A Contrastive Analysis of Mandarin Chinese and Thai: Suggestions for Second Language Pronunciation

Abstract

This study investigates the differences between consonants and vowels of Mandarin Chinese and Thai sound systems which are considered to create the difficulties in L2 pronunciation, according to the contrastive analysis hypothesis. As well, this research aims to re-check the accuracy of contrastive analysis’s predictive power by comparing the differences of Mandarin Chinese pronunciation performance by native Thai speakers. Research findings show that, first, it is possible to find out the similarity and difference between L1 and L2 by contrastive analysis. Second, L2 pronunciations are influenced by L1. Third, some differences between L1 and L2 do not cause difficulty in L2 learning, while some similarities do. In other words, the difficulty of L2 learning is not merely the sum of its differences. Fourth, there are other factors influencing the pronunciation of a L2 learner. As a result, the accuracy of a contrastive analysis’s predictive power is not as high as it has been claimed.