Common mistakes Vietnamese people make when using English.

Teacher Nguyen Phuong, who taught for many years at the University of Foreign Languages ​​(Vietnam National University, Hanoi), shared his insights on learning English, especially the pronunciation of Vietnamese speakers.

Occasionally, parents complain about the pronunciation of English teachers. Some complaints are even exaggerated, such as "Vietnamese teachers at language centers pronounce everything wrong."That's not entirely true.

Once, to verify the authenticity of such a comment, I asked the person who made the comment to record the teacher's pronunciation. Upon listening back, I told them that the teacher's pronunciation wasn't wrong, but that their (my nephew's) musical ear was the problem.

To be more convincing, I compared the teacher's pronunciation with the standard pronunciation (from a pronunciation dictionary) using phonetic transcription software. The comparison confirmed that the teacher's pronunciation was correct, differing only in timbre and pitch. I asked him to pronounce it, but he mispronounced it.

Therefore, judging whether a teacher's pronunciation is right or wrong isn't something everyone can do. Someone who sings off-key might very well judge someone who sings correctly as singing off-key!

Another time, my niece, who is in 9th grade, said, "My teacher pronounces the two words 'cool air' in the lesson as if they were one word, with the final sound of 'cool' attached to the first sound of 'air.' Is that right or wrong?" I replied, "When reading smoothly and naturally, that's correct."

Don't think only foreign teachers have perfect pronunciation.

Simply put, mispronunciation is equivalent to "talking at cross purposes."Once I was invited to visit a language center. There, they had both foreign (native speakers) and Vietnamese teachers teaching English.

After observing and discussing, and based on my personal experience, I found that the young Vietnamese teachers spoke English quite well and fluently, with most of them pronouncing American English quite accurately.

To be fair, thanks to access to standard English through various channels—studying abroad, self-improvement, electronic means, etc.—young teachers today have improved significantly. They pronounce words more accurately, speak more fluently, use more engaging teaching methods, and are more confident than previous generations of colleagues, almost on par with native speakers.

The quality of a teacher must be assessed on an individual basis, regardless of whether they are native English speakers or Vietnamese speakers, full-time or part-time teachers… and not on a general basis.

Imagine a foreigner learning Vietnamese; it would be a pity if the student ended up with a Vietnamese tourist who stutters, speaks with a strong regional accent, and has a low level of education! Remember that not all Vietnamese people speak standard Vietnamese or are capable of teaching it. The same applies to foreign languages.

And, mispronunciation isn't just a problem when learning a foreign language (but also your native language).

"Types" in English

According to S. Huntington, it is precisely because English no longer carries racial identity that it is increasingly used widely in almost every field.Therefore, we can now speak of "types" of English (Englishes). Besides the main variations like spoken English in the US, Australia, New Zealand, etc., there's Indian English, Singaporean English, and perhaps even Venglish soon?

In its interaction with native languages, English also undergoes variations that create difficulties in communication.

Vietnamese people are considered to have the best ability to imitate sounds in the Asian region. This is perhaps partly due to the fact that Vietnamese has six tones, the Latin alphabet is sufficient to cover the range of sounds and letters in English, and Vietnamese people have a better "musical ear"? We don't see Vietnamese people pronouncing "when" as /ven/ like many Thais, or "mail" as /meo/...

However, these similarities sometimes lead learners to misunderstand and oversimplify the sounds of English. Although Vietnamese and English have similar spellings and sounds, their pronunciations are not entirely the same. English sounds are often assimilated by speakers through interaction with Vietnamese sounds, meaning they become "Vietnamese-ized."

Bad habits

The scope of a general article only allows for discussing a few relatively typical points to illustrate the habits of Vietnamese people in using English (not just Vietnamese people in the country).

Spelling and pronunciation.One of the bad habits of learners is learning by analogy, which leads to misreading.

English has many words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently: plough, enough, thought, though, through, borough; ace, face, and preface; chore and chorus, chaotic. You can't deduce the pronunciation of "cough" from "though" or "through"...

Words may have the same spelling but different pronunciations and stress patterns when they change word class. For example, the verb "export" and the noun "export," the verb "increase" and the noun "increase" differ in both pronunciation and stress placement. Similarly, "clean" in the noun "cleanliness" is no longer pronounced as it originally was. These examples are quite common in English.

Learners should avoid "formulaizing" linguistic phenomena (for example, they shouldn't conclude that "if you write OO, it's pronounced /u/; if you write EA, it's pronounced /i:/...; if a word has two syllables, the stress falls on the first syllable...).

Furthermore, while English is not a tonal language like Vietnamese, we shouldn't pronounce English words as if they have tones: pronounce "card" as /cạc/, "source" as /suộc/... as if they had a dot (.).

That's a flawed way of learning, because English is notoriously misspelled as "written one way, read another." Every rule in English has many exceptions. Teachers shouldn't mislead learners into following that method.

Final sound.English and Vietnamese also differ in the pronunciation of the final sounds of each word, especially consonants. For example, when pronounced, the words "write" and "ride," "rice" and "rise" differ in their final phonemes (/t/ vs /d/, /s/ vs /z/), causing them to have different meanings.

Because Vietnamese doesn't place much emphasis on those specific characteristics, when speaking English, Vietnamese speakers tend to almost completely omit the final sounds, which can be difficult and annoying for listeners.

Conversely, some people place too much emphasis on the final sound to the point of exaggeration, making it sound unnatural. For example, they exaggerate the pronunciation of "home" to almost "homer" (almost adding an extra syllable).

Sound properties.Although Vietnamese, for example, also has the /t/ sound, it doesn't have the aspirated quality found in English; the /k/ sound in "lúc" (time) isn't pronounced the same way as in "look" in English... These are the differences in the characteristics of this sound between the two languages.

Stress.First and foremost, regarding word stress, learners should absolutely avoid "regulating" or "summarizing" the way to place stress in English into "formulas," as illustrated in the example above. Similarly, when learning pronunciation, when encountering new words or variations of words, never forget to check the position of the primary and secondary stress.

Because English rules have many exceptions, the best approach is to memorize and practice them.

Intonation.Whether an accent sounds natural depends on correct pronunciation, stress, and rhythm. This helps speakers speak fluently. However, many Vietnamese speakers tend to read/speak English with a monotonous, flat tone, lacking rhythm and sentence emphasis.

For any English learner or teacher, when looking up the meaning of a new word, never forget to check its pronunciation; don't pronounce it based on guesswork or generalizations; try to compare your pronunciation with the words in an electronic dictionary.

Because practical phonetics, including pronunciation, stress, and intonation, is crucial for English learners, the Ministry of Education and Training's exams, from the 2001-2002 school year to the present, have consistently included a section testing practical phonetics, serving as a valuable reminder for both students and teachers.

Even though the trend is to prioritize fluency over accuracy, correct pronunciation with the right intonation will make it easier, more effective, and more sophisticated for others to communicate with you.

Learning American English or British English is both good, but whenever I listen to British Prime Minister Theresa May speak, I personally still prefer her English – so clear, articulate, and elegant.