Babkina, V. (2018). Phonological interference of mother tongue over the English

bad
becomes 
bat, bag 
becomes 
back, dog 
becomes 
dock
, that learner transfers the L1 knowledge on the target language. This 
transfer is negative since it brings about mispronunciation of the words 
and causes further unintelligibility of the transmitted message. 
The factor of the L1 influence is probably one of the most 
significant that a foreign language teacher faces in the classroom. Due to 
that reason, there are various studies dedicated to the problem of negative 
transfer. 
One of such studies is a research conducted by a British 
phonetician J.C. Wells. In his work “Overcoming phonetic interference” 
J.C. Wells (2000) affirms: 
“When we encounter a foreign language, our natural 
tendency is to hear it in terms of the sounds of our own 
language. We actually perceive it rather differently from the 
13
Eckman, F. R. (2004): 
Typological Markedness and Second Language Phonology.
Retrieved February 14, 2015 from 
https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/eckman/www/Fred%20Eckman/Recent%20Publications_fil
es/typmkdL2phon.pdf
 
14
Crystal, D. (2008): 
A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics
. Sixth edition. Oxford: 
Blackwell, p. 249.
 

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22 
way native speakers do. Equally, when we speak a foreign 
language we tend to attempt to do so using the familiar 
sounds and sound patterns of our mother tongue. We make 
it sound, objectively, rather differently from how it sounds 
when spoken by native speakers. This is the well-
documented 
phenomenon 
of 
phonological interference (Crystal 
1987:372). 
Our 
L1 
(mother tongue) interferes with our attempts to function in 
the L2 (target language)
15
”. 
In his article J.C. Wells (2000) reveals the issue of phonological 
interference of the mother tongue of Japanese learners when their 
language interferes with the pronunciation of the English language 
sounds. Wells pays attention to such problems as phoneme difficulties, 
allophonic difficulties, phonotactic difficulties of consonant clusters and 
final consonants and some other issues. In this research the British 
phonetician demonstrates that the influence of the mother tongue on the 
English language pronunciation can be quite sizable but there are always 
ways to reduce this negative transfer and help learners achieve 
intelligible pronunciation. Wells not only highlights the problems and 
classifies them but also gives some pedagogical solutions to overcome 
these issues.
One of the common problems that Japanese learners face when 
they deal with the English language is the pronunciation of the sound /v/. 
Wells (2000) states: 
“It should be carefully distinguished from the sound /b/. In 
the case of /v/, the lower lip, as active articulator, is pressed 
against the upper teeth in such a way as to allow the air 
expelled from the lungs to continue to pass through: in 
phonetic terminology, it is 
labiodental
and 
fricative
. With /b/, 
on the other hand, the lower lip articulates with the upper lip 
and forms a firm contact with it such that the air flow is 
completely blocked for a moment: it is 
bilabial
and 
plosive
. 
Learners can easily see the difference if the teacher 
15
Wells, J.C. (2000): “Overcoming Phonetic Interference”. 
English Phonetics, Journal 
of the English Phonetic Society of Japan, 
3. pp. 9-21. 

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23 
demonstrates it accurately and confidently, and they can 
usually manage to reproduce it themselves by imitation
16
”.
Another example of phoneme difficulty for Japanese learners is 
distinguishing the sounds /l/ and /r/. The learners tend to replace the 
sound /l/ with the sound /r/. The author suggests the drilling of minimal 
pairs in order to assist the learners to identify the sounds and to 
pronounce them in an intelligible way. For example, “