" is [ka.uː]
• English 'o' is a diphthong /oʊ/. Italian speakers often pronounce it as /o/.
• Most Italian accents are rhotic, wherein 'r' is either a trill [r] or a flap [ɾ] and speakers may have difficulty learning the English /ɹ/.
• Italian doesn't have /h/ sound and speakers may not pronounce it.
• Tendency to make double consonants geminate, e.g. the two p's in "happy" become a longer 'p' sound: This happens because geminate consonants are distinctive in Italian and, as mentioned above, Italian speakers tend to use spelling as a cue to pronunciation.
• In Italian, the letter 'z' is used for the alveolar affricates [ts] and [dz]. While rare, it is possible for speakers to mistakenly carry this over to English pronunciation instead of [z].

Japanese

• Tendency to confuse /l/ and /r/, since they are indistinct in Japanese. Both are often pronounced as [ɺ].
• In Japanese, there is no /f/. However, before /u/, /h/ becomes [ɸ] and this sounds close to an /f/. Speakers may have difficulty perceiving the difference between [fu] and [hu].
• Other than in front of /u/ Japanese speakers may produce [p] instead of [f].
• Japanese also lacks [v]. Typically, [b] and [w] replace it (i.e. video becomes bideo or wideo). It is typically the former since /w/ does not exist in Japanese.
• Japanese has a largely consonant-vowel syllable structure (although there are some clusters that include prenasalized stops) and so both consonant clusters and words ending in consonants may have epenthetic vowels (usually o or u). Between voiceless consonants, these epinthetic vowels (and already existing vowels as well) may be voiceless.
• May have trouble distinguishing 'm' and 'n' before bilabial consonants (b, m, & p)
• Articles such as "the" and "a" are often dropped.
• Difficulty remembering to distinguish between singular and plural nouns.
• There are a number of phonological processes that Japanese speakers may transfer to English:
  • Alveolars become postalveolars in front of /i/ and /j/.
    • /s/ becomes [ʃ]. (Some well-educated speakers hypercorrect their speech and make most instances of [ʃ] into [s].)
    • /t/ and /d/ become [tʃ] and [dʒ].
    • The epinthetical vowel (mentioned above) after syllables ending in /ʃ/ and /dʒ/ is usually [i].
    • /h/ becomes like the German [ç].
  • Alveolar stops become africated in front of /u/.
    • /t/ and /d/ become [ts] and [dz] or [z]..
• Gemination of consonants like 'k', 's', 't' and 'p' in some occurrences. This may be attributable to inappropriate use of the gemination mark or sokuon when transliterating.
• Difficulty pronouncing /w/ sound except before 'a'.
• Usage of pitch accent, as is normal in Japanese, rather than the standard English stress accent.
• Dental fricatives are absent in Japanese and may be pronounced as alveolar fricatives or dental stops.
• Often misrepresent schwa [ə] as a short [a].
• Difficulty pronouncing the lax vowels [æ ɪ ʊ ʌ], since these sounds do not exist in Japanese.
• May reverse "yes" and "no" for a negative question. This is because the Japanese words for "yes" and "no" literally translate into "That's right" and "That's wrong" respectively.

Korean

• Difficulty distinguishing /r/ and /l/ since they are allophones of the same Korean letter. The phoneme /r/ may be pronounced [l] in both the syllable-final and syllable-initial positions. Intervocalic /l/ may be pronounced [r]. Most Korean speakers will speak with a rhotic accent.
• Devoicing of initial (and sometimes final) consonants, since Korean does not have voiced initials nor voiced finals.
• The labiodental fricative sounds do not exist in Korean, so /v/ becomes [b] and /f/ becomes [p].
• Postalveolars do not exist as phonemes in Korean so the names 'Jack' and 'Zack' are likely to sound exactly the same.
• Dental fricatives do not exist in Korean:
  • [θ] may become [s] or [t̪].
  • [ð] may become [z] or [d̪].
• Tendency to epenthisize vowels on words ending with consonants. This is less likely with voiceless stops and sonorants. Usually the vowel is [i] with syllables ending in fricatives. .
• Tendency to break up consonant clusters with [ə]. Consonants may also be deleted in clusters or at the end of words
• Word-final voiced consonants may become devoiced.
• Plural markers are often omitted.
• Korean has most of the vowels in English (Except for /æ/) and /ɔ/ so there isn't much difficulty producing them. However, speakers tend to ignore vowel reduction processes and pronounce words as they are spelled.

Malay and Indonesian

• Difficulty distinguishing between tense and lax vowels Malay and Indonesian have only 6 vowel sounds.
• Dental fricatives are pronounced as stops.

Mandarin Chinese

• Mandarin phonology permits only /n/, /ŋ/ and /ɻ/ in postvocalic positions. Therefore, speakers may have difficulty in the many words that have postvocalic consonants, often following them with a vowel sound.
• Trouble with dental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/. They are typically pronounced as alvoelar fricatives.
• /v/ may be pronounced as [f] or [w] since the latter does not exist in Mandarin phonology.
• Word-final devoicing of voiceless consonants.
• While both English and Mandarin distinguish between plain and aspirated stops rather than voicing, several allophones of English aspirated sounds are unaspirated and several allophones of plain stops are voiced. In Mandarin, this allophonic variation doesn't exist and Mandarin speakers may aspirate or devoice when native English speakers would not.
• Tonalization of English syllables, as Chinese is a tonal language; Usually a combination of high and falling for stressed syllables, as well as neutral and low tones for unstressed syllables.
• Confusion of [l] and [r]. Chinese has no final [l] sound or initial [r] sound, though there is a voiced retroflex fricative that sounds similar to [r].

Maori

• /ɾ/ is a tap, like with Spanish. Typically speech is non-rhotic
• Aspirated consonants [pʰ] [tʰ] [kʰ] are unaspirated, sounding like 'b' 'd' and 'g.'

See also: New Zealand English

Nigeria

Note:Many Nigerians are educated entirely in English, but their first language, spoken at home, is a native Nigerian language, such as Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo or Ibibio.

• /θ/ and /ð/ tend to be replaced by [t] and [d].
• Non-rhotic. The actual rhotic consonant varies but may be an alveolar flap, trill, or just like the English /ɹ/. When it is the latter of the three, the accent would sound more like native British were it not for the vowel inventories of Nigerian languages.
• Several vowels present in English are absent from Nigerian languages. There is usually variation from region to region on what is used
  • "Bird" ([bɜːd] in RP) is pronounced variably as [baːd] or[beːd]. In the west of the country, [baːd] is more common , while [beːd] is more common in the East.
  • The vowel /ʌ/ is replaced by [o] or [e], so "cut" /kʌt/ is pronounced [kot] or [ket], the latter being Eastern.
  • "O," which is a diphthong in most dialects of English ([əʊ] in RP, [ow] in North American), is generally pronounced as [oː],
  • The diphthong [eɪ] is typically pronounced as [eː].
• Some native Yoruba speakers tend to put [h] at the beginning of words that begin with a vowel.
• Some native Hausa speakers pronounce /p/ as [f].
• Some speakers replace /j/ with [dʒ], so "yet" is pronounced like "jet."
• Speakers may replace /tʃ/ with /ʃ/ in certain contexts, pronouncing "watch" as "wash."
• There is a syllabic rhythm to speech, and unstressed syllables are often pronounced distinctly.
• Words from Nigerian languages are often injected into speech.
• Questions are sometimes constructed as a statement followed by "sha" and a rising tone. Another way of constructing a question is to use "shebi" or "abi" as a marker at the beginning of the sentence.
• The meanings of "no" and "yes" are reversed for negative questions relative to standard English ("Yes, I have no bananas"). People often say "I'm coming" as they go away, meaning they'll be back soon.

Persian

• In general, attempting to identify speakers of Persian by their phoneme inventory is difficult since Persian has almost all English consonants and most of its vowels.
  • Persian has no dental fricatives, and speakers tend to substitute stops in their place.
  • Persian has no /w/ and [v] is typically used instead.
  • If they haven't learned to pronounce the English approximant /ɹ/ then a speaker may have a trilled or flapped 'r.'
• The final vowel is often lengthened in long words while stressing the first syllable
• Consonant clusters that Persians find difficult may be separated by epinthetical vowels or simplified through deletion. The epinthetical vowel may be at the beginning of the word in cases of words like "stop" to make it sound more like "e-stop."
• Final -ng may become -nk as in "studyink economic".

Philippines

• Tagálog and many other native languages do not have a number of phonemes present in English and so there is a tendency to substitute these phonemes especially if the speaker in not fluent in English:
  • Labiodental fricatives may become bilabial stops.
  • /z/ may become [s] since Tagálog has only the latter.
• Some sounds may be interchanged
  • /dʒ/ may become [dj].
  • [ʃ] may become [sj]
  • [tʃ] may become [tj].
• Tagálog has only five vowels, so the many vowel sounds in English may be mapped to the nearest-sounding existing vowel. However, a number of English vowels appear in Tagalog allophonically in unstressed positions and this may facilitate a speaker's ability to learn the vowels.
• Tendency to epinthesize vowels when dealing with consonant clusters.(e.g., sport may become is-port).
• Speakers may mix up "he," "she," and "it." Tagálog does not distinguish gender in pronouns.
• Tagálog 'r' is an alveolar flap. Speakers may have difficulty pronouncing the English 'r.'
• Rhotic speech, so 'r' is pronounced even in the coda of a syllable.

Polish

• Polish has no dental fricatives. Apical stops or labiodental are typically substituted. In the past, alveolar fricatives were known to be used.
• Voiced consonants may become voiceless in word-final positions or may assimilate devoicing when next to voiceless consonants.
• Trouble differentiating similar vowels:
  • /i/ and /ɪ/ sound similar, although the latter could be perceived as /ɨ/, which is a phoneme in Polish.
  • /u/ and /ʊ/ may also be mistaken.
  • /ɛ/ and /æ/ are pronounced as the former. E.g. "man" and "men" are pronounced [mɛn].
• A few commonly used false friends, most prominently "actually" with intended meaning of "at present".
• Problems with articles.
• Inappropriate use of "he/she" pronouns for animals and inanimate objects.

Portuguese

• Portuguese has no dental fricatives. Speakers may pronounce them as dental stops.
• Common mistakes due to Portuguese cognates with different meanings ("false-friends"):
  • "Deception" used when the intended word was "disappointment."
  • "Actual" used when the intention was "current."
  • "To pretend" used when the intention was "to intend."
• Portuguese has no /ɪ/ and it may be substitutded for /i/. However, it could be perceived as /ɨ/, which is a phoneme in European Portuguese.
• Speakers may make spelling pronunciation mistakes:
  • Occasionally pronounce 'oo' in "door" or "Moore" as /u/
  • May pronounce "apple" as [eɪ.pəl]
• Typically speech is rhotic, having r in the coda. Depending on where the speaker is from, it may be an alveolar [ɾ] or a uvular [ʁ]
• Postalveolar fricatives usually substitute postalveolar affricates.
• /h/ is typically dropped.
• In Brazil, Depending on the speaker's region, alveolar stops /t/ and /d/ may be palatalized before /i/ so that they sound more like [tʃ] and [tʒ]

Romanian

• Romanian does not have dental fricatives:
  • Voiceless /θ/ may be replaced with a dental [t̪].
  • Voiced /ð/ may become a dental [d̪].
• Since /t/ and /d/ are typically pronounced as dental stops anyway, words like "there" and "dare" can become homonyms.
• /æ/ pronounced as [ɛ]. This and the above three tendencies, make many Romanian unable to pronounce death and that differently.
• Tendency to pronounce the English high lax vowels /ɪ/ /ʊ/ as [i] [u] (ex: "fill" and "feel", "put" "poot", "live", "leave" are homonyms), since Romanian doesn't have these vowels.
• Tendency to pronounce /ŋ/ as [ŋg] ("singer" rhymes with "finger") because Romanian [ŋ] is an allophone of /n/ before velar stops.
• Common mistakes due to Romanian cognates with different meanings ("false-friends"):
  • "Eventually" used when the intended word was "probably."
  • "Actual" used when the intention was "current."
• Some speakers may have difficulty in using prepositions. Romanian is an inflected language and use of prepositions is less extensive than in English. While English prepositions modify the meaning of verbs, in Romanian there are separate words for each meaning (e.g. "go in" = "a intra", "go out" = "a ieşi", "go away" = "a pleca", "go ahead" = "a continua".)
• A significant number of Latinate words have identical or very similar spelling in Romanian and English, making pronounciation confusing.

Russian

• There is no /w/ in Russian and speakers typically substitute [v] and will have trouble perceiving the difference between the two.
• There are no dental fricatives in Russian, so they may be replaced with alveolar fricatives or dental stops.
• Alveolar consonants /s/ /d/ /t/ /n/ may be pronounced as dental.
• In Russian, every consonant is either soft or hard. If a consonant appears before /i/, /ɪ/ or /e/ it is likely to be palatalized. This is most noticeable with /t/, /d/, and /n/ as their place of articulation changes from dental or alveolar to postalveolar (which then affricates) or even palatal. Palatalization in cognates may also be a factor: dune, дюна [dʲunə].
• Russian /r/ is an alveolar trill. This may carry over into English. Speakers able to pronounce English /ɹ/ typically velarize it so it comes out as [ˠ]. /l/ may also be a velarized [ɫ]
• Voiced consonants may be devoiced in word-final position, this is normally done in Russian.
• /h/ may be pronounced as a velar fricative [x], which does not exist in most dialects of English.
• Russian has only five or six vowels and speakers may have trouble with vowels not in their native inventories.
  • /ɛ/ and /æ/ are pronounced as the former. E.g. "man" and "men" are pronounced [mɛn].
  • The diphthongs /aɪ/, /eɪ/, and/ɔɪ/ sound with the consonant [j] sound instead of the short /ɪ/. E.g. "high" sounds like [haj], rather than [haɪ].
• Inappropriate use of "he"/"she" when referring to animals or inanimate objects.
• Difficulty with articles such as "a" and "the."

Serbian

• Often a palatalized dental [r̠ʲ] is used instead of the typical English 'r', especially before vowels.
• /h/ is pronounced [x] as in Spanish Jose.
• Difficulty distinguishing between /w/ and /v/ because the former does not exist in Serbian.
• Dental fricatives are typically replaced by apical stops.
• Difficulty with English diphthongs. May pronounce each vowel as distinct.
• Difficulty with pronoun gender, sometimes using "he" or "she" when "it" is most appropriate.
• Trouble with articles like "the" or "a."

Spanish

• Spanish lacks many vowels present in English, often causing the following changes:
  • [æ] becomes [ɛ], [e] or even [a]
  • [ɪ] becomes [i]
  • [ʊ] becomes [u]
  • [ə] becomes the vowel it represents in the written word.
  • [ɔ] becomes [o]
  • [əu] (British) or [oʊ] (American) becomes [o]
  • In general the pronunciation of vowels will tend to follow the Spanish pronunciation of their written form.
• Voiceless stops /p/ /t/ /k/ are unaspirated, making them sound like voiced stops in English.
• Castilian Spanish has both /ʝ/ y and /ʎ/ ll. Most American dialects have lost the distinction (see Yeísmo) and speakers pronounce both as either /ʝ/, /ʒ/, or /dʒ/. Usually, speakers will substitute one of these for English /ʒ/, /dʒ/, and /j/.
• /ʃ/ is pronounced as [tʃ] by many speakers, since the former does not exist in Spanish.
• Pronunciation of both /v/ and /b/ as the same sound, typically [β̞] but [v] and [b] are also possibilities depending on the region.
• /z/ is often devoiced to [s].
• Often a word beginning with [s] + consonant will obtain an epinthetical vowel (typically [e] or [ɛ]) to make "sprite" sound more like "esprite."
• Some difficulty with dental fricatives. European speakers may not have trouble with /θ/ but speakers from any Spanish-speaking community tend to pronounce /ð/ as a dental stop. Sometimes /θ/ may be pronounced as [f].
• Intervocalic and final /b/, /d/, and /g/, become the corresponding approximants [β̞], [ð̞], and [ɣ̞], as it is done in standard and Latin American Spanish.
• Occasional mispronunciation of final /m/ as [n], e.g. "welcome" -> "welcon." This is how it is pronounced in the few Spanish words ending in "m" (most notably, "álbum" and "réquiem").
• Pronunciation of final /ŋ/, especially before non-velar consonants, as [n] (sing -> seen), because [ŋ] is an allophone of /n/ before velar stops.
• Spanish has a trilled /r/ and an alveolar flap, /ɾ/. Speakers may have the former word-initially and the latter intervocalically.
• Most accents are rhotic. There are a few exceptions such as in Gibraltar and some dialects of Castilian.
• /h/ is either pronounced as [x] or dropped. The former is because the closest Spanish sound to [h] is [x]; the latter because a written "h" is silent in Spanish.
• Syllabe-final /s/ may sometimes turn into /h/ or dropped altogether, as it is done in some Spanish dialects.

See also: Spanglish.

Swahili

• Devoicing of consonants in word-final position
• Some speakers have trouble with dental fricatives, pronouncing them as either dental stops or alveolar fricatives. This is not uniform.
• Some speakers have difficulty distinguishing between /l/ and /r/. Most dialects are non-rhotic and the rhotic consonant for Swahili speakers is an alvoelar flap
• Stress is often placed on the penultimate syllable: newspaper is newspaper.

Swedish

• Sing-songy intonation. Swedes often speak English with a melodic intonation, ending sentences on an up-note, much parodied (The Swedish Chef from The Muppet Show is a well known example.)
• Difficulty pronouncing dental fricatives. Usually a dental stop or labiodental fricative is substituted.
• Swedish lacks a /z/, it is often pronounced [s].
• /tʃ/ is often pronounced as [ʃ]. This could be caused by a mix-up with Swedish orthography, where ch often has a sound more like English sh.
• /dʒ/ as in jump is sometimes pronounced as [ʒ] (pleasure) or even [j] (yellow), (the latter could be caused by mix-up with Swedish orthography, where j has this sound).
• Some difficulty in verb conjugations (e.g. "they is"). Swedish verbs do not inflect for person.
• Different swedish dialects have different realizations of /r/. They range from alveolar trills and flaps to uvular sounds and even retroflex fricatives.
• The /ʃ/ sound when written as ti (as in nation) may be pronounced as [tʃ]. This could be due to problems with orthography.
• Diphthongs: /aɪ/ may become [aj], and /aʊ/ would become [av]. The former may not be significant and the latter may be due to problems with orthography.
• Words written with rs, rt, rd, rn and rl often turn to retroflex variants of the consonant following r.

See also: Swenglish

Swiss German

• Voiced consonants may be devoiced in all positions, especially word-finally — lenis and fortis plosives may differ in length and aspiration, yet Swiss German dialects do not have any fully voiced plosives. This is not too different from English
• Some dialects have [kx] instead of aspirated [k], hence some speakers use this sound.
• [θ ð] often pronounced like [s] or [t d]; Swiss dialects don't have dental fricatives
• Dialects that have an [æ] phoneme (e.g. Basel, Zurich) usually use this to represent English [æ]; others (e.g. Graubuenden) however use [ɛ], which can then create homonyms.
• Older speakers may use [œ] instead of [ʌ]; other speakers generally use a variant of [a]

Thai

• /r/ is trilled instead of the approximant /ɹ/
• non-rhotic speech
• /l/ at the end of a word is pronounced as [n] or [w]
• /tʃ/, /ʃ/, and /ʒ/ are indistinguishable and pronounced as [cʰ]
• /dʒ/ is pronounced as [j] or [c]
• /g/ is pronounced as [k] (devoiced)
• [z] is pronounced as [s] (devoiced)
• [v] is pronounced as [w] at the beginning of a word
• [v] is pronounced as [p] at the end of a word
• Thai has no dental fricatives and usually substitutes apical stops for them.

Turkish

• Final obstruent devoicing.
• Dental fricatives become dental stops.
• /w/ becomes [β] and/or [v].
• Speakers may trill their r’s when speaking.
• clusters including liquids (those including /l/ and /r/) may have an epinthetical schwa.

External links

• A site collecting recordings of people from different areas reading the same paragraph (most recordings also have an IPA transcription)