English Pronunciation for Vietnamese Speakers

In 2005, Ha Cam Tam published the pronunciation errors noted while examining 51 final-year English majors, four years into their degree, at Vietnam National University in Hanoi. The words they most often got wrong were not rare ones: job, country, centre, the, English, tradition.

Almost every item on the list comes from the shape of a Vietnamese syllable. It starts with at most one consonant, ends in a vowel or one of six consonants, and carries a tone. English words break all three rules.

This guide takes the problem areas one at a time, each with a fix. The error counts come from Ha Cam Tam's study and the facts about Vietnamese from standard descriptions of its sound system (see Sources). Where a point is a teaching observation rather than a finding, the section says so.

About the transcriptions. Every table gives a US and a UK form from a pronunciation lexicon IPAtics maintains, printed exactly as it appears there. The US forms mark stress even in one-syllable words (light is /ˈlaɪt/) but not vowel length; the UK forms mark length with ː and often leave stress out. Both write English r as /ɹ/.

Final consonants: where Vietnamese stops

A Vietnamese syllable can end in a vowel or in one of six consonants: /p/, /t/, /k/, /m/, /n/ and /ŋ/. The three stops are unreleased: the mouth closes and no burst of air follows. English ends words on almost any consonant. In the Hanoi study this was the biggest single problem: 25 of the 51 students left out final sounds, most often /z/, /s/, /t/, /v/, /ks/ and /dʒ/.

Take the ending off the last four and they all become lie. The first four are easier: Vietnamese has those endings, and English often leaves a final /t/ or /k/ unreleased too.

The endings Vietnamese lacks are mostly sounds you can hold: /f/, /v/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/. So hold them. Say life and keep the /f/ going for a full second, then shorten it. For /z/, put two fingers on your throat and keep the buzz on to the very end of lies.

Then use linking: move the final consonant onto a following vowel, so life is becomes "lai-fiz". Vietnamese syllables already start with /f/, /v/, /s/ and /z/ (spelled ph, v, x and, in the North, d), so linking turns an ending you lack into a beginning you already have.

Grammar lives at the end of the word

In English, a lost final sound often loses grammar too. The plural, the third person -s and the past tense are all endings, and most of them make a consonant cluster.

The -ed ending is a single /t/ or /d/ after most sounds, so worked and asked have one syllable each; it adds a syllable only after /t/ or /d/, as in wanted. The -s ending adds one only after a hissing or hushing sound, as in watches.

The Hanoi study also found the opposite problem: 13 students added an /s/ or /z/ where none belongs, at the end of a word such as people, which is already plural, or even in the middle of one, so that hobby came out as "hoz-by".

Clusters: tr, str and the end of asked

A Vietnamese syllable has no consonant clusters. The only thing that can come between the first consonant and the vowel is a /w/ glide, as in hoa. English allows three consonants at the start of a word and more at the end. Osburne's case study of one Vietnamese speaker found final clusters regularly reduced, in largely predictable ways.

In the Hanoi study, the sound mispronounced most often was /tɹ/, in words such as try, train, country, tradition and translate. Sixteen students said it as /tʃ/, the ch of chain. Ha Cam Tam puts this down to the cluster being new to Vietnamese speakers. Spelling makes it worse: in Hanoi Vietnamese, tr and ch spell the same sound, [tɕ], so an English tr invites it.

English /tɹ/ is two movements: the tongue tip touches the ridge behind the upper teeth for /t/, then pulls back and touches nothing for /ɹ/, lips slightly rounded. Say "t... rain" slowly, then close the gap until it is train. If the front of your tongue flattens against the roof of your mouth, you are back to chain.

For clusters at the end of a word, build from the back: "t", then "kt", then "skt", then asked.

th is not the Vietnamese th

Vietnamese writes th, but it means an aspirated /tʰ/, the sound at the start of thu. Read English think with it and you get a t. In the Hanoi study, /θ/ was said as /t/ or /s/ and /ð/ as /z/ or /d/, and the, the commonest English word, was among those most often mispronounced.

Put the tip of your tongue lightly between your teeth and blow: that is /θ/. Add your voice for /ð/. Closing the gap gives /t/ or /d/; pulling the tongue back gives /s/ or /z/. Our guide to the two TH sounds explains which words take which, and the pages on /θ/ and /ð/ have more example words.

sh, j and p

sh and s

In Hanoi Vietnamese, the letters s and x both spell /s/, and there is no /ʃ/. In the study, 15 students said /ʃ/ as /s/, and others went the opposite way. Final /ʃ/, /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ were often replaced by /s/, and English, which ends in /ʃ/, was on the list. Southern speakers who still say s as a retroflex [ʂ] start from a sound between the two.

For /s/, keep the tongue tip forward and the lips spread. For /ʃ/, the "shh" that asks for quiet, pull the tongue back a little and push the lips forward.

j and z

In Hanoi, the letters d, gi and r all spell /z/, and no Vietnamese letter spells the English j. The study found /dʒ/ replaced by a whole range of sounds, among them /z/, /tʃ/ and /s/, and job was one of the words most often wrong. The same spelling habit turned English /ɹ/ into /z/ for some students.

English /dʒ/ starts with a stop: the tongue tip closes against the ridge, as for /d/, then opens into a buzzing sh. /z/ has no stop, so if you can stretch your j, it has turned into something else.

p and b

At the start of a word, /p/ appears in Vietnamese only in loanwords such as sâm panh (from French champagne), and some speakers say even those with a b. Vietnamese b is not the English /b/ either: it is an implosive. The study recorded English /p/ said as /b/.

At the start of a stressed syllable, English /p/ comes with a puff of air. Hold a sheet of paper in front of your mouth: it should move for pen and stay still for Ben.

Vowels: ship and sheep, bad and bed

This section rests on teaching experience, not on the studies above. Vietnamese vowels do not line up with the English ones, and two English pairs are hard to keep apart: /ɪ/ and /iː/, and /æ/ and /ɛ/.

Vietnamese i is close to the vowel of sheep. For /ɪ/, make it shorter and looser, with the tongue slightly lower. Vietnamese e is close to the vowel of bed; English /æ/ sits between it and Vietnamese a, so drop the jaw further while keeping the tongue forward. Our list of English minimal pairs every learner confuses has more pairs to practise.

Tones, stress and rhythm

Northern Vietnamese has six tones, and the tone changes the word: ba means "three", bà "lady", bá "governor" and bã "residue". English uses pitch in two other ways.

First, a word of more than one syllable has one main stressed syllable, louder, longer and often higher, and many of the others shrink to the schwa /ə/. Second, pitch moves across the whole sentence: yes with a rise is a question, with a fall an answer, and it is the same word. You cannot say an English word "in the wrong tone", but you can stress the wrong syllable or give every syllable the same weight. Teachers commonly hear the second habit from Vietnamese learners, which fits a language in which every syllable keeps its full vowel and tone.

The UK entries leave stress unmarked, but it falls on the same syllable in both accents. The guide to the English schwa shows how to say the weak vowels around it. Learn each word's stress with the word, then say the stressed syllable long and loud and let the others go quickly.

For teachers: what to drill first

The Hanoi counts suggest an order.

1. Endings. Nearly half the students dropped final sounds, and the endings carry the grammar. Drill final /s/, /z/, /v/ and /dʒ/, then the -s and -ed clusters, using linking to the next word.
2. /tɹ/ and the th sounds. /tɹ/ was the sound mispronounced most often. Show students how Hanoi spelling, in which tr and ch sound the same, pulls train toward chain.
3. sh, j and p. Short drills with the minimal pairs above.
4. Stress and vowel reduction. Put the transcription on the board: a stress mark and a row of schwas show where the beat goes.
5. Vowels. ship and sheep, bad and bed.

In parts of the North, /n/ and /l/ have merged in Vietnamese itself, so check night /ˈnaɪt/ against light /ˈlaɪt/ and knock /ˈnɑk/ against lock /ˈlɑk/ early. Northern speakers also need r kept apart from z. Our page for ESL teachers and tutors covers IPA worksheets and minimal-pair drills.

Trying it yourself

IPAtics is a desktop app that shows the IPA for any text you select, in any app, and plays the word, so you can check an ending or a stress mark while you read. To convert text in the browser, paste it into the English to IPA converter. The free IPA Anki decks include a deck of English minimal pairs, and the IPA chart lays out every sound by where and how it is made.

The guides for Chinese speakers and Korean speakers cover two more languages with few final consonants and no clusters.

Sources

• Ha Cam Tam. "Common Pronunciation Problems of Vietnamese Learners of English." VNU Journal of Science, Foreign Languages 21(1), 2005, pp. 35–46. js.vnu.edu.vn/FS/article/view/2072. The source for every error count in this guide.
• Osburne, Andrea G. "Final Cluster Reduction in English L2 Speech: A Case Study of a Vietnamese Speaker." Applied Linguistics 17(2), 1996, pp. 164–181. doi.org/10.1093/applin/17.2.164.
• Wikipedia, "Vietnamese phonology": syllable structure and final stops, the Hanoi values of th, tr, ch, s, x, d, gi and r, initial /p/ and the implosive b, the tones, and the /n/–/l/ merger.