The 'V' and 'W' of non-native speakers.

[Prezbucky]

ahhhh

i was going to say... it sounded like "wizard" with a Northeastern USA accent.
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Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.

[NinaZara]

When I was small, I used to watch the British sitcom "Mind your language". If I get to watch it again nowadays I still won't get bored. Mr. Brown is so gorgeous! I wish he was my English teacher.

Anyway, I noticed that one character in the sitcom named Anna, from German (I think), couldn't differentiate the 'V' and the 'W' sound. Me and my sisters couldn't understand why she couldn't see the difference because it was very obvious to us. Then now I met many people, I also notice that most or some, Indonesians can't pronounce 's' sound without making the sound 'sh' and the 'z sound sounding like 'j'.

Malaysians usually have problems making the 'th' sound. An American friend told me I tend to make the 't' sound only at the beginning of the words (or was it at the end?).

And we also tend not to stretch our vowels. We feel funny if we do.

[Jamie (K)]

Indonesians don't make "s" into "sh" and "z" into "j" everywhere. They can pronounce them correctly near back vowels (u, o, a), but before front vowels (i, e) they have trouble with them.

[NinaZara]

Okie dokie, Jamie.

[Indiansoil]

Hi NinaZara,

As I said before that I was having the problem of making distinguished sounds when pronouncing words that have the "sh" and the "s" sounds as in "pronunciation", "she", and "shy". If I said "shy", it would sound "sigh". But thank God! Now I can do well!

Well, just few days ago I started taking the "v" and "w" sounds and now I am feeling pretty much comfortable with them too. But I have to be conscious! The problem is with the initial "v" only, as in "victory". Well, I am likely to pronounce it incorrectly if I don't take care of the initial "v".

Okay, now the third problem which I am to handle: "j" and "z". I have not worked on them yet. But now I will take them. I was working on each of these sounds one by one. I am happy now.

I hope I will be able to pronounce them correctly soon.

Have a nice day!

Gopal.

[NinaZara]

Hello Gopal,

Welcome to English-Test.net

You can just call me Nina. 'Zara' just happened to be my favourite clothing line when I first became a member of this forum. It has nothing to do with my name.

[Jamie (K)]

Gopal, I think you have to practice a three-way contrast between "z", "zh" and "j". They're three distinct sounds.

If you had trouble with "s" and "sh", I'm guessing your native language is not Hindi, but probably Gujarati or maybe even Oriya. Can you tell us what it is?

[Tom]

Hello again

Please see this:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=v+and+w+sounds+of+indians&meta=

Tom

[Jamie (K)]

This is very interesting, Tom, thank you. I see that the Hindi speakers in the recordings alternate between [w] and [v], apparently depending on the phonetic context.

The parts about the syntax and word usage are just ordinary aspects of foreigners' use of English. When Indians displaying those syntactic characteristics get into English classes in the US, they'll be viewed as simply making about the same errors any other foreigner makes. The problem is usually that when the Indians arrive as adults, these characteristics are so ingrained that they have horrible trouble passing English classes, despite their very large vocabularies.

[Tom]

Hi

Just read that Hedy Lamarr had trouble pronouncing "Valley of Sorek" in Samson and Delilah. Perhaps because she was also German.

Tom

[Jamie (K)]