Mistake or Vietnamese English

Abstract

It is undeniable that English has become the most popular foreign language in Vietnam nowadays. Nevertheless, among the millions of people speaking English in Vietnam, there are many people who make mistakes in pronunciation. This creates some typical features of so-called “Vietnamese English”. This paper focuses on the mistakesmade by Vietnamese users of English when pronouncing the four English sounds /∫/, / /, /ʧ/ and //. Reasons for the mistakes and some tentative suggestions to mitigate the problem arethen discussed. The mistakes are identified in terms of both wrong manner of articulation and wrong place of articulation of the sounds. It is argued that the mistakes can be explained in terms of inadequate knowledge of the articulation of the sounds and, more importantly, the interference of the mother tongue. Suggestions for effective ways to overcome the difficulty include: careful instruction in how to pronounce the sounds, comparative and contrastive analysis of the phonetic features of the sounds in English and those of the similar sounds in Vietnamese, and more emphasis on drills and practice..