PRONUNCIATION PROBLEMS IN THAI TONES OF CENTRAL VIETNAMESE LEARNERS

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the pronunciation problems of Central Vietnamese learners who study Thai as a foreign language. Six Vietnamese people were asked to pronounce a list of 203 Thai words, which are made up of four types of Thai syllables. The Praat program was used to conduct an acoustic analysis of the phonetic characteristics. The results showed that the negative transfer affected the learners’ pronunciation of the high tone [4]. On the other hand, the positive transfer affected the learners’ pronunciation of the middle [1], the low [2], the high-falling [3], and the low-rising tones [5] because these characteristics are similar to those of ngang, huyền, hỏi/nặng, and sắc in Central Vietnamese. In addition, the differences in tonal contour and in the distribution of tones related to syllable structures between the two languages have also affected the learners’ pronunciation. For the pronunciation of closed syllables with a short vowel, the learners replaced the high tone [4] with sắc by the interference phenomenon. Nevertheless, the characteristics of sắc are more similar to those of the low-rising tone [5] in Thai. The results revealed learners’ inability to distinguish between the high [4] and the low-rising tones [5]. For other tones, the learners did not have difficulty pronouncing them based on their similar phonological characteristics.