Introduction
The English language has gone through cycles of prominence and decline in China since it arrived on Chinese shores in 1637 for the purposes of trade (Adamson, Reference Adamson2002). Since then the language has evolved in China from the stage when it was regarded as a language spoken by ‘barbarians’ (Adamson, Reference Adamson2002) in the 1700s to the present day which sees an unprecedented surge of enthusiasm for the language. This significant change in the attitudes of the Chinese people towards English has accelerated since China's open door policy gathered steam in the early 1990s. Conservative estimates place the number of people learning English in China at about 200 million. A recent estimate by Crystal (Reference Crystal2008) suggests that the number of English speakers in China has, in fact, doubled, with the widespread enthusiasm for English generated by driving forces such as China's entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the hosting of the Beijing Olympic Games, international tourism, foreign investment, the development of Western China, and the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA) launched on January 1, 2010.
This has generated substantially growing interest in and research into English language teaching, English language policy and the sociolinguistics of English in China. Some researchers have used the terms ‘Chinglish’, ‘Chinese English’ or ‘China English’ to describe English in China. For purposes of the present study, the term ‘Chinese English’ will be used and henceforth referred to as ‘CE’. While the recognition of the existence of such a variety is still a moot point, what is noticeable is the paucity of research on the phonetic features of CE, as noted by Kirkpatrick (Reference Kirkpatrick2007: 146). With regard to pronunciation, the few existing studies have focused only on the phonetic features of speakers from a few provinces in Mainland China. While these studies have no doubt thrown new light on the pronunciation features of CE, they may not be robust enough to represent a general picture of CE, given especially the complex linguistic situation resulting from multi-ethnicity in Mainland China. In fact, little research has been done on features of English spoken in the multiethnic areas such as Yunnan where a great number of ethnic groups inhabit. In addition, the studies that have been done on English pronunciation have focused on English speakers of Han Chinese. The present study seeks to address this gap by conducting a small-scale investigation of the pronunciation features of CE as spoken in Yunnan (henceforth referred to as ‘Yunnan English’ or YE). Specifically, this paper will provide a detailed analysis of the English pronunciation of ten undergraduate speakers of different ethnic backgrounds from various parts of Yunnan, based on their recordings of a read passage. Comparison will be made between the results of these speakers and previous studies of pronunciation of other varieties of CE where applicable.
Ethnicity and language in Yunnan province
Located on China's southwestern frontier, Yunnan is the eighth largest province of this country. It borders on Laos and Vietnam to the south and southeast, and Myanmar (Burma) to the west. The area of Yunnan is 152,100 square miles (394,000 square kilometres) (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2010) and the population is over 42.88 million according to the 2000 population census (ESCAP, n.d.).Footnote 1 One notable feature of the population in Yunnan lies in the great complexity of its ethno-linguistic groups. The largest number of recognized Chinese ethnic groups, i.e. 25 out of 56, is found in this province, which approximately accounts for 33% of the population of Yunnan according to the 2000 population census (NBSC, 2000).Footnote 2 Among the ethnic population are such major groups as Yi, Bai, Hani, Zhuang and Miao. Among the other 66% of the population (NBSC, 2000) are the Han Chinese who are the descendants of the conquering armies and immigrants through the centuries, most notably during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2010). The non-Han population of Yunnan, accounting for one third of its population, are intermixed to the extent that not one county is inhabited by a single nationality. According to the NBSC (2000) statistics, the Yi nationality is the largest minority ethnic group in the province. This ethnic group mainly inhabits Central Yunnan, i.e. Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture. The second largest in the population are the Bai, who inhabit Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture. Other major minority ethnic groups are Hani, Zhuang, Dai, Miao, Hui (Chinese Muslims), Lisu, Lahu, Wa, Naxi, among many others.
While each minority ethnic group has its own language, only a few have written forms (e.g Yi, Naxi and Hui) whereas most have only spoken forms (e.g. Bai). The minority ethnic languages are largely mutually unintelligible. However, due to the nationwide promotion of Putonghua (or ‘Mandarin’) in China, most people in Yunnan, be they Han or other ethnic groups, speak dialects which belong to the Southwestern Mandarin Group (Li, Reference Li1985a, Reference Li1985b; Yan, Reference Yan2006). Although communication is not a big issue among the Han and other ethnic groups with Putonghua as the medium, the way Putonghua is spoken varies from region to region and from one ethnic group to the next. In fact, the pronunciation of each individual ethnic group is characterized by their substrate languages, both in terms of vowels and consonants. This is also true of the Han Chinese from various regions, though similarity prevails. Figure 1 shows a map of Yunnan province and the main minority ethnic groups residing in the province.
Figure 1. Map of Yunnan Province and its main minority ethnic groupsFootnote 3
Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, great efforts have been made by the Chinese government, coupled with the increasing access to and availability of the internet and both TV and radio broadcast media, to promote Putonghua as a national lingua franca and considerable progress has been made. However, as Li (Reference Li2006: 155) points out, ‘one perennial reality is that in the dialect areas, Putonghua has to compete with local dialects and often subdialects as well’. Putonghua is in fact not the most commonly used dialect in Yunnan. While it is true that Putonghua is a prerequisite for all teachers in the cities and most in the rural areas, it is not spoken in most of the governmental sectors or for daily communication. It is also rare to hear Putonghua spoken among local students in classroom, local people at parties and other activities such as shopping, travelling, etc. From the linguistic situation described above, it can be expected that there exist dialectal variations in Yunnan which may substantially affect the English pronunciation of learners from different linguistic backgrounds. The present study takes this factor into account and investigates pronunciation features of the five largest groups of speakers in Yunnan, i.e. Han, Yi, Bai, Hani and Zhuang nationalities.
Previous studies of CE
As there is a lack of empirical research on pronunciation features of YE, it is necessary to briefly review previous studies of other CE varieties which can cast some light on the present study and also serve as objects of comparison. Previous research on CE has in the main tended to focus on its lexis (e.g. Jiang, Reference Jiang2002; Kirkpatrick, Reference Kirkpatrick2007; Pride & Liu, Reference Pride and Liu1988) and syntax (e.g. Kirkpatrick, Reference Kirkpatrick2007; Xu, Reference Xu2000; Xu, Reference Xu2008), but its pronunciation features have not received equal attention. In fact, to date, the only detailed and systematic empirical studies in this area are Hung (Reference Hung2002) and Deterding (Reference Deterding2006b). Hung's (Reference Hung2002) study analyzed the speech of 93 first-year undergraduate non-English-major students at three universities in Beijing who are from 10 Chinese dialect groups, namely Beijing, Tianjin, Northeast, Northwest, Yue (Cantonese), Wu, Min (Fukien), Kejia (Hakka), Gan (Jiangxi) and Xiang (Hunan). All students were recorded reading 100 words in citation forms (e.g. ‘This is a worry’; ‘This is a cord’). The phonetic features of Chinese English identified in the study were categorized under each Chinese dialect group.
Deterding (Reference Deterding2006b) analyzed and described the pronunciation of 13 non-English-major undergraduates originally from nine Chinese provinces, namely Anhui, Henan, Hunan, Jilin, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Liaoning, Shandong and Zhejiang. Each student was recorded reading a passage and participating in a short interview. He identifies some salient features of pronunciation which he argues ‘may become established as part of a unique variety of English that is emerging in China’ (Deterding, Reference Deterding2006b: 175). There are a few other studies of CE pronunciation features, which include Ho (Reference Ho, Lee, Ho, Meyer, Varaprasad and Young2003), who videotaped and transcribed oral presentations of 39 PRC students who were studying in Singapore, Chang (Reference Chang, Swan and Smith1987), Pride and Liu (Reference Pride and Liu1988), Jiang (Reference Jiang2002), and He and Li (Reference He and Li2009) who provide some impressionistic descriptions of phonological features of Chinese English as a whole. Table 1 shows a summary of some of the most salient CE pronunciation features from these studies.
Table 1: A summary of pronunciation features of Chinese English from previous studies
It can be seen from Table 1 that consonants may be more challenging for CE speakers. In the present study, we attempt to explore the pronunciation of YE and seek to investigate whether and how it differs from that of other varieties of CE. To achieve this end we conduct detailed analysis of consonants and vowels of YE.
Participants and data
Ten undergraduates volunteered to participate in the study. Participants consist of two speakers from each of the Han, Yi, Bai, Hani and Zhuang nationalities. They are all undergraduates from a university in Yunnan and have not resided outside the province for an extended period of time (defined as at least three months). Table 2 shows the detailed information about these participants whose names are replaced by ‘Speaker …’ to protect their identity.
Table 2: Detailed information about participants
Participants were recorded reading a short passage (henceforth referred to as ‘The Wolf Passage’) which is attached in Appendix I. Recordings were made in a quiet room using a high quality digital PCM recorder and saved on the computer in .wav format with the sampling rate of 10,000 Hz which is frequently used in phonetic research (Hayward, Reference Hayward2000: 68). The ‘Wolf Passage’ was selected because it contains sufficient examples of vowels and consonants as well as a good balance of phonological environments to measure the different sounds (Deterding, Reference Deterding2006a). The recordings of ‘The Wolf Passage’ were then carefully analyzed using a detailed inventory of all vowels and consonants. The detailed pronunciation features were recorded in the inventory during analysis for which each recording was played five times.
The pronunciation features of YE
The following are some of the main features of the pronunciation of the ten speakers with different ethnic backgrounds, which will be discussed with examples from ‘The Wolf Passage’.
Consonants
1. Omission and vocalization of /l/
This is perhaps the most salient consonantal feature of YE. There are several instances of dark /l/ in ‘The Wolf Passage’. Nine out of ten speakers omit /l/ and pronounce wolf as /wɒf/ or /wɔːf/ or simply /ʊf/. Four of the speakers pronounce full as /fɔː/ while others pronounce it as /fuː/ or with /l/ in the word vocalized as /ǝ/ (/fʊǝ/). Most instances of l-vocalization occur in the word fool, which is pronounced by four speakers as /fʊǝ/. Other instances of /l/ omission and vocalization include little /lɪt, 'liːtɔː/, usual /'juːjɔː/, successful /sǝk'sesfɔː/ and told /tɑʊd/. The word fields /feldz/ is one exception.
2. Omission of final /n/ and insertion of schwa before /n/
The word afternoon /ɑːftə'nuː/ is found to be the typical example for /n/ omission. This feature is also found in the word soon /suː/. Interestingly, three out of ten speakers are found to insert the schwa /ǝ/ before the final /n/ in the word afternoon /ɑːftǝ'nuːǝn/. This is probably because the schwa insertion makes the final /n/ easier to pronounce. One would think that he who inserts schwa before the final /n/ in afternoon may do the same in soon, as is the case for Speaker 1. However, this is not always predictable, because Speakers 7 and 9, who omit the final /n/ in afternoon, are instead found to pronounce soon as /'suːǝn/.
3. /ʒ/ pronounced as /j/
Typically the fricative consonant /ʒ/ in the word pleasure is pronounced by six out of ten speakers as the approximant /j/. Another such instance is the word usual /'juːjɔː/. This feature is worthy of further investigation with more instances because, as with No. 2 above, this has not been reported by previous studies. These two, among others that will be discussed later in the paper, could potentially be one of the key features of YE. Unfortunately, there are only two instances of the sound /ʒ/ in ‘The Wolf Passage’.
4. /θ/ pronounced as /s/
As reported in Deterding (Reference Deterding2006b) and elsewhere, this feature is also one of the key features of CE. Here five speakers pronounce ‘th’ (/θ/) in thought, third and threaten as /s/. It is important to note that these five speakers are from Han, Yi, Bai, Hani and Zhuang respectively, which means the other speaker in each of these groups does not pronounce in this way, although both Bai speakers are from Dali and both Zhuang speakers are from Wenshan. This indicates that it may not be easy to generalize this feature either in terms of ethnicity or place of origin.
5. /ð/ pronounced as /z/
Four speakers pronounce almost all the instances of the voiced dental fricative /ð/ as /z/. Both Hani speakers (Speakers 7 & 8) pronounce the consonant in this way. This feature, however, is not found in the pronunciation of all the Bai and Zhuang speakers. This may mean that this feature is ethnicity-specific.
6. /ʃ/ pronounced as /ç/
Four speakers from four different ethnic groups are found to pronounce the consonant cluster ‘sh’ in the word shepherd as /ç/ which is similar to ‘ch’ in the word ich (I) in German. This feature was not reported in previous studies of CE.
Vowels
1. /ʌ/ pronounced as /ɑ/
As the most salient vocalic feature of pronunciation of YE speakers, this most frequently occurs in words such as duck /dɑk/, up /ɑp/, us /ɑs/, come /kɑm/ and cousins /'kɑzǝnz/. This feature, however, needs further validation through acoustic measurement in the future study due to the fact that it is no easy task to differentiate aurally between these two sounds. This feature is found in the pronunciation of nine of ten speakers and may be considered as a wide-spread feature of YE.
2. Absence of reduced vowels
Deterding (Reference Deterding2006b) also lists this feature as the second most salient for other varieties of CE, which may suggest that in terms of vowels YE is quite similar to those varieties. This occurs with most speakers in the unstressed sequence con-, e.g. concern /kɒn'sɜːn/ (or in some cases /'kɒnsǝn/) and convinced /kɒn'vɪnst/ (or in some cases /'kɒnvɪnst/). This also occurs in words such as a /e/, the /ze/, were /we/, of /ɒf/ (medial) and shepherd /'çeped/.
3. /iː/, /ɪ/ and /e/
The features of these three vowels are hard to categorize because each of these vowels is pronounced at least in two different ways. The long vowel /iː/ is pronounced /e/ in fields /feldz/ (by two speakers) but /eɪ/ in feast /feɪst/ (by three speakers). The pronunciation of vowel /ɪ/, probably due to its complex nature, varies from word to word or even for the same word, e.g. it /jiːt/, village/villagers /'velɪʤ, 'veɪlɪʤ/ and fist /fiːst, feɪst, fɜːst/. The vowel /e/, on the other hand, is realized in three different ways, namely /ɜː/, /iː/ and /eɪ/, as in the words however /hɑʊ'ɜːvǝ/, threaten /'θriːtǝn, 'sriːtǝn/, pleasure /'pleɪjǝ/ and successful /sǝk'seɪsfɔː/.
4. Extra final vowel or schwa (/ǝ/) insertion
Three types of schwa insert are found in the data. The first type occurs after the final plosive of a word that is followed by another word beginning with a plosive or other consonants or even a vowel, e.g. next to /'nekstǝ tu/, used to /'juzdǝ tu/ and just escaped /'ʤɑstǝ ɪ'skeɪpt/. The second type occurs between a consonant cluster within a word, e.g. cried /kǝ'rɑɪd, kǝ'red/. The third type of schwa insertion is found before the nasal /n/ within a word, e.g. afternoon /ɑːftǝ'nuːǝn/, soon /'suːǝn/ and cousins /'kɑzǝnz/.
5. Diphthongs
The most noticeable feature for diphthongs is the pronunciation of /eɪ/ as /ɑɪ/, /iː/ or /e/ in the words raising /'rɑɪzɪn/ (by five speakers) and safety /'siːftɪ, 'seftɪ/. The sound /ɑɪ/ is pronounced by five speakers as /e/ in the words while /wel/, tried /tred/, cried /kǝ'red/ and diet /delt/. Two speakers are found to pronounce /ɪǝ/ as /εǝ/ in the word fear /fεǝ/. One speaker pronounces the word air /εǝ/ as /ɜː/.
Conclusion
This paper has outlined some of the most salient features of the pronunciation of Yunnan English speakers from eight different regions of Yunnan Province. The most salient consonantal feature, i.e. omission and vocalization of /l/ of YE, though not the most salient for CE, is found in the pronunciation of all speakers. The most salient vocalic feature of YE, i.e. /ʌ/ realized as /a/, seems to be widespread regardless of ethnicity and region. Some features identified in previous studies, e.g. /r/ pronounced as /l/ and /v/ pronounced as /w/, which were identified in CE in previous research, are not found in the pronunciation of YE speakers. On the other hand, some features, particularly omission of final /n/, /ʒ/ realized as /j/, /ʃ/ realized as /ç/ and /ʌ/ realized as /ɑ/, which are found in the pronunciation of YE speakers, were not reported in previous studies of the pronunciation of CE. These features may be the ones that constitute the pronunciation of YE.
The results indicate that while there exist some pronunciation features that are shared by YE and CE, there are some features which are more specific to YE than to CE. However, the present study does not indicate whether these features are more ethnicity-specific or more region-specific. Further research is needed to include more speakers from more ethnic groups in order to validate the results of the present study. It should be pointed out that the present study only focuses on the segmental aspect of the pronunciation of YE. To establish a more complete description of the pronunciation of YE, future research also needs to investigate the suprasegmental features, e.g. intonation, stress and rhythm, of this variety. It should be mentioned here that the first author of this paper has done some preliminary studies on the acoustics of Yunnan English in terms of vowels and rhythmic patterning (Ao, Reference Ao2010) on a small set of pilot data and that the auditory analysis described in this paper will be validated by further acoustic analysis for his doctoral dissertation. Since China is the country with the largest population in the world, it is expected that linguistic variations exist at various levels, both geographically and ethnically. Therefore, in order to better understand Chinese English as a new variety, it may be necessary to conduct more features-based descriptions of the pronunciation of smaller varieties (as well as other features), from which a more general picture of CE may emerge.
Appendix I: The Wolf Passage
The Boy Who Cried Wolf
There was once a poor shepherd boy who used to watch his flocks in the fields next to a dark forest near the foot of a mountain. One hot afternoon, he thought up a good plan to get some company for himself and also have a little fun. Raising his fist in the air, he ran down to the village shouting ‘Wolf, Wolf.’ As soon as they heard him, the villagers all rushed from their homes, full of concern for his safety, and two of his cousins even stayed with him for a short while. This gave the boy so much pleasure that a few days later he tried exactly the same trick again, and once more he was successful. However, not long after, a wolf that had just escaped from the zoo was looking for a change from its usual diet of chicken and duck. So, overcoming its fear of being shot, it actually did come out from the forest and began to threaten the sheep. Racing down to the village, the boy of course cried out even louder than before. Unfortunately, as all the villagers were convinced that he was trying to fool them a third time, they told him, ‘Go away and don't bother us again.’ And so the wolf had a feast.
RAN AO is currently a research associate and concurrently doing his PhD in applied linguistics at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He has taught English and Chinese languages extensively in China and Singapore. His current work as a research associate involves English as a lingua franca in Asia and the teaching of English pronunciation. He has published articles on English phonetics, teaching of English pronunciation and listening, and using songs in the ELT classroom. His research interests include English phonetics, world Englishes, and language teacher education. Email: mraoran@gmail.com
Associate Professor EE-LING LOW is concurrently the Associate Dean of Teacher Education (Programme and Student Development) at the National Institute of Education, Singapore and an Associate Professor at the English Language and Literature Academic Group. She obtained her PhD in Linguistics (Acoustic Phonetics) from the University of Cambridge, UK under NIE/NTU's Overseas Graduate Scholarship. In 2008, she won the Fulbright Advanced Research Scholarship, which she spent at Boston College. She has published several books, articles and chapters on English linguistics and World Englishes, and is currently the President of the Singapore Association for Applied Linguistics. E-mail: eeling.low@nie.edu.sg
