The Comparison of the Phonological and Pronunciation Aspects

on English and Bugis Language

By:

LISA BINTI HARUN

(0203517065/ROMBEL 3)

A Research Paper

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

Final Test of Second Language Acquisition Subject

GRADUATE PROGRAM

STATE UNIVERSITY OF SEMARANG

2018
 1. Introduction
A. Background of the Study

Language is one of the most uniquely human capacities that our species
possesses, and one that is involved in all others, including consciousness, sociality
and culture. Language is something that cannot be separated from man’s life
which is none of man’s activity where language is not required. We employ the
symbolic system of language to make meaning and communicate with other
fellow humans. We mean and communicate about immediate realities as well as
about imagined and remembered worlds, about factual events as well as about
intentions and desires. It has given a big impact to man’s civilization development
until man can deliver and develop his thoughts. Moreover, language itself is a
verbal communication and interaction device that only own by man and can be
investigated internally and externally. Internally, the investigation is focus on the
internal structure of the language for instance phonology, morphology, syntax and
words. On the other hand, external investigation is related to the factors exist
outside the language and related to the language usage by the speaker in particular
social groups of society. This external investigation proposes conclusion that
related to the usage of language in every man’s activity in the society.
One of the languages that become a must for people nowadays to learn is
English. It is usually become the second language for most of the people around
the world. Broadly speaking, there are thousands of languages in the whole world
that may become the native language or first language. All of these languages
have their own sounds and internal investigation that certainly different from
English especially languages in Asia. Thus, these factors will indirectly give
problem to the speakers who want to learn English. In my point of view, this is
something interesting for me to investigate. I would like to investigate what are
the differences between English and other language in this case my regional
language (Bugis language) and what are the difficulties the non-native speakers of
my region’s language have when they want to learn English.

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 2. First Language Acquisition, Bilingualism and Second Language
Acquisition

According to Troike (2006) for purposes of SLA concern, the important

features that all shades of L1s share are that they are assumed to be languages
which are acquired during early childhood – normally beginning before the age of
about three years – and that they are learned as part of growing up among people
who speak them. In some parts of our world, most children grow up speaking one
language only. According to Ortega (2009), the field that investigates these cases
of monolingual language acquisition is known by the generic name of child
language acquisition or first language acquisition.
Meanwhile, in many parts of the globe, most children grow up speaking
two or more languages simultaneously. These cases are in fact the majority in our
species. We use the term ‘bilingual acquisition’ or ‘multilingual acquisition’ to
refer to the process of learning two or more languages relatively simultaneously
during early childhood – that is, before the age of four. The field that studies these
developmental phenomena is bilingualism (or multilingualism, if several rather
than two languages are learned during childhood).
The third field devoted to the study of the acquisition and development of
the language faculty is second language acquisition. SLA as a field investigates
the human capacity to learn languages once the first language – in the case of
monolingual children – or the first languages – in the case of bilingual or
multilingual children – have been learned and are established. Naturally, this
happens later in life, whether in late childhood, adolescence or adulthood.

3. English Sounds and Letters

The English alphabet has 26 letters, made up of consonants and vowels.
There are five vowels (a, e, I, o, u) and the rest are all consonants. In English,
pronunciation of words centers upon syllables: a syllable is a unit of pronunciation
which has one vowel sound, with or without surrounding consonants, forming the
whole or a part of a word. For example, there are two syllables in wa/ter and three
in in/fer/no. The sounds of spoken language are known as phonemes. Thus,

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/water/ has two syllables but four phonemes: w/a/t/e/r; /inferno/ has three syllables
but seven phonemes: i/n/f/e/r/n/o.

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabet of phonetic

notation designed to capture all the different ways words in English can be
pronounced, based on the Latin alphabet. It was designed by the International
Phonetic Association (1999) as a standardised system for representing sounds of
oral language.

The table below illustrates the equivalence of each grapheme (or letter) in
the orthographic alphabet to a phoneme in IPA. Table 1 gives consonant
grapheme-phoneme correspondence, and Table 2 describes vowel grapheme-
phoneme correspondence.

Table 1: Consonants

IPA
Consonant Representative Consonant IPA Representative
Grapheme Words Grapheme Phoneme Words
phoneme
/b/
b Baby /r/ r rabbit, wrong

/d/ /s/
sun, mouse,
d Dog s
city, science
/f/ f field, photo /t/ t tap
/g/ g game /v/ v van
/h/ h hat /w/ w was
judge, giant,
/j/ ʤ /y/ j yes
barge
cook, quick, zebra, please,
/k/ k /z/ z
mix, Chris is
/l/ l lamb /th/ ð then
/m/
monkey,
m /th/ θ thin
comb
/n/
nut, knife,
n /ch/ ʧ chip, watch
gnat
/ng/ ship, mission,
ŋ ring, sink /sh/ ʃ
chef

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 /p/ p paper zh/ ʒ treasure

Table 2: Vowels

Vowel Representative Vowel Representative

IPA IPA
Phonemes Words Phonemes Words
/a/ æ cat /oo/ ʊ look, would, put
cart, fast
/e/ e peg, bread /ar/ ɑ:
(regional)
/i/
burn, first, term,
ɪ pig, give /ur/ ɜ:
heard, work
torn, door, warn,
/o/ ɒ log, want /au/ ɔ:
haul, law, call
wooden, circus,
/u/ ʌ plug, love /er/ ə
sister
pain, day, gate,
/ae/ eɪ /ow/ aʊ down, shout
station
sweet, heat, thief,
/ee/ i: /oi/ ɔɪ coin, boy
these
tried, light, my,
/ie/ aɪ /air/ eə stairs, bear, hare
shine, mind
road, blow, bone,
/oe/ oʊ /ear/ ɪə fear, beer, here
cold
/ue/
moon, blue,
u: /ure/ ʊə pure, cure
grew, tune

4. Bugis articulation

The Bugis is one of the largest ethnic groups in Eastern Indonesia. Nowadays,
the Bugis population totals approximately three million people. The Bugis
homeland is the south-western peninsula of Celebes island – or Sulawesi.
However, the Bugis people can be found in other areas in Indonesia such as
Kalimantan, Southeast Sulawesi, Maluku, East Nusatenggara, Irian (New
Guinea), Jambi (eastern Sumatra), and even in Java (especially Jakarta) (Hugo in
Mahmud, 2010)

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 Aksara Lontaraq (or Lontarak) is the original alphabet of Bugis, Makassar
and Mandar society in South Sulawesi. It is believed that there are what the
ancestors called as Makassar Kuno alphabet that exist before Lontaraq alphabet,
but later the Lontaraq alphabet that being used by the society until nowadays.
Some people have the opinions that Lontaraq is different from other alphabets in
Indonesia for instance Bali, Java, Lampung, Sunda alphabet and others that being
related to Pallawa alphabet from India.

The alphabet has already exists since the twelfth century. There is 23
letters (including consonants and a vowel) that arranged based on its own rules. In
the alphabet system, there are also several vowels markers such as u, e, o, and ae.
Below is the example of the system:

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 2. Discussion

In this part, I would like to discuss the difficulties might happen when
Bugis people wants to learn English. Here, I would like to explore from two basic
aspects of English namely phonology and pronunciation because in these two
aspects I can see many differences from both of the language.

 Phonology

Based on point 4 and 5 above, there are a lot of phonemes in English that
are missing in Bugis alphabet until it will give difficulties and a lot of hard works
to learn English. The missing phonemes are mentioned below:

a. Phoneme /p/ and /f/ (English) vs letter pa (Bugis)

In English, phoneme /p/ and /f/ are located in labial which refers to the
lips. Sounds produced which both lips are pressed together to interrupt the airflow
while phoneme /f/ produced with the lips in which the bottom lip touches the
upper front teeth. It can be seen from both alphabets above that the Bugis alphabet
only have phoneme /p/ which known as pa ( ) until all the words that contain
phoneme/f/ in English or even in Bahasa Indonesia will be pronounced with
phoneme /p/. The examples of words are:

File becomes pail

Chef becomes chep

b. Phoneme /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /z/ and /s/ (English) vs letter sa (Bugis)

Phoneme /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ are located in palate-alveolar alongside with /ʧ/ and
/dʒ/. For the first two phonemes, the blade of the tongue is arched near the
alveolar area with a simultaneous approximation of the front of the tongue
towards the hard palate. Meanwhile, phoneme /s/ and /z/ are categorized as
lingua- alveolar fricative which is a sound that flow of air air out of the body is
constricted by touching the tongue to the alveolar ridge — the part of the roof of

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the mouth, just behind the upper front teeth, creating a narrow opening through
which the air passes. In Bugis alphabet system only recognize the letter sa ( ), so
all of the phonemes above will be pronounced as the phoneme /s/. the examples of
the word is:

Shift becomes sip

c. Phoneme /θ/ and /t/ (English) vs letter ta (Bugis)

Phoneme /θ/ is located in dental, which refers to the teeth, particularly the
front upper teeth. The tongue touches these teeth when producing the sounds such
as in the word three or teeth. In Bugis alphabet system, it does not recognize
phoneme /θ/ until the Bugis speaker only use the letter ( ) or sound ta to
produce such words such as three or teeth. The example can be mentioned as
below:

Thinner becomes tiner

 Pronunciation
- The difficulty in pronouncing consonant blend.

Consonant blend (also called consonant cluster) are a collection of two or

three different consonant sounds that are each heard when the word is
pronounced. The example can be seen in word “drink”. Both the letters “d” and
“r” are consonants and when the word “drink” is pronounced, the sounds of both
of these letters can clearly be heard. It is a problem for Bugis people to
pronounce this consonant cluster because they tend to add the ‘e’ intervenes
between the consonant clusters. Below are examples of words that I might hear in
daily conversation:

Slow becomes selow

Blender becomes belender.
- The adding of sound /ng/ in the end of word.

For Bugis people, they have their own characteristics that reflect their
accent and language. They have a habit which they naturally adding sound /ng/ in

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the word that ends with letter ‘n’. This happens because of the influence from the
Bugis language itself and later it also implied when they speak in Indonesian
language and also in English. There are several English common words that they
used in daily life and it obviously changed when they pronounced it. The
examples of the words are:

Check in becomes cheking

3. Conclusion

Language is man’s ability that he can use to interact with others, for
instance signs, words and movement. We can say that language is something
crucial and inseparable in man’s life. Moreover, every language has its own
uniqueness, characteristics and history; therefore a language may be different
from one to another.

Thus, every non-native speaker cannot fully imitate how the native
speakers speak as they are naturally learning English as their first language. By
exploring the following aspects thoroughly means that me as the author try to find
out what is actually wrong and what makes the Bugis people difficult to learn
English. Later, knowing the main problem will make them understand and they
will try to decrease the difficulties.

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 REFERENCES

Troike, M.S. 2005. Introducing Second Language Acquisition.UK: Cambridge

University Press.

Mahmud, M. 2010. Language Change in Bugis Society. Masyarakat Linguistik

Indonesia, Vol. 1. 85-96.

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