![]() (2006:60) The difference in spelling (also called ortography) and pronounciation from one word to another is caused by different influences and loan words of different languages. The Low German languages include Old Saxon (which has evolved into modern Low German or Plattdeutsch), Old Low Franconian (which became Dutch and Flemish), Old Frisian (which became Frisian, still spoken in a few places in the Netherlands), and Old English’. High German was spoken in the mountains and uplands of Germany and, after Martin Luther translated the Bible into this language, became the standard literary language of Germany. Drout in his book A History of English Language, ‘ But English itself belongs to the West Germanic group, which is divided into two branches, High and Low. English is actually originated as West Germanic language. ![]() English itself has a complex and long history to its ‘fixed’ form as we see today. It is pronounced /ju:/ in ‘university’, /ʊ/ in ‘bush’, /u:/ in ‘shoot’, /ʌ/ in ‘bus’ or ‘cup’, or /ɜ:/ in ‘fur’, while in Indonesian the letter ‘u’ in simply pronounced the same as phonetics /u:/ in any word, as in ‘dunia’ /du:nIa/, ‘kamu’ /kɑ:mu:/, ‘suatu’ /su:wɑ:tu/ etc. The alphabet or letter ‘u’ can be pronounced in many different fashions. The English learners will find it difficult to follow English spelling’s ‘inconsistency’. In romanized Japanese and Indonesian, it simply pronounced as it is written /kɑ:rɑ:te/, while in English, the pronunciation is very different, /kərɑ:tɪ/, where there are some changes in /ɑ:/ into /ə/ and /e/ into /I/. Another example is the loanword ‘karate’ from Japanese. For example the word ‘simple’ in English, according to the alphabet it should be pronounced /si:mple/ which is very similar to the phonetics, while in English it should be pronounced differently, which is /sImpl/. Most of Indonesian alphabets have similar sound and spelling as in International Phonetics Alphabets (IPA). This difference is pretty much significant for Indonesian speakers for Indonesian alphabet is using phonetics rules in the clear way. The difficulty occurs to the English users (especially Indonesian) since the English spelling doesn’t apply phonetics rules as in Indonesian. The English pronunciation cannot be separated with the unique form of English spelling. They become common mistakes accepted by the English users and learners. The mistakes somehow become the truth and they are no more considered as mistake. The mistakes are done in many generations, from teachers to students and teachers to teachers. These mistakes are in the pronunciation of some English words. There are some common mistakes done by most Indonesian who learn English and especially English students.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |