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Regional accents of English

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When foreign nationals speak the English language, they tend to carry the intonation, accent or pronunciation from their mother tongue into the English speech. Some of the foreign or regional accents are easily identified with certain characteristics.

Another factor is how the English language is taught to young school children. If pronunciation is not taught correctly by the teachers, students will speak in the wrong way too. So there may be systematic mispronunciation coming from a country, such as India, Hong Kong, Malaysia, etc.

Origins in alphabetical order:

USA:

  • pronouncing 'o' like 'ah'. "not" sounds like "naht", "oppurtunity" like "appurtunity" (especially in Minnesota)

USA south:

  • The pronunciation of 'I' as Ahh.
  • nasal?

East Asian languages (including Vietnamese, Chinese):

  • due to the syllabic nature of their native languages, they tend to drop the ending sound of English words, e.g. 'ant' 'and' sound the same.

Cantonese (Hong Kong Chinese):

  • trouble with 'r', read as 'l' sound.
  • trouble with 'v', read as 'w' sound.
  • trouble with 'wh', read as 'w' sound.
  • trouble with 'th', read as 'd' sound.
  • trouble with most ending sound.
  • trouble with past tense.
  • forgetting to add 's' for plurals.

Japanese:

  • trouble with 'l', read as 'r' sound.
  • tend to over-stress ending sound, e.g. sound as soundo.

Mandarin (Chinese):

  • trouble with ending 'm' sound, there is no ending 'm' in Mandarin pronunciation, e.g. time read as tyne.

Persian:

  • throat noise in 'k' sound.

Russian:

  • special quality in the 'r' sound.
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