A comparative study betweeen phonetic consonants pronounciation variations of Chinese and American main characters on “Spy Next Door”

ABSTRACT

In pronouncing English, there will be differences in the way of every single person in pronouncing a particular sound what we call varieties in English. There are two important terms in English variations those are accent and dialect. Accent is used for varieties in case of pronounciation aspect while dialect varieties in grammar and vocabulary. One of English varieties can be found between Chinese and American.

By applying Daniel Jones’ theory about consonants, first is based on the place of speech organs which articulate them and second based on the manner in which the organs articulate them, the researcher proposes to find out how and what types of consonants variations produced by Chinese and American. Besides, the researcher also compares them to reveal the differences and similarities based on phonetic point of view.

This research is conducted as a descriptive qualitative and comparative method as its research design. The data are taken from “Spy Next Door” film in the form of sounds and text of words uttered by the Chinese and American main characters. Then only the same words produced are taken as the main data. The references are gotten from many books, article and text dealing with this study.

From the analysis, the researcher finds a lot of varieties in pronouncing the consonants produced by Chinese and American main characters. For example, Chinese produces Labio-dental fricative [ϖ] as Bilabial semi-vowel [ω] as found in word very pronounced as [ωερι] where in Daniel Jones’ theory it is [ϖερι]. American also varies Bilabial plosive [π] as Breathed bilabial plosive [πη] as in put which pronounce as [πηΥτη] while it is [πΥτ] based on Daniel Jones’ theory. The researcher also finds that the American main characters often use aspiration (often symbolized as [-h] by linguists) in pronouncing the bilabial plosive, alveolar plosive and velar plosive consonants, while Chinese main character does not. Besides that Chinese commonly produces variations in pronouncing consonants by using both, supporting and even different organ of speech and place of articulation from what is stated in Daniel Jones’ theory while American main characters commonly use supporting organ of speech and place of articulation in producing consonant variations

The researcher suggests to other researchers conduct further research on phonetic variation in pronouncing vowel, or they can also study about how non native English people pronounce English when they have unusual pronounciation in their mother tongue, for example, Japanese have no consonant “l” in their language used, they pronounce London as Rondon.