English is Easy to Learn but Difficult to Master

Nowadays English is more and more popular. There are a lot of books teaching people how to learn English. But it should be noted that although English is easy to learn,it is difficult to master. This paper analyzes the reason why it is hard to master from three aspects:speech sounds,vocabulary,grammar.In this paper a large number of examples are given to illustrate the difficulties to master English.

The Differences of Pronunciation between American English and British English

This paper begins with a brief introduction to the two branches of the English language.Analyze the differences pronunciation between American English and British English,then demonstrates the reason why cause the different.Firstly,about four hundred years ago,people from Britain,German,France and many other parts of the world came into the U.S.They not only brought their rich cultures but also their languages too.Secondly,because of its territory expansion and economic development,American English become stronger.And then in different vowels and consonants analyze the differences of pronunciation between American English and British English,and set some examples.

音的象征性及其功能

In English, many sounds and sound groups have symbolism. To study the sounds’ functions will improve our ability of reading and appreciating English poems.

Neutralization of English Consonants

This paper gives a brief account of English consonant cluster's structure and phonetic features from the perspective of the definition and cause of neutralization of English consonants as well as their distinctive features and oppositions.It comes up with the final conclusion that neutralization exists in only thirteen English consonant clusters,among a large number of consonant clusters.

The Negative Transfer from Xinyang Dialect on English Consonant Pronunciation

In the paper, the author presents the negative transfer influence of Xinyang dialect on learners' English consonant pronunciation by comparing their differences in the segmental level, and proposes some suggestions for English pronunciation teaching based on the theories of Contrastive Analysis, the Input Hypothesis.

Experimental Phonetics Contrastive Study on [d?][t?][?]——Spoken by American Native Speakers and Yantai English Learners

The negative transfer of native language influences the English acquisition process of the college students from Yantai in a great degree,both in the segmental and suprasegmental level,while the consonants in the segmental level are influenced most.The paper makes an experimental phonetic contrastive study on [d?],[t?],[?] in the aspect of frication between native English speakers from America and English learners from Yantai basing on processing a large number of English word corpora by using PRAAT.It is found that the degree of frication of [d?],[t?],[?] in American English is strong,while Yantai weak.

A Comparative Analysis of Consonants in Chinese and Arabic Phonetics

Arabic and Chinese are one of the most difficult languages to learn in the world.The mark of Arabic is Pinyin characters plus pinyin symbols.On the other hand,the mark of Chinese is ideographic square shaped characters;each pronunciation of a Chinese character is generally a syllable.There are great differences between Arabic and Chinese consonants,so this paper mainly discusses the similarities and differences between the two languages and their respective characteristics through the comparative analysis of Chinese and Arabic consonants.

The Production of the Sequence -UI- by Francophone Learners of English

This paper considers the renderings of the sequence -UI- by Cameroonian, Gabonese, and native French users learning English with the view to finding out whether French users speaking different L 1s pronounce this sequence in different or similar ways. The data were recordings of items containing -UI- and the contrastive method of analysis was used. It was found that this sequence is rendered in two ways by the learners. Besides, different L2 French-speaking learners tend to pronounce it in the same ways and so do L2 and L1 French-speaking learners. It can therefore be hypothesised that Francophone speakers tend to draw more from French when they speak English than from their respective L 1s.

Acquisition of pronunciation of consonant clusters by Arabic speakers of English as a second language

The study is based on an observation of the pronunciation of a group of undergraduate students of English as a Second Language （ESL） whose mother tongue is Arabic and who have no formal training in the spoken variety of English other than that received in the classroom. The study of acquisition of pronunciation of consonant clusters at morphological, particularly at the morphophonological levels indicates that the learners are sensitive to the syllabic structure viz., cccv type and cccvcc type, at the word-initial, medial and final positions. Samples of words with different consonant clusters were tested with a homogeneous group of students. Words of identical morphological categories were used as the data to test the students＇ level of perception. These were analyzed using Speech Analyzer Version 2.5. The data includes consonant clusters like plosive-fricative, plosive-plosive, fricative-fricative and plosive-fricative-trill/liquid combinations. The results varied according to the perceptual and articulatory abilities of the learners. It was observed that the plosive perception and acquisition of three-consonant clusters of plosive-plosive word initially, plosive-plosive combinations word finally and plosive-fricative type, posed more difficulty for the learners. The tendency to drop one of the consonants of the cluster was more pronounced with syllables ending in plural morphemes and those ending in -mp, -pt, -kt, -nt, -bt, etc. Difficulty was also noticed with the initial plosive＋/r/, plosive＋/1/combinations, especially in word initial positions. Across the syllable boundaries, these clusters are almost inaudible with some speakers. The difficulty in the articulation of these consonant clusters can be accounted for the mother tongue influence, as in the case of many other features. The results of the analysis have a pedagogical implication in the use of such words with consonant clusters, to teach reading skills to the students of undergraduate level in the present setting and promote self-learning through the use of speech tools.

Vietnamese final stop consonants/p, t, k/described in terms of formant transition slopes

It is well known that both bursts and formant transitions serve as separate cues to the place of articulation of initial stop consonants. In Vietnamese, final voiceless stop consonants/p, t, k/are unreleased （i.e., produced without an audible burst）. This provides an opportunity to study these final stop consonants and to compare their characteristics with those of the corresponding initial stop consonants. As unreleased final consonants have not been previously studied, this paper analyses the Vowel-Consonant （VC） and Consonant-Vowel-Consonant （CVC） productions in terms of the transition duration, the starting formant transition values and the slopes of the VC transitions. Measurements have shown that in the same preceding vowel contexts, the 3 final stop consonants/p, t, k/are always clearly differentiated by at least one of the 3 slopes of Fl, F2 or F3. In perception tests, synthesized consonant C in the context/a/-C are recognized as/p/, or/t/, or/k/when the slopes of the/a/-C transition ofF2 and F3 are varied. It means that slopes of the VC transition are an important parameter that allows Vietnamese distinguishing the 3 final voiceless stop consonant/p, t, k/in Vietnamese language. These final stop consonants can also be differentiated in the locus equation space. The study also pointes out that the effects of the final consonants on either long vowels or short vowels. The results explain why Vietnamese can not pronounce the short vowels in isolation.

An Overview of Hong Kong English

The discussion of HKE’s(Hong Kong English)origin,linguistic features,language planning policies and status aims to present a general overview of HKE.Through literature reviewing,it is found that HKE has simpler vowel system and smaller num ber of vowel contrasts,all fricatives are voiceless for most HKE speakers,HKE speaker like to simplify the final consonant clusters or omit the final consonant,the subject of a relative clause is usually missing in the‘zero’-subject relatives,code-mixing,codeswitching and the direct translation(from Cantonese into English or the directive translation of the sound of load-words)are popu lar in HKE speakers’speech,and HKE enjoys the status of second language in Hong Kong,etc.

Interlanguage Phonological System of L1 Cantonese Learners of English

This paper aims to study the unique interlanguage phonological system of the L1 Cantonese learners of English in GuangdongProvince, including the roles of the differences between native language and target language, language transfer and other constraints dur-ing the interlanguage formation process. An experiment has been designed to test the pronunciation of targeted consonants of the voca-tional college students, who are English majors with Cantonese as native language but are also exposed to Mandarin for a long time. Re-sults show that the sounds that do not exist in native language are easily pronounced incorrectly. The phonological system the subjectsdevelop to substitute the targeted consonants is quite different from that of the L1 Cantonese learners from Hong Kong and is also variedfrom that of the L1 Mandarin learners from other province of China's Mainland. It confirms that the L1 Cantonese learners of English inGuangdong Province do have a unique phonological system in their interlanguage and that special attention should be paid by teachersduring the teaching of English pronunciation.

侗泰语与南岛语的历时比较研究

In this article, the anthor expounds that Dong - Tai Language developsfrom Austronesian Family and is at its third developing period.

Intelligibility in Chinese English Spoken in Central China

It is widely accepted nowadays that intelligibility is the essential goal for most learners of English,and it is not necessary for them to mimic all aspects of native-speaker English in order to achieve a high level of intelligibility.However,the features that are needed in order to make oneself easily understood by listeners from elsewhere remain controversial.The current research focuses on thirteen five-minute recordings of conversations between young speakers of English in central China and an interviewer from Britain,in order to determine which features of their speech gave rise to misunderstandings.It was found that,in the 18 tokens of misunderstanding identified,4 resulted from lexical semantics(22%),3 from Chinese place names(17%),3 from grammar(17%),and 11 from pronunciation(61%)(with some tokens cross-classified).The most common phonological factors giving rise to loss of intelligibility were omission of syllables and simplification of word-initial consonant clusters.

Fast global kernel fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm for consonant/vowel segmentation of speech signal

We propose a novel clustering algorithm using fast global kernel fuzzy c-means-F(FGKFCM-F), where F refers to kernelized feature space. This algorithm proceeds in an incremental way to derive the near-optimal solution by solving all intermediate problems using kernel-based fuzzy c-means-F(KFCM-F) as a local search procedure. Due to the incremental nature and the nonlinear properties inherited from KFCM-F, this algorithm overcomes the two shortcomings of fuzzy c-means(FCM): sen- sitivity to initialization and inability to use nonlinear separable data. An accelerating scheme is developed to reduce the compu-tational complexity without significantly affecting the solution quality. Experiments are carried out to test the proposed algorithm on a nonlinear artificial dataset and a real-world dataset of speech signals for consonant/vowel segmentation. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in improving clustering performance on both types of datasets.

先秦汉语叠韵联绵词的声母组配类型

本文提供了先秦汉语全部的叠韵联绵词共139条。(1)在韵素完全相同的情况下,可以根据音节首辅音(声母)的响度序列为双音节结构区分相对轻重;(2)叠韵联绵词双音节结构的形成与音系的复制有关,用"复辅音声母裂化"说难以全部解释。