Contrastive Analysis

Contrastive Analysis is a systematic study and comparison of two languages, such as the
learners' target language and learners' native language with the intent to identify their
differences and similarities in order to predict difficulties.

English and Urdu Phonology

English and Urdu, both languages have some common characteristics which are based on
1) Place of articulation 2) Manner of articulation and 3) Aspiration (voiced/voiceless)

Place of articulation tells us where the consonants are produced. For each consonant two
parts of the mouth are involved, and the name given to it reflects it. Starting from the front,
some consonants are made using both lips and these are called bilabial consonants. The sound
made by an interaction between the tongue and the teeth are just dental sounds. When you
run your tongue back behind your teeth, you come to a bony ridge called an alveolar ridge,
several sounds are made on or just behind the ridge. It produces either alveolar or palato-
alveolar sounds. Moving back from alveolar ridge you come to a hard but smoother zone
called the hard palate.

There is now a difference in the way the tongue is used. The velum is the soft part of the
palate, closest to the throat. It is the body of the tongue. The sounds produced are called velar
sounds. And the only sound left /h/ is produced by air passing from the windpipe through the
vocal cords, or glottis. It’s a glottal sound.

After Place of articulation, we need to consider Manner of Articulation, which tells us how
consonants are produced. The comparison of the consonants of English and Urdu language is
mainly based on Place of articulation and Manner of articulation. Most important categories
are: Plosive sounds also called stop sounds are formed by the air being completely blocked in
the mouth and then suddenly released.

Comparison

Starting with the plosives, in English phonology /p/ and /b/ are plosives having bilabial
articulation. /p/ is voiceless and /b/ is voiced. The alternatives for these sounds in Urdu
phonology are /pe/ (‫)پ‬and /bay/(‫ )ب‬which are denoted be /p/ and /b/ respectively. These
plosives have the same characteristics as that of English plosives. /t/ and /d/ are alveolar
sounds. They are plosives. /t/ is voiceless and /d/ is voiced. In Urdu phonology the same
symbols /t/ and /d/ have a matching characteristics where /t/ is pronounced as /te/ (‫ )ت‬and /d/
as /dāl/ (‫)د‬. But in comparison with /t/ and /d/ plosives of the English language we come
across sounds /ʈ/ and /ɖ/ pronounced as /ṭe/ (‫ )ٹ‬and /āl/ (‫)ڈ‬. /ʈ/ is voiceless and /ɖ/ is voiced.
They are plosives but differ because they are retroflex i.e. post-alveolar (without being
palatalized). Their sounds are quite matching with that of English plosives.

Segmental Elements

Consonants

English has forty four phonemes; twenty four consonants, twenty vowels and diphthongs.
English has twenty six letters used to represent all the forty four phonemes. There is no one-
to-one correspondence between phonemes (sounds) and letters. English alphabet letters have
very ambiguous sound value. English language has twenty four consonant sounds. A
consonant is a sound that is produced with the obstruction of air.

i. /p/, /k/, and /t/ sounds are aspirated sounds in Received Pronunciation and these
are pronounced with slight aspiration. In Urdu these sounds exist as aspirated and
un-aspirated so the Pakistani learners tend to pronounce these sounds without
aspiration.
ii. The difference between /v/ and /w/ is neutralised. /v/ is a labio-dental fricative
while /w/ is a balabial semi vowel.
iii. /h/ sound does not occur in the final position in a word in Received
Pronunciation but the Pakistani learners do pronounce it at the end if a word.
Besides, /h/ is not aspirated after any consonant but the Pakistani learners
pronounce it as aspirated.
iv. / r/ sound is not pronounced in its final position if there is no vowel sound after it
but Pakistani learners pronounce /r/ sound at the end of a word which does not
bring any change in meaning.
v. Consonant clusters are another problematic area for Pakistani learners. The
consonant cluster is also a big hindrance in the way to learn intelligible
pronunciation. The phonemes and diacritics, if not learnt properly, distort the
 shape of the words that cause unintelligibility in pronunciation and there occurs a
breakdown in oral communication (Akram 2010). Pakistani learners, usually, tend
to add a vowel at the beginning or in the centre of a syllable. So they
mispronounce certain words, e.g. Cricket /krikit/ as /kirkət/, Film /film/ as /filəm/
Vowels
A vowel is a sound produced during free flow of air. Following are the errors
encountered by Pakistani learners due to vowel sounds.
i- / ɒ / and / ɔ: / sounds are replaced by / ɑː/ by the Pakistani learners, e.g.
Hot /h ɒ t/ as /h ɑː t/ Caught /k ɔ: t/ as k ɑː t/ Saw /s ɔ: / as /s ɑː /
ii- Pakistani learners usually do not shorten the vowel in unstressed
syllables. Int. J. of Res. in Linguistics & Lexicography: INTJR-LL-1(4)-
43‐48 46 Comfortable /kʌmfəteibəl/ instead of /kʌmfətəbl/ Permanent
/pʌrmɑːnent/ instead of / pɜ:mənent/
iii- / ɜ:/ sound is also confusing for Pakistani students. They often replace /3:/
with /ər/ or /ʌr/, e.g. /w3:/ as /wʌr/ or /wər/ and /f3:/ as /fʌr/ or /fər/.
iv- Pakistani learners add /r/ to /ɪə/, /eə/ and /ʊə/. So they pronounce Beard
/bɪəd/ as /bɪərd/ Bare /beə / as /beə r/ Poor /pʊə/ as /pʊər/
v- / ɔɪ / sound is replaced with /wai/. So Pakistani learners pronounce Boy
/bɔɪ/ as /bwaɪ/ and Join / dʒɔɪn/ as / dʒwaɪ n /
vi- Triphthongs also cause problems for the non-native speakers particularly
for Pakistani learners.

Influence of Mother tongue (L1)

It’s a fact universally acknowledged that mother tongue influences the learning of a target
language. Learners’ mother tongue shares characteristics of sounds with the foreign/target
language. Florez (1998: 3) adds that interference or negative transfer from the first language
is likely to cause errors in aspiration, intonation, and rhythm in the target language.
According to Seferoglu (2005), segmental aspects of the sound system include individual
vowels and consonants. So it seems to be true that, as Odlin (1989: 112) puts it, ‘there is no
little doubt that native language phonetics and phonology are powerful influences on second
language pronunciation.’ The learner learns the mother tongue in a natural environment but
he learns the second language in an artificial environment. So speech habits of the mother
tongue are superimposed on the speech habits of the target language.
Another very important reason for difficulty/error in learning pronunciation is Urdu
orthography. The deep orthography of Urdu influences the acquisition of English
phonetics/phonology. The sound and spelling system of mother tongue or the national
language also disfigure the shape or form of the word that distorts the pronunciation (Akram
2010). Urdu is a syllable timed language while English is a stress timed language.

Being non- native speakers of English language, Pakistanis speak English that is coloured by
their native language(s) influence. The interference of their mother tongue can be seen at
segmental and supra-segmental levels which is sound differences that extend over many
segments (phonemes) or beyond the level of a segment (Roach, 2009). Among the supra-
segmental features, stress is a very important feature for describing variations in different
varieties of English. According to Katamba, word-stress occurs when “a particular syllable
of a word is pronounced in a way that makes it more prominent than the rest”. English is a
stress-time language and Pakistani native languages are syllable-time languages; therefore,
Pakistani speakers show different stress patterns.

As Kenworthy (1987, p.14) asserts ‘features like word and sentence stress, rhythm, and
intonation are very important in highlighting the important bits of a message.’ Pakistani
speakers, whose native language is not English, speak English with stress patterns which are
hybridized with the influence of their native language(s). Most of the time, either they
produce no stress or different stress patterns from that of any other variety of English.
Pakistani speakers also face difficulty learning stress patterns of native English and it causes
differences in the spoken English varieties. There is no distinction of stress patterns of
bisyllable words as noun and verb rather speakers of this variety regularize stress either on
first or on second syllable. So, no difference of stress position in word ‘record’ as noun as
well as verb. Similarly, absence of stress shift is also reported in this variety, as in derived
forms of words, which are words with suffixes, no shift in stress position is brought, so the
stress position of the stem of the word is retained. For example, ‘examine’ and ‘examination’
are pronounced with same stress patterns.

Urdu EFL learners normally find difficulties with English supra-segmental phonemes, e.g.
wrong use of stress in words and intonation in sentence during speaking English. Contrastive
analysis of segmental consonant phonemes shows that similar consonant phonemes between
Urdu and English include /p/, /t/, /k/, /b/, /d/ /t∫/, /f/,/s/, /h/, /m/, /n/ ,/ŋ/, /l/, /w/,/z/, /dʒ/, /∫/ ,/ʒ/,
and /j/. However, different consonant phonemes are /ʒ/, /v/, /ʒ/, /ŋ/, and /r/. From this
analysis, it may be said that Urdu EFL learners may find difficulties when they pronounce /ʒ/,
/v/, /ʒ/, /ŋ/, and /r/. As Urdu phoneme system does not contain articulations like them. So, all
such facts explore that a poor equivalence of some of the English consonants causes some
difficulties to students’ correct pronunciation.

The students encounter problems applying stress, segmental phonemes and segmental
phonemes. In other words, Urdu EFL learners are not aware of which syllable should be
stressed and which one should not. The majority of the Urdu EFL learners does not how to
use pattern of intonation; even for Wh-questions and Yes/No questions, therefore, when they
speak English, they stress the wrong syllable or apply wrong intonation. As a result, their
speech for the native speakers becomes unintelligible. The most difficult phonemes to be
pronounced by Urdu EFL learners are: /v/, /ʒ/, /ŋ/, and /r/. Though these phonemes are
extremely imperative to be accented like the native English speakers yet majority of Pakistani
Urdu EFL learners are unable to pronounce them correctly. They are unable to make any
distinction when words those begin with the letter west /west/ and vest /vest/. In the
pronunciation of /w/ sound corners of the lips are pushed backwards as in smiling position
and it sounds like Sami- vowel while in the pronunciation of /v/ sound upper front teeth and
lower lips are pressed together with audible frictions (Ladefoged, 2001). Another important
difficulty in pronunciation of the phoneme is that they do not know difference in the
pronunciation of words while adding “-ed ” in finite verbs or adding “s” or “-es” for making
plural nouns or adding “-s” or “-es” with the first form of verbs for third person singular
subject in simple present tense.

Words Native speakers’ Pronunciation Urdu EFL learners’ pronunciation

Passed /pa:st/ /pa:sd/

Helped /helpt/ /helpd/

Watches /wɒtʃiz/ /wa:tʃiz/

Housing /haʊzɪŋ/ /haʊsɪng/

Houses /haʊzɪz/ /haʊsɪz/

Come /kʌm/ /kəm/

Admit /ədˈmɪt/ /edˈmɪt/

Ali (2009) claims that ‘Pakistani students do not get enough chance to go through proper
study of English speech-sounds. Therefore, they do not recognize them properly. Instead they
try to match them with speech-sounds of Urdu which ultimately corrupt their English
pronunciation. Pakistani students pronounce most English words in an Urdu accent which
spoils their image while speaking in front of public or while communicating with any
outsider’.

Urdu speaking learners of English syllabify English words with the different number of
syllables in English words and assign different stress location in English words. Thus, the
Second Language Learners perceive English speech with different syllable and stress patterns
than those specified in the dictionary, which correspond to native speakers of RP English.
The study concludes that Urdu speaking learners of English make phonological variations in
English. It maybe because of a bit weak intuition of lexical stress in their native words which
ultimately effects on second language learning though, English is considered as a stress-timed
language.