Anglophone pronunciation of foreign languages

The following is a list of common non-native pronunciations English-speakers make when trying to speak foreign languages. Much of it is due to transfer of phonological rules from English to the new language as well as differences in grammar and syntax that they encounter.

This article uses International Phonetic Alphabet pronunciation. See and IPA chart for English for an introduction.

= Arabic =

*English has no pharyngeal consonants and speakers are likely to have difficulty with the both the voiced and voiceless pharyngeal fricatives.
** The voiceless pharyngeal fricative (IPA|/ħ/) may be pronounced as the voiceless glottal fricative (IPA| [h] )
**The voiced pharyngeal fricative has no clear equivalent in English and speakers may simply omit it.
*Speakers may omit the glottal stop.
*English has no voiced uvular fricative and speakers may replace it with IPA| [g] .
* Arabic distinguishes certain emphatic (pharyngealized) consonants (mostly alveolar) with non-emphatic ones; English makes no such distinction and speakers are likely to pronounce them as their English equivalents.
* Speakers have difficulty with gemination of consonants, which is contrastive in Arabic (i.e. IPA|/darrasa/ 'taught' vs. IPA|/darasa/ 'studied') but not in English.
* Speakers may also have difficulty with vowel quality, which is dependent largely on surrounding consonants rather than length.
* Speakers also have difficulty with phonemic vowel length as in the distinction between IPA|/kaʃafa/ ('to uncover') and IPA|/kaːʃafa/ ('to demonstrate').

= Chinese (Mandarin) =

*Like many European or other non-tonal language speakers, English speakers have difficulty with the 4 tones in standard Mandarin.
*Chinese initials also cause a problem.
**The aspiration is stronger in Chinese and the English voiced consonants have voiceless Chinese counterparts: /d/, /b/, /g/ are missing in Chinese and are pronounced as unaspirated /t/, /p/, /k/, English speakers often pronounce them as /d/, /b/, /g/.
**The aspirated consonants are often pronounced as unaspirated by English speakers, thus making the words sound like different initials.
**Distinguishing between [ʈʂ] (zh) and [tɕ] (j) or [ʈʂʰ] (ch) and [tɕʰ] (q) is often a problem, besides, as mentioned above, the difference between voiced/voiceless may not be correct.
*Initial /ɻ/ (r) (also pronounced and transcribed as [ʐ] is difficult to pronounce for English speakers.
*Final [y] (ü) is often mispronounced as [u] .
*Final [ɨ] (in zhi, zi, chi, ci, shi, ri) is often substituted with [i] by English speakers. (This vowel can be described as missing (null), just as an extension of the consonant. So, final /ʐɨ/ can viewed as /ʐʐ/).
*Typical for Northern dialects and standard Mandarin erhua (/ɚ/ -r) and the phonetical changes in the finals cause difficulties for English and other foreign language speakers, although the sound exists in American English ("car", "war").

Esperanto

*Many English speakers have difficulty with the voiceless velar fricative (written <ĥ>). They may instead pronounce it as IPA| [k] or IPA| [h] .
*Because of soft and hard pronunciations of in English, speakers may confuse IPA|/g/ (), IPA|/dʒ/ (<ĝ>), and IPA|/ʒ/ (<ĵ>)
*Many English speakers have difficulty with the diphthong IPA|/eu/ (spelled ), as it doesn't exist in English.
* Speakers may have difficulty with the voiceless alveolar affricate IPA|/ts/, especially word-initially and instead pronounce it as IPA| [s] . This sound is spelled with a and speakers may commit a spelling pronunciation error and say IPA| [k] instead.

= Finnish =

* Speakers may speak too formally; written Finnish is so formal that it is awkward when spoken in casual conversation and speakers may not recognize the distinction.
**e.g. "“hyvää päivää, nimeni on Jaakko”" (written), rather than "“terve, mun nimi on Jaakko”" (spoken).
* Speakers may also overuse "kiitos" (thank you, please) and "ole hyvä" (please) in an attempt to be polite. In Finnish, politeness is given by the level of speech formality.
*English has no front rounded vowels and speakers may have difficulty with Finnish IPA|/y/ and IPA|/ø/, as well as any diphthongs that include these vowels. English speakers may use IPA|/jʊː/ (as in d"ew") instead IPA|/y/, because it is the closest sound and IPA|/ʊː/, instead of IPA|/ø/.
*Speakers may make certain spelling pronunciations causing them to pronounce orthographic as IPA| [iː] , <ä> as IPA| [ɑː] , and as IPA| [uː] .
*Some speakers have difficulty with the trilled IPA|/r/ since this is not an English sound.
*English speakers often have difficulties with the accusative and partitive cases, since English has no such cases and speakers are rarely aware of the distinction.
**Some verbs require the usage of the accusative or partitive affixes as part of the verb; this can be easily forgotten.
*Speakers may have difficulty with consonant gradation, so "Helsingin" sounds like "Helsinkin" and "pankia" like "pankkia".
*Speakers may have difficulty with vowel length and gemination; i.e. "tuli" (IPA|/tu'li/ fire) and "tulli" (IPA|/tu'lːi/, customs) may both be IPA| [tʊli] . Speakers aren't likely to have trouble with "tuuli" (IPA|/tuː'li/, wind) but the precise length and phonetic quality may be different enough to be confusing to native speakers.
*Difficulty with pluralization (the partitive case is used to pluralise numbered nouns, rather than a standard plural). i.e. "kaksi autot", rather than "kaksi autoa".

French

*Difficulty with nasalized vowels, e.g. making "an" IPA| [ɑ̃] (year) sound more like IPA| [ɑ̃ːn] .
*As English lacks front rounded vowels, speakers may have difficulty with French IPA|/y/, IPA|/ø/, IPA|/œ/, and IPA|/œ̃/.
*Difficulty in distinguishing IPA|/ɛj/, IPA|/e/, and the rarer IPA|/ei/, leading to "abeille" ('honey bee'), "abbé" ('abbot'), and "abbaye" ('abbey') all tending to be pronounced as IPA| [æˈbeɪ] .
*Tendancy to pronounce unstressed vowels as a schwa (IPA| [ə] ). This leads for instance to "le" (masculine definite article) and "la" (feminine definite article) being pronounced the same.
*The voiced postalveolar fricative IPA|/ʒ/ may be pronounced as an affricate (IPA|/dʒ/), the distinction between the two rarely being significant in English.
*Written French is the equivalent of English . English-speakers may commit a spelling pronunciation error and say IPA| [ʧ] instead of IPA| [ʃ] .
*The French rhotic is trilled and usually a uvular IPA|/ʁ/; English-speakers tend to use the approximant IPA| [ɹ] .
*Speakers may uniformly use "dans" and "en" or mix them up, because both translate as "in" in English.
*Although "nous" is the first person plural pronoun in Standard French, its use may come off as too formal since colloquial varieties are more likely to use "on." See French personal pronouns.
*Difficulty in observing the rules of liaison, where a final consonant preceding an initial vowel must sometimes be silent and sometimes not: e.g. "Mes "amis "arrivent" IPA|/mezami.aʁiv/ (My friends are arriving).
*Although rare, speakers may forget that orthographic is always silent in French.
*Speakers may not include determiners like "le" or "la" as often as is appropriate, such as when showing the object of a sentence.
*English has very little grammatical gender. As a result, mistakes may arise with the French gender system:
** "mon" and "ton" (possessive adjectives "my" and "your" respectively) apply to feminine nouns if they start with a vowel, English speakers may forget and say "ma" and "ta", which are the feminine forms before words beginning in consonants.
**Feminine and masculine articles, especially for inanimate objects, have to be memorized and speakers may mix them up. e.g. "le" main" instead of "la" main" (the hand), "la" pont" instead of "le" pont", "le" douleur" instead of "la" douleur" (the pain), etc.
**Speakers may have difficulty with gender and number agreement in adjectives. e.g. "la maison blanc" instead of "la maison blan"che" (the white house)
*Beginning speakers may transfer usage of English auxiliary "be" and use "être" to reflect a continuous aspect, as in "Je "suis allé(e)" au magasin" instead of "Je "vais" au magasin" ('I am going to the shop'). In this example, "je vais" can mean one of three things: I am going, I go, and I do go.
*French has a T-V distinction, "tu" and "vous", many English-speakers often use the wrong one for the situation, like using vous between close friends and tu for formal occasions. Plus, the usage in European French and in Canadian French differs slightly, as Canadians (including Québécois) use the tu form more often.
*Inappropriate usage of the term "Mademoiselle", especially to older women. The term should only be used for unmarried women under say 25, and even unmarried single women over that should be called Madame. When calling a room, it should be only "Mesdames et messieurs", not "Mesdames, mesdemoiselles, messieurs".

= German =

*Many English speakers have difficulty with the voiceless velar fricative (written ). They may instead pronounce it as IPA| [ʧ] (because of spelling) or IPA| [k] .
* English speakers may have difficulty pronouncing the rhotic consonant of Standard German, which is IPA| [ʁ] . However, depending on dialect, this can also be IPA| [ʀ] , IPA| [r] , and (very rarely) IPA| [ɹ] . English speakers are most likely to use this last realization.
*Many English speakers also have difficulty with the voiceless palatal fricative (also written ). For this reason, they may pronounce "ich" ("I") as IPA| [ɪʃ] rather than IPA| [ɪç] . Note that the former is a common feature in some (non-standard) German dialects.
*German represents the affricate IPA|/ʦ/. English speakers may commit a spelling pronunciation error and say [z] instead of IPA| [ʦ] . Or, conversely, some English speakers hypercorrect and have trouble prouncing IPA| [z] when it is close to a IPA| [ʦ] : "zusammen" - German: IPA| [ʦuˈzamən] , Anglophone: IPA| [ʦuˈʦamən] .
*English speakers may mix up and due to their pronunciations in English spelling and thus incorrectly pronounce "die" ("the", feminine) as the English word "die". This may also cause the humorous mistake of pronouncing "schießen" ("to shoot") as "scheißen" ("to defecate, to shit").
*English has no front rounded vowels and speakers may have difficulty with German IPA|/y/, IPA|/ʏ/, IPA|/ø/, and IPA|/œ/.
*English has very little grammatical gender. As a result, mistakes may arise with the German gender system:
**Masculine, feminine, and neutral articles, especially for inanimate objects, have to be memorized and speakers may mix them up. e.g. "das" Tisch" instead of "der" Tisch" (the table).
**Speakers may have difficulties with gender and number agreement in adjectives. e.g. "das weiß Haus" instead of "das weiß"e" Haus" (the white house), "die grün Blumen" instead of "die grün"en" Blumen" (the green flowers), etc.
*English speakers often have difficulties with the accusative and dative cases, since English has no such cases (except in pronouns) and speakers are rarely aware of the distinction.
**e.g. accusative: "der" weiß"e" Tisch" instead of "den" weiß"en" Tisch" (the white table), etc.
**e.g. dative: "das" weiß"e" Haus" instead of "dem" weiß"en" Haus" (the white house), "die" rot"en" Blumen" instead of "den" rot"en" Blumen" (the red flowers), etc.

=Japanese=

*Speakers may have trouble distinguishing between long and short vowels. They may also pronounce short vowels closer to English lax vowels:
**Short IPA|/i/ may become IPA| [ɪ]
**Short IPA|/ɯ/ "Audio|U (Japanese).ogg|listen" may become IPA| [ʊ]
**Short IPA|/e/ may become IPA| [ɛ]
**Short IPA|/o/ "Audio|O_(Japanese).ogg|listen" may become IPA| [ɔ]
**Short IPA|/a/ may become IPA| [æ]
*Speakers may pronounce long IPA|/ɯː/ with full lip rounding (i.e. IPA| [uː] ).
*May have difficulty distinguishing between IPA|/ai/ and IPA|/ae/, as both may be perceived as similar to the English diphthong IPA|/aɪ/.
*May have difficulty distinguishing between IPA|/aɯ/ and IPA|/ao/, as both may be perceived as similar to the English diphthong IPA|/aʊ/.
*May use stress accent, as is normal in English, rather than the standard Japanese pitch accent, and may replace IPA|/a/ with a schwa when making syllables unstressed.
* Standard Japanese postalveolars (the sounds spelled with "sh, ch" and "j") are alveolo-palatal and English speakers may pronounce them as IPA| [ʃ] , IPA| [tʃ] and IPA| [dʒ] instead of IPA| [ɕ] , IPA| [tɕ] and IPA| [dʑ] respectively.
*May have difficulty producing geminated consonants.
*Speakers may fail to pronounce an utterance-final IPA| [ɴ] as uvular and, instead, may pronounce it as a velar nasal.

=Portuguese=

*Although rare, speakers may forget that orthographic is always silent in Portuguese (like in French and Spanish).
*Difficulty with nasal vowels, especially in the nasal diphthongs IPA|/ɐ̃ũ/ (as in "João", "pão" etc.) and IPA|/ɐ̃ĩ/ (as in "Magalhães", "mãe" etc.).
*As with French, Portuguese represents the equivalent of English . English speakers may commit a spelling pronunciation error and say IPA| [tʃ] instead of IPA| [ʃ] .
*As with French, the voiced postalveolar fricative IPA|/ʒ/ may be pronounced as an affricate (IPA| [dʒ] ).
*Speakers may have trouble distinguishing between similar Portuguese diphthongs like IPA|/ei/ and IPA|/ɛi/, IPA|/oi/ and IPA|/ɔi/, and IPA|/eu/ and IPA|/ɛu/.
*Speakers may have difficulty with stressed vowel alternations such as "novo" [IPA|novu] (new, sing.) versus "novos" [IPA|nɔvuʃ] (new, plural).
*Speakers may have difficulty with the various realizations of Portuguese IPA|/r/. See Guttural R in Portuguese.
*English has very little grammatical gender. As a result, mistakes may arise with the Portuguese gender system:
**Feminine and masculine articles, especially for inanimate objects, have to be memorized and speakers may mix them up, e.g. "o" mão" instead of "a" mão" (the hand), "o" ponte" instead of "a" ponte" (the bridge), "o" dor" instead of "a" dor" (the pain), etc.
**Speakers may have difficulty with gender and number agreement in adjectives, e.g. "a" casa branc"o" instead of "a" casa branc"a" (the white house), "as" flores vermelha" instead of "as" flores vermelh"as" (the red flowers), etc.
**The singular feminine definite article in Portuguese is "a" but this is also the indefinite article in English. This may lead to "a menina" being mistranslated as "a girl" instead of "the girl" with "uma" " (a/an) and "a" (the) possibly being mixed up. To make things even more confusing, "a" also is a preposition meaning "to."
**The word for "thank you" is different for men and women, "obrigad"o" when the speaker is a man and "obrigad"a" when the speaker is a woman. Many speakers may choose the wrong one.
*Speakers may not include determiners like "o" or "a" as often as appropriate, especially before certain geographic toponyms. For example, Anglophones tend to say "Ele nasceu em Rio de Janeiro" " (He was born in Rio de Janeiro) instead of the correct "Ele nasceu no Rio de Janeiro". In European and southeastern Brazilian Portuguese, the articles "o" and "a" are optional before a proper name, e.g. "A Maria é..." (rather than "Maria é..."), and required before a possessive adjective, e.g. "Falei com o teu pai" (rather than "Falei com teu pai").
*Conversely, they might hypercorrect and include determiners where it would be otherwise inappropriate, e.g. "Ele foi para os Santos" (rather than "Ele foi para Santos").
*Speakers may place adjectives before a noun rather than after, which can often change the meaning: e.g., "grande homem" (great man) versus "homem grande" (big man).
*Speakers may uniformly use "por" and "para" or mix them up, because both can translate as "for" in English.
*Speakers may uniformly use "ser" and "estar" (and their conjugated forms) or mix them up, because both translate as "to be" in English.
*Portuguese has quite a few homographs and homophones like "como" which is either "“how”" or "“I eat”" and "a" is either "“the (feminine)”", “at/to” or "“it (feminine)”". Another homophone is "sem" with is "“without”" and "cem" which is "“hundred”", are both pronounced the same.
*Since many Anglophone speakers learning Portuguese have previously studied Spanish (but are not fluent), subtle, yet obligatory differences in pronunciation may be overlooked. Examples: Spanish "dos" (two) instead of "dois", Spanish "no" (no) instead of "não", and Spanish "pequeño" (small) instead of "pequeno".

Russian

* Speakers are likely to have difficulty with Russian's extensive palatalization system. Instead of palatalized sounds they may produce a C+IPA| [j] :
**Speakers of English dialects that have undergone yod-dropping may have more difficulty with IPA|/tʲ/, IPA|/dʲ/, IPA|/sʲ/, IPA|/zʲ/, and IPA|/nʲ/ (coronal consonants) than other speakers.
** Most speakers have little difficulty with IPA|/fʲ/ and IPA|/vʲ/.
* Some speakers have difficulty with the trilled IPA| [r] in Russian, especially the palatalized IPA| [rʲ] since neither are sounds of English. [Harvcoltxt|Jones|Ward|1969|p=185]
**Non-rhotic speakers, even after learning rolled-r, are prone to omit IPA|/r/ in such Russian words as удар IPA| [uˈdar] ('blow') and горка IPA| [ˈgorkə] ('hillock'). [Harvcoltxt|Jones|Ward|1969|p=185]
* Speakers may forget to devoice consonants in word-final positions or in other phonetic environments.
* Depending on the speaker's dialect, they may have difficulty with "dark l" (that is, velarized IPA|/l/, which in Russian contrasts with a palatalized IPA|/lʲ/) in positions other than in the syllable coda. [Harvcoltxt|Jones|Ward|1969|p=168]
* Speakers may have difficulty with the voiceless velar fricative and instead pronounce it as IPA| [h] .
*Speakers may have trouble with consonant clusters that do not exist in English such as тьма IPA| [tʲma] ('darkness'), ждать IPA| [ʐdætʲ] ('to wait'), ткнул IPA| [tknul] ('prodded'), всегда IPA| [fsʲɪgˈda] ('always'), мной IPA| [mnoj] ('me', instrumental), and взморье IPA| [ˈvzmorʲjə] ('sea-shore'). Most likely, they will insert an epenthetic schwa.
* Difficulty with Russian vowels:
** Most English speakers have no IPA|/ɨ/ (although it is an allophone in some dialects) and speakers generally have difficulty producing the sound. [Harvcoltxt|Jones|Ward|1969|p=33] They may instead produce IPA| [ɪ] .
**Speakers may replace IPA|/e/ with the diphthong in "day". e.g. IPA| [ˈdeɪlə] instead of IPA|/ˈdʲelə/ дело ('affair'). [Harvcoltxt|Jones|Ward|1969|p=41]
** Speakers are likely to diphthongize IPA|/u/, making сижу IPA|/sʲɪˈʐu/ ('I sit') sound more like IPA| [sɪˈʒʊu] . Some speakers may also universally front it to IPA| [ʉ] . [Harvcoltxt|Jones|Ward|1969|p=64]
** Speakers may also diphthongize IPA|/i/ in a similar fashion, especially in open syllables [Harvcoltxt|Jones|Ward|1969|p=30]
**Speakers may have difficulty with Russian IPA|/o/, pronouncing it as either IPA| [ɔ] or the diphthong in "boat". [Harvcoltxt|Jones|Ward|1969|p=56]
** It is likely that speakers will make the second element of Russian diphthongs insufficiently close, making them resemble English diphthongs (e.g, IPA| [druzʲeɪ] instead of IPA| [druzʲej] ) or pronounce it too long. [Harvcoltxt|Jones|Ward|1969|p=75]
** Speakers may pronounce IPA|/a/ as IPA| [æ] in closed syllables так ('so') and IPA| [ɑ] in open syllables два ('two'). [Harvcoltxt|Jones|Ward|1969|p=47]
*Speakers may also have difficulty with the Russian vowel reduction system as well as other allophonic vowels.
** Speakers generally fail to front IPA|/u/ and IPA|/o/ to IPA| [ʉ] and IPA| [ɵ] , respectively, between palatalized consonants.
** Tendency to reverse the distribution of IPA| [ʌ] and IPA| [ə] . English speakers tend to pronounce IPA| [ə] in the pretonic position, right where IPA| [ʌ] is required in Russian, while they pronounce IPA| [ʌ] in pre-pretonic positions, where IPA| [ə] occurs. Thus speakers may say голова ('head') as IPA| [gʌləˈva] instead of IPA| [gəlʌˈva] and сторона ('side') as IPA| [stʌrəˈna] instead of IPA| [stərʌˈna] . [Harvcoltxt|Jones|Ward|1969|p=55]
* Speakers may forget that orthographic <ё> (as well as <е> sometimes) is an o-sound.
* There are no cues to indicate correct stress in Russian. Speakers must memorize where primary and secondary stress resides in each word and are likely to make mistakes. [Harvcoltxt|Jones|Ward|1969|p=212]
* Speakers tend to forget to geminate double consonants. [Harvcoltxt|Jones|Ward|1969|p=214]

= Spanish =

*Speakers may occasionally forget that orthographic is silent in Spanish.
*Similarly, speakers may pronounce words with as IPA|/l/ rather than the palatal IPA|/ʎ/ or other palatal sounds depending on dialect.
*Speakers are likely to pronounce IPA|/x/ (as in "México" and "trabajo") as IPA| [h] (a number of Spanish dialects do this as well).
*Some speakers have difficulty with the trilled IPA|/r/ since this is not a phoneme in English.
**Some speakers may fail to distinguish between the trilled IPA|/r/ and the tapped IPA|/ɾ/, making word pairs like "ahorra" ('save') and "ahora" ('now') homophones.
**Non-rhotic speakers often omit IPA|/ɾ/ in words like "carne" ('meat') and "tercer" ('third').
*Many speakers are liable to use English vowel qualities for Spanish ones (like IPA| [ʊu] instead of IPA|/u/), particularly word-finally.
*Speakers may not pronounce voiced stops (IPA|/b/ /d/ /g/) as fully voiced. They may also fail to pronounce them as approximants or fricatives between vowels and word-finally (in such positions, IPA|/b/ is realized as IPA| [β] , IPA|/d/ as IPA| [ð] , and IPA|/g/ as IPA| [ɣ] .
*Speakers may pronounce orthographic B as IPA| [b] and orthographic V as IPA| [v] . In Spanish, these two letters represent a single IPA|/b/ phoneme with an allophone IPA| [β] .
*English speakers frequently split diphthongs into two distinct vowels, pronouncing words like "tienes" ('you have') as IPA| [tʰiːˈɛ.nɪs] instead of IPA| [ˈt̪je.n̪es] and "jueves" ('Thursday') as IPA| [huːˈɛvɪs] instead of IPA| [xwe.βes] (notice that this changes the number of syllables).
*In unstressed syllables, English speakers are very likely to merge IPA|/i/ and IPA|/e/ to IPA| [ɪ] : "pintar" IPA|/pin'tar/ becomes IPA| [pɪn'taɹ] . Even more commonly, speakers are likely to reduce unstressed IPA|/a/ to IPA| [ə] : "gracias" IPA|/ˈgɾa.θjas/ becomes IPA| [ˈgɹɑ.si.əs] .
* In European Spanish, C and Z represent IPA|/θ/. This sound has merged with IPA|/s/ in other dialects. English speakers tend to treat these letters as they are used in English so that "cintura" ('waist') and "zapato" ('shoe') are pronounced IPA| [sɪnˈtɚ.ə] and IPA| [zəˈpɑ.toʊ] respectively rather than IPA| [θinˈtu.ɾa] and IPA| [θaˈpa.to] (or IPA| [sinˈtu.ɾa] and IPA| [saˈpa.to] ). They also may pronounce "rosa" ('pink') as IPA| [ˈɹo.zɑ] .
*English speakers are likely to pronounce IPA|/t/ and IPA|/d/ as alveolar IPA| [t] and IPA| [d] , respectively, instead of the dental IPA| [t̪] and IPA| [d̪] which a native speaker would use.
*Speakers may place adjectives before a noun rather than after.
*Speakers may uniformly use "por" and "para" or mix them up, because both translate as "for" in English.
*Speakers may uniformly use "ser" and "estar" (and their conjugated forms) or mix them up, because both translate as "to be" in English.
*English has very little grammatical gender. As a result, mistakes may arise with the Spanish gender system:
**Feminine and masculine articles, especially for inanimate objects, have to be memorized and speakers may mix them up, especially for nonintuitive genders. e.g. "el" mano" instead of "la" mano" (the hand), "la" puente" instead of "el" puente" (the bridge), "la" dolor" instead of "el" dolor" (the pain), etc.
**Speakers may have difficulty with gender and number agreement in adjectives. e.g. "la casa blanc"o" instead of "la casa blanc"a" (the white house), "los" flores roja" instead of "las" flores roj"as" (the red flowers), etc.

= Welsh =

* Welsh has a number of voiceless sonorants that English lacks, including nasals (IPA|/m̥/, IPA|/n̥/, and IPA|/ŋ̊/) and liquids (IPA|/r̥/, and IPA|/ɬ/); speakers may substitute these sound for their voiced counterparts.
**An exception to this may be the voiceless lateral, which is actually an alveolar lateral fricative, a sound that speakers may confuse with IPA|/ʃ/
**Speakers may also simply pronounce both rhotics as an alveolar approximant IPA| [ɹ] .
* Speakers have difficulty with the velar fricative IPA|/x/ and pronounce it as IPA| [h]
*Welsh has a range of diphthongs that don't exist in English and speakers may have difficulty pronouncing and differentiating between them.
*Northern Welsh has IPA|/ɨː/ and IPA|/ɨ̞/ (spelled ) while Southern Welsh has merged these vowels with IPA|/iː/ and IPA|/ɪ/ respectively. Speakers may have difficulty with these northern vowels.
*Speakers may have difficulty with Welsh consonant mutation.

ee also

*Non-native pronunciations of English
* Accent reduction

References

Bibliography

*citation
last =Jones
first= Daniel
last2 =Dennis
first2= Ward
year= 1969
title= The Phonetics of Russian
publisher=Cambridge University Press
*citation
last=Schane
first=Sanford A
year=1968
title=French Phonology and Morphology
publisher=M.I.T. Press