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

Cases of phonological interference selected for the study 
After having studied and analysed the data received from the 
observation and video recording, the following results were obtained. 
Listed below are the nine cases of phonological interference of the 
mother tongue over the pronunciation of the consonant sounds of English 
among Peruvian EFL learners. The choice in favour of the mentioned 
cases was also supported by corresponding literature reading and theory 
analysis done by the researcher of the study. The conclusions were based 
on the works of such authors as Stanley Whitley, M. (2002); Resnick, M. 

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(1975); Finch, D.F. and Lira Ortiz, H. (1982); Celce-Murcia, M.; Brinton 
D. M. and Goodwin, J. M. (1996); Kenworthy, J. (1987).
Each case of phonological interference below is accompanied by a 
few examples taken from the learners´ oral discourse. Phonemic 
transcription was used to represent the pronunciation performed by the 
participants. The standard pronunciation of British English was preferred 
in the study and The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 
(2000) was used as a reference. The words containing the underlined 
consonants in each sentence represent the examples where the 
phonological interference occurs. The analysis of each case is also 
included.

Case 1. Replacing the palato-alveolar fricative /ʃ/ with the palato-
alveolar affricate /tʃ/. 
Example 1. Coca Cola supplies with materials, ingredients, 
machinery…
 
The underlined sound /ʃ/ is replaced with the sound /tʃ/. A 
participant pronounced the word as /mʌˈtʃinʌri/, whereas the standard 
pronunciation of this word is /məˈʃ:nəri/.
Example 2. This research shows that the number of the company’s 
shareholders is increasing.
The sound /ʃ/ is replaced with the sound /tʃ/ and the words are 
pronounced as /ˈtʃou/ and /ˈtʃeə ˌholdəs/.
The standard pronunciation of these words considering the 
grammar tense of the verb and plural form of the noun is /ˈʃəuz/ and 
/ˈʃeəˌhəuldəz/.
Example 3. She shares power with her three brothers.
The learner pronounced the underlined word as /tʃeəs/. The 
standard pronunciation of the word considering the grammar tense of the 
verb is /ʃeəz/.

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Case 1 is an example of phoneme difficulty caused by phonological 
interference of the mother tongue. There is a tendency among Peruvian 
learners of English to replace the palato-alveolar fricative /ʃ/ with the 
palato-alveolar stop /tʃ/
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due to the influence of the participants´ native 
tongue. As per Table 2 and Table 3 borrowed from the book by 
Stanley
Whitley (2002), where the consonant sounds of the English and Spanish 
languages are demonstrated, the phoneme /ʃ/ is shown as part of the 
English language sound system and not given as a phoneme used in 
Spanish. The Peruvian variant is not an exception.
In some other Latin American variants of Spanish, for example 
spoken in such countries as Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina (Rio de La 
Plata region), the use of the sound /ʃ/ is more frequent due to the 
occurrence of yeismo con rehilamiento or the phenomenon of yeismo 
with friction when 
ll 
and
 y
are often pronounced as /ʃ/ or /ʒ/.
Besides that, in Puerto Rico, Panama, northern Chile, and 
Andalusia, the stop /tʃ/ sometimes even becomes the fricative sound /ʃ/ in 
medial position: 
muchacho
/mutʃatʃo/ - /muʃaʃo/
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. But usually in 
Spanish speaking countries the palato-alveolar fricative is a rare 
phenomenon. This sound occurs only as an allophone of other consonant 
sounds, depending on the linguistic environment.
Even in the loanwords that contain the sound /ʃ/,