Contrastive Studies Of English-Chinese Consonant Systems

Learning pronunciation is the basic part of learning any foreign language. In order to be able to speak authentic English, English learners and teachers in China should have a good understanding of the similarities and differences between English and Chinese phonemes. The consonant system, as an important and determining feature of the phonetic system, should require more efforts of study and comparison. Contrastive studies of English and Chinese consonant systems are presented in this paper. Phonetic features of different categories of English and Chinese consonants are explicated in great details, and computer aided acoustic analysis is also applied. In addition, this paper raises suggestion and advice to English learners and teachers on how to avoid mistakes and overcome difficulties in pronunciation of English consonants. Chinese pinyin system is also a target of study in this paper, since the system, as the author holds, is misleading the Chinese learners of English to a considerable extent. The studies are expected to help eliminate common misunderstandings on English consonant pronunciation and to reveal the fundamental differences between English and Chinese consonantal phonemes. Results of contrastive studies show that significant differences exist between the consonant systems of the two languages, and English learners cannot pronounce correctly unless they obliterate the interference from the habits in speaking Chinese.