English Pronunciation for Chinese Speakers 🇨🇳 🇺🇸

When I was a fresh graduate I was excited and nervous to start teaching English. I began my career in the USA teaching live and I truly loved meeting people from so many countries. Then I decided to follow my passion and move abroad. But that meant I needed to do something new - to teach online.

Can you imagine how surprised I was when the first online teaching job that I landed was teaching Chinese adults English? I didn’t speak a single word of Chinese so I was a bit apprehensive. However, after my first week, I fell in love with my students and their culture. I have never met more determined people who view language acquisition as the key to personal and professional development. The challenge is that many Chinese schools promote learning English by writing and reading and fall short in the speaking department. This post is for all of my past students and for YOU, dear native Chinese speaker, wanting to improve your English pronunciation. May it help you speak English with confidence and become proud of your voice!

- Your coach, Ms. Morgan

Learning a new language is life-changing. It opens the doors to many opportunities, people, and places. However, we are often affected by our native language and apply its patterns to the pronunciation of English. Do you know what the most common challenges are for Mandarin Chinese natives speaking English? Read below to find out. If you want the audio lesson, sign up to get the free PDF workbook with audio. Let’s do this!

Challenge #1 - The American L

The L in Mandarin Chinese is light - /l/, often with the tongue up behind the front teeth, and doesn’t appear at the end of syllables. This causes confusion when Mandarin speakers listen to and speak in English. They hear there’s a difference in sound, but doesn’t associate the Dark L with an L. The challenge is that In English there are two types of /l/. The tip of the tongue goes up with clear L, an L before a vowel like '“plate , love". But the dark L is made in the back of the throat and occurs AFTER a vowel . This the sound most Chinese speakers struggle with and often replace the L with a vowel sound, like an unrounded u. For example: '‘feel’ becomes ‘fiu’, school’ beccomes sku’, and ‘people’ might sound like ‘pipo’.

Practice words:

Tall. Tell. Child. Social. Meal. Elbow. Hospital. Simple.

Challenge #2 - Breaking Consonant Clusters

English uses many consonant clusters, but in Mandarin Chinese there can only be 2 consonants in a row at the beginning of a syllable na donly if the second consonant is a Y or W sound.

Many Chinese speakers carry this rule over to English and the result is they add a vowel between the consonant clusters or they drop one or more consonant . For example , a word like ‘ grasp ’ might be pronounced as ‘gras ’, a word like ‘bring ’ might sound like ‘bwing’, and a word like ‘cramp ' as 'cwam’.

Practice these words

Pray. Blow. Clasp.Strange. Strandard. Masks

Challenge #3 - Using Chinese Rhythm

In Mandarin Chinese syllables are usually given the same stress , so sometimes Chinese speakers sound robotic when speaking English . English rhythm is very different because more important words (content words ) are higher in pitch , louder in volume , and longer in duration ,while less important words (function words ) are usually reduce . When Mandarin speakers use Chinese rhythm while speaking English they sound monotone and lack flow since they don’t make a distinction between important words and less important words. The other challenge is that applying tones onto English may affect their intelligibility, as they stress less important words.

Practice reading the following sentences, but change your pitch on the words in BOLD:

1.Tom's shoes are too big for him.

2.Don’t let your cat eat grass or she'll get sick.

3.We went to New York for vacation.

Challenge #4 -Confusing N with NG

Both of these sounds exist in English and Chinese, but in Mandarin Chinese , the /n/ may be dropped at the end of a syllable while it must be pronounced in English. Mandarin speakers keep their tongue down instead of lifting the tip for the /n/, and as a result , it may seem as if the /n/ is replaced with /ŋ/ (the NG sound ), and words like ‘win’ and ‘thin’ might sound like ‘wing’ and ‘thing’.

Practice the following pairs (watch your tongue position as explained above):

Sin-Sing. Win- Wing. Ton- Tongue

Challenge #5 - Diphthongs Trouble

Dipthongs are changing vowels, that means that they are made up of two vowel sounds that must be pronounced. Chinese has the same diphthongs as in English (except for ‘oy’) and several more , but they tend to change into monophthongs , where only the first vowel is pronounced . Chinese speakers sometimes apply this in English as well, so in fast speech a word like ‘pain’ may sound like ‘pen’, and ‘kite’ like ‘cut’.

Practice these pairs:

Saw-So. Bought-Boat. Bet- Bait. Done- Down

That’s it! Of course there are other challenges, but these are the most common. Which one will you practice first? Tell us in the comments…