Comparison Among Languages: C. Cappa, J. Fernando, S. Giulivi

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Dyslexia and Additional Academic Language Learning

Module 5

Comparison among languages


C. Cappa, J. Fernando, S. Giulivi1

Authors are in alphabetical order. All authors have contributed


1

equally to the write up of the present module.

Original version. Versions of this module adapted to the local contexts


of partner countries can be downloaded from the relative sections
(see appropriate flag symbols)

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This publication reflects the views of the author only, and the Commission
cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the
information contained therein.
Dyslang Module 5
Comparison among languages
Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, 2012.

Cover illustration Euroface Consulting 2012.

Fair usage
This work is available under Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported
(See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/)
This mean that the author allows the work to be shared, copied
and distributed as well as remixed and adapted provided the
following are respected:

Specific attribution: This author permits adaptation to local contexts provided the
original author and material are acknowledged, and it is clear where the original
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may not endorse the derived version.

Non commercial use: This work is restricted to non-commercial use. However, it


may be incorporated into commercial contexts, e.g. workshops or online courses,
provided it is clear that this material may be obtained freely, and where it may be
obtained.

This publication was produced by:


Claudia Cappa°, Jill Fernando*, Sara Giulivi**

°ISAC-CNR Modulo di ricerca “Metodologie e tecnologie didattiche per i distur-


bi specifici dell’apprendimento” (Turin- Italy), Communication Physiology Lab-IFC
and ILC CNR, (Pisa, Italy)
*British Dyslexia Association
** Department of Teaching and Learning - SUPSI (Locarno Switzerland)

Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Volfgang Sahlfeld del DFA-SUPSI Locarno for the comments
and contribution to the present Module.

The original version in Italian can be downloaded, after registration, from


http://www.dyslang.eu/default.asp?jazyk=it&pozadi= (Italian website)
or http://www.dyslang.eu/default.asp?jazyk=ch&pozadi= (Swiss website )
or from: www.dislessiainrete.org/dyslang/dyslang-moduli-e-materiale.html

The original version in english can be downloaded, after registration, from


http://www.dyslang.eu/default.asp?jazyk=&pozadi=
or from: www.dislessiainrete.org/dyslang/dyslang-moduli-e-materiale.html
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages

Learning outcomes

• Acquire basic knowledge of the main differences between languages and of the main
difficulties plurilingual individuals may encounter, due to the differences between the
acquired languages and the languages to be acquired.

Useful terminology

Morphology: morphology is that field of linguistics that studies the internal structure of words and
the different forms that words can assume by adding affixes or by combining them with other words.

Morpheme: words are made up of morphemes. A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of a
word. Morphemes can be divided into lexical and grammatical. The first ones have a lexical meaning,
e.g. nouns, adjectives and verbs; the second ones (articles, prepositions, endings, etc...) express gram-
matical functions and their meaning depends, at least partly, on their context. Besides, morphemes
can be free or bound. Free morphemes can stand by themselves in a clause (e.g. Today, yesterday, bar,
we, you, that, of, then, etc...); while bound morphemes can’t stand alone and are always attached to
other morphemes (e.g. In Italian the -o ending for male singular substantives, the i- ending for male
plural ones and, in English, the -s ending for plurals). Bound morphemes are called affixes. These latter
can be subdivided into prefixes, if they are added on the left of the word (e.g. ex-moglie, in-utile),
infixes, if they are added in the middle of the word (e.g. parl-ott-are), suffixes, if they are added on the
right of the word (e.g. dolce-mente, can-i, scriv-ono).

Phonetics: is the branch of linguistics that describes the physical characteristics of human sounds
and languages. In other words, phonetic studies what we do while we speak and while we listen to
someone talking.

Phonology: is the branch of linguistics that studies the linguistic function of the sounds, that is their
capability to differentiate meanings. Phonology also covers how the sounds of a determined language
will combine together and how they can be modified in determined contexts.

Phoneme: it is the smallest distinctive unit in the sound system of a language, that is the smaller
unit (representation of speech sound) that can determine a change of meaning in two otherways simi-
lar words.

Syntax: it is the branch of linguistics that studies the principles that, in different languages, rule the
combination of words in more complex structures

by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, Novembe, 2012


Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages

Contents

INTRODUCTION 1

5.1 LANGUAGES IN THE WORLD 2



5.2 CONSONANT AND VOWEL SYSTEMS 3

5.3 LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY 6


5.3.1 Morphological typology 9
5.3.2 Syntactical typology 11

5.4 EXAMPLES OF COMPARISON BETWEEN LANGUAGES 14
5.4.1 Turkish-English 14
5.4.2 Turkish- French 16
5.4.3 Final remarks 18

REFERENCES 19

LINKS AND FURTHER READINGS 19

APPENDICES 21
Appendix A - Arabic 22
Appendix B - Chinese 26
Appendix C –Bulgarian 29
Appendix D- Indo-Aryan languages of South Asia (with sub-sections
on Hindi/Urdu and Bengali 33
Appendix E - Polish 39
Appendix F - Portuguese 43
Appendix G - Somali 47
Appendix H - Tamil 49
Appendix I - Vietnamese 51

by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, Novembe, 2012


Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages

INTRODUCTION
In the interstices of language lie powerful secrets of the
culture.
Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born

Although Swan and Smith’s quotation refers to English, this observation


could be applied to learners of any language.
All pupils can be expected to experience some difficulties in certain
aspects of learning an additional language. Where difficulties appear
to be particularly severe or prolonged, it can be useful to compare
pupils’ performance in the new language with their oral and literacy
skills in their first language. In the case of monolingual children, this
should not present significant difficulties as language teachers can talk
to their colleagues and look at examples of pupils’ work. However,
the situation can be quite different for multilingual children where
the school may not have much information about pupils’ skills in their
first language or indeed about the language itself. The purpose of
this section is to familiarise teachers with some of the features of a
number of first languages spoken by pupils in our schools. This will
enable teachers to gain understanding about whether errors made in
the additional language are likely to be dyslexic indicators or whether
they could be attributed to features of pupils’ first language. Perhaps
more importantly, it will highlight to teachers the areas of instruction
which are likely to require particular attention.

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by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages

5.1 Languages in the world

There are about 7000 and they have many similarities and differences.
First of all, the number of speakers of each language is extremely variable.
Some languages, like English or Mandarin Chinese, have a total of more than
one billion speakers; others number just a few hundred people, for example
some languages spoken by Australian Aboriginals or American Indians; some
others are spoken by just a few dozen people and are at risk, in a short
while, to disappear forever.
However, the most macroscopic difference lies in the ‘sound shapes’ of
words carrying the same meaning in the different languages: for example,
the object that we usually use to drink is called “glass” in English, “bicchiere”
in Italian, “verre” in French, etc… This relation between sound and meaning
is completely arbitrary.
Languages also differ in the sound inventories they draw from, in order to
form words and, in particular, in the sounds they use to distinguish different
word meanings: the English language has chosen, among all the possible
linguistic sounds, a consonant like the initial one of the word “that”, but the
same sound hasn’t been chosen, for instance, by Italian or French. Similarly,
many English words include an aspirated “h” either at the beginning or in
the middle of the word. Italian doesn’t have aspirate “h”, and that’s why
many Italians learning English, when pronouncing words like “head”, “hot”,
“holiday”, “ahead”, very often drop this sound.
In this module we will try to provide some examples of the basic typological
differences that can occur among languages and explain the reason why it
can be useful for foreign languages teachers to know – even just partially –
such differences.

Many of the examples provided below concern differences with respect to


English, and to the possible learners’ difficulties in learning this language.
However, the principles of those differences can be extended to other
languages.
We will deal with differences in sound inventories, but also with the
different modalities that every language has chosen to convey the meaning
of words through morphological and syntactical structures. Such modalities
are related to what we call “linguistic typology” (see par. 5.2).

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by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages

5.2 Consonant and vowel systems

Phonemic inventories of different languages can be very diverse, both in terms


of number of phonemes and in terms of type of phonemes. British English,
for example, has 10 single vowels and 21-24 consonants (numbers may vary
in American English and in the different dialects). Italian has 7 vowels and
23 consonants. Bulgarian has 6 vowels and 33 consonants. Japanese has a
relatively small phonemic inventory, consisting of 5 vowels and 14 consonants,
while Rotokas language – spoken in Papua New Guinea – has an even smaller
one with just 5 vowels and 6 consonants. Xhosa language, one of the official
languages of South Africa, has a very large phonemic inventory, consisting of
10 vowels and up to 69 consonants… To see:
www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter2/amerenglishvowels.html

When you learn a foreign language, you may have to face some difficulties
related to the differences that you may find between its phonemic inventory
and that of your mother tongue. First of all, if you are already over the so-
called critical period, the phonetic-phonological component of a second
language will be one of the most difficult aspects to learn (BOX 5.1).

It is a fact that during the first months of life, when the child naturally and
without effort acquires the native language, the brain develops its own
neural networks based on the input it receives, that is based on the mother
tongue. So shaped neural networks favour the learning of linguistic structures
somehow ‘similar’ to those already acquired, whereas they interfere with
those which are not similar, as may be the case with an L2. This means that,
when as children we learn our native language, we group together the variety
of perceived sounds into a series of categories that we acknowledge as
peculiar of our language. These categories form a sort of “filter” through which
we perceive the L2 sounds.

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Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages

I Box 5.1 The Critical Period

The “critical period” is generally defined as the temporal window in the life
span after which it is no longer possible to acquire a certain linguistic code as
a native language (Fabbro, 2004).
Indeed, the existence of a critical period, going from early infancy until
puberty, was originally proposed for native language acquisition (Lenneberg,
1967) and then extended also to second language learning (see Krashen et al.,
1982). After puberty, the plasticity of the language acquisition mechanisms
seems to start decaying. Recent research in the field of language acquisition,
however, have led to a less drastic view of the critical period and have shown
that the most abrupt decay after puberty concerns especially the acquisition
of phonetic abilities. Furthermore, researchers have highlighted the
importance of considering the “critical period” not as a single homogeneous
window in time, but as a continuum of windows (Goswami, 2004), or as
“multiple critical periods” (Knudsen, 2004), during which the cerebral areas
dedicated to certain linguistic functions mature and become stable under
a neuro-physiological and neuro-anatomic point of view, making neural
restructuring progressively more difficult.

The following table, translated from Daloiso (2009) displays the critical
periods for language acquisition that have been identified

CRITICAL PERIODS FOR LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

PRIMO PERIODO SECONDO PERIODO TERZO PERIODO


(0-3 anni) (4-8 anni) (da 9 anni)
Linguistic • Perfect • Perfect • Foreign accent
characteristics pronunciation pronunciation • Difficulties in
• Optimal • Optimal syntax
development of development of • Difficulties
linguistic abilities linguistic abilities in acquiring
• Optimal syntactic • Optimal syntactic function words
competence competence • Greater
• Possible possibilities of
interferences fossilisation
among
languages
Neural correlates • Maturational • Maturational • Stable
factors factors cognitive
• Implicit memory • Implicit memory functions
• Beginning of • Complete
lateralisation lateralisation
Cerebral The languages The languages are The languages
representations acquired are partly represented acquired late are
represented in the in the same cerebral represented in
same cerebral areas areas different cerebral
areas, that are
larger than the
mother tongue
areas

As the table shows, the acquisition of new linguistic codes becomes more
difficult as neural plasticity diminishes with time. The first and second critical
periods are crucial for the acquisition of a native competence in one or more
languages. These two time windows are therefore the most favorable time
when children can develop a plurilingual competence (Daloiso, 2009)

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I
Box 5.2 Assimilation of new sounds to native sounds

According to some recent research, native phonological categories act as


“prototypical sounds” and behave as sorts of “magnets” both for native
and non-native sounds: the sounds we get in touch with are “attracted”
by the prototypical sounds that, in the acoustic space, are perceived as
the closest ones; therefore a non-native sound located too far in the
acoustic space from any other prototypical sound, will not be “attracted”
by it. (cfr. the “neural commitment” and the “native language magnet
effect” concepts in Kuhl, 2004). Especially when the competence in a
L2 is still poor, some sounds of this language may turn out to be more
difficult than others to distinguish. This difficulty depends on how much
they are “attracted” by and “assimilated” to the sounds of the mother
tongue.

According to the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) by Best (1994) the


modalities of assimilation of the L2 sounds to those of L1 can be various.
For example, it is possible that two L2 phonemes are attracted by a single
L1 phoneme and both of them are assimilated to it. In this case it will be
difficult to perceive them as different from each other. For instance, if
the sounds th and t of the English language are perceived by an Italian
speaker with little competence in this language, both of them will be
assimilated to the t sound and will turn out to be difficult to distinguish.
In some cases, two L2 phonemes may be attracted and assimilated to
two different L1 phonemes: in this case they will be much easier to
distinguish. In other cases, it is possible that one of the two phonemes
is assimilated to a L1 phoneme whereas the other one is not assimilated
to any native sound. In this case too, the two sounds will be quite easy
to distinguish. If the person who is learning a L2 receives a qualitatively
and quantitatively appropriate input, he/she will be able to perceive the
“articulatory gestures” that are needed to produce a sound (to learn
more about “articulatory gestures”, (Goldstein, & Fowler, 2003), and will
have the possibility to form the peculiar phonological categories of a L2.

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5.3 Linguistic typology

Existing languages are classified by linguists according to three main


criteria: the “genealogical” grouping, which is based on the “family”
relationships among languages; the “areal” grouping, based around the
common structural features which are typical of those languages spoken in
geographically close areas; and the “typological” classification, based on the
internal structure of words and on the modalities of word combinations into
sentences. In this unit we will mainly focus on the “typological” criterium,
since it plays a more significant role for our purposes.
To learn more about genealogical and areal classifications, see Boxes 5.3 and
5.4.

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by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
As already hinted at in paragraph 5.3, one of the criteria that the linguists
have used in order to try to “sort out” existing languages, is the genealogical
classification: languages have been grouped into different “linguistic
families” according to their derivation from a common original single
language. Linguists have been able to trace this through a backwards
reconstruction. Various linguistic families, geographically arranged as
illustrated in the map below, have been investigated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Primary_Human_Language_Families_Map.png
The family is the largest “genealogical unit” and it can be divided into
groups (and subgroups) of languages. Both living and extinct languages can
belong to such groups and subgroups. As an example, we quote below the
Indo-european family with its corresponding groups and subgroups. For
space reasons, we will avoid quoting extinct languages. As you can see, both
Italian and English - for instance – belong to the Indo-European family, so
they are genealogically related (whereas Chinese is not), but belong to
different linguistic groups. Finally, as you can see, Turkish is not in the tree.
As a matter of fact this language belongs to the Altaic family.

http://srhabay.wikispaces.com/19+INDO-EUROPEAN+LANGUAGE+FAMILY
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages

I
Box 5.4 - Areal Classification of Languages
Languages which don’t belong to the same family or to the same
linguistic group, can share some similarities of a structural kind that
may have been created thanks to the geographical proximity among
the languages themselves. Japanese and Chinese, for example, are not
derived from the same original language, but have common features
which have developed thanks to the contacts they have kept down
the centuries. So, at areal level, these two languages fall into the same
classification.

Another example could be that of Sinhala and Tamil, two languages


spoken in Sri Lanka (although Tamil is also spoken in Tamil Nadu, South
India, and elsewhere). They show a lot of similarities in their syntactic
systems and share a lot of vocabulary, but belong to two different
families: Sinhala is part of the Indo-Aryan family, while Tamil is a
Dravidian language.

Acquiring awareness of the typological differences among languages can


turn out to be particularly useful for teachers of foreign languages, since it
allows them to better understand the way different languages ‘work’, and so
to foresee some of the difficulties that can emerge in language learners.

When two languages have one or more morphological or syntactical


features in common, they are said to be typologically correlated, whether
or not they are genealogically related. Linguists make a distinction between
morphological typology and a syntactical typology.

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5.3.1 Morphological typology

Morphological typology classifies languages on the basis of the internal


structure of words and identifies 4 primary linguistic categories:

1. Isolating: this kind of language has a low morpheme-per-word ratio and


expresses the connection among words mainly through their order in the
sentence.
2. Agglutinative: this kind of language forms words by adding as many affixes
as the amount of grammatical connections necessary to express.
3. Inflecting: this kind of language uses a single suffix in order to express the
grammatical functions.
4. Incorporating or Polysynthetic: in this kind of language a sentence can
correspond to a single word: this means that it is possible to incorporate
all the grammatical connections that an inflecting language would express
with a sentence, into a single word.

It is important to keep in mind that “pure” types of languages do not actually


exist and that the classification mentioned above doesn’t have to be taken
rigidly. Some languages can be included in a specific typology for some
features, but in a different typology for some other features. English, for
instance, can be considered an isolating language, since its morphology is very
reduced, however it shows some inflective features as well as typical features
of agglutinative and incorporating languages.

To learn more about morphological typology and examine some examples of


each of the 4 morphological typologies listed above, see the box 5.5.

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Box 5.5 Morphological Typology: exemples

From a morphological point of view it is possible to detect 4 types of languages:

ISOLATING: in isolating languages morphology is nearly nonexistent. This means that


nouns can’t be distinguished by gender, number or case; verbs aren’t inflected, etc…
In order to express connections among words, isolating languages mainly make use of
the order of words in addition to some particles. Chinese is an example of an isolating
language. English is another example, even if less “extreme”. In these languages the
order of words tends to be quite rigid, adjectives aren’t inflected (“A red rose” vs
“Seven red roses”), nouns can’t be distinguished by gender, but just by number (“cat”
means both male and female cat) and verb forms never change (in English the only
exception is the present tense in which, at the third-person singular, you have to add
the suffix –s or –es). So English and Chinese, even if not genealogically related, are in
fact typologically related since they are both isolating languages.

AGGLUTINATIVE: agglutinative languages form words by adding as many affixes4 as the


amount of grammatical connections to be expressed.
Some examples of agglutinative languages are German, Japanese, Finnish, Hungarian
and Turkish. In the latter language, for instance, the word “bird” is “kus”, while “birds”
is “kus-lar” (to the lexical morpheme that means “bird” we add “-lar”, that is the plural
suffix); likewise “room” is “oda”, while “rooms” is “oda-lar” (lexical morpheme + plural
suffix); “my rooms” is “oda-lar-im” (lexical morpheme + plural suffix + possessive suffix).

INFLECTING: inflecting languages express the various grammatical functions by means


of a single suffix, they further express grammatical functions by changing the stem
vowel of words (a vowel that ends a stem and precedes an inflection).
Romance languages and Slavic languages are generally inflective languages. Some
examples of the Romance ones are Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese; while
some examples of the Slavic ones are Russian, Czech, Bulgarian and Polish.
Italian can be considered an example of inflective language: e.g. in the verb “scriv-
ete” (= “you (pl.) write”) the suffix –ete contains the information about the present
indicative tense, the active form and the second-person plural. Besides, if we consider
the first-person present indicative of the verb “faccio” (= “I do”), compared to “feci” (=
“I did”), the change of the stem vowel from –a- to –e- shows the shift from the present
tense to the past historic.
In the French verb “parl-ons” (= “we talk”), the suffix –ons contains the following
information: present indicative, 1st person plural, active form; similarly in the Spanish
verb “habl-as” (= “you speak”), the suffix –as means present indicative, second person
singular, active form.

INCORPORATING (or polysynthetic): in incorporating or polysynthetic languages it is


possible to express with a single word all the connections that in an inflective language
are expressed with a clause. Some examples of them are a few African Bantu languages
as well as some languages spoken by American Indians. In Inuit language, for instance,
the word “angyaghllangyugtuq” means “someone wants to buy a big boat” (angya-
ghlla-ng-yug-tuq = boat-AUGMENTATIVE-to buy-VOLITIVE-3 PERS. SINGULAR)

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Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages

5.3.2 Syntactical typology

Syntactical typology classifies languages according to the reciprocal order


in which the constituents of the clause tend to place. It takes 4 aspects into
account:

The subject (S) - verb (V) - object (O) order. The possible combinations are six,
that is: SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS, OSV and OVS. Among these combinations, the
most frequent are SVO; SOV; VSO . VOS is attested in very few languages, OSV
in no-one and OVS (it seems) just in one.
The noun-adjective order
The use of prepositions or postpositions
The noun-genitive order

It is important to underline that the observation of diverse languages shows


the existence of systematic correlations among the four aspects mentioned
above. We know, for example, that if a language is normally characterised by
the subject-verb-object order (1), then the adjective usually goes before the
noun (2), uses prepositions, not postpositions (3) and the possessive phrase
is positioned after the noun (4). To learn more about it and examine some
examples, see the Extension material box 6.6.
As already mentioned in paragraph 6.1.2, there is a systematic correlation
among these four aspects. In particular, the following correlations can be
identified:

1) VSO/Ps/NG/NA
2) SVO/Pr/NG/NA
3) SOV/Po/GN/AN
4) SOV/Po/GN/NA

These “combinations” are of the <<if…then>> kind and so, from a logical
point of view, they constitute implications. Linguists call them “universal
implications”.
It is important to note that not every language falls perfectly into the categories
mentioned above. There may be several exceptions.
An awareness of the differences and the correlations among languages at the
syntactical typological level, can emerge as very helpful for teachers of foreign
languages.
Given the large variety of languages and cultures that more and more often
coexist in school, it is impossible for teachers to know in detail the native
language of all their pupils. However, proceeding from the information that
they will receive from their pupils about their own mother tongue, and on the
basis of some basic knowledge of syntactic typology, teachers will be able to
acquire a better awareness of the different structural features of that language.

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Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages

This will be useful in two ways:

on the one hand it will be useful for the teacher to make a comparison
between the student’s native language and the taught language, and
anticipate the possible difficulties he/she may find;
on the other hand it will be useful for the pupil to reflect on the differences
between his/her mother tongue and other languages (let’s imagine a
student of Turkish origin, living in Italy, and studying English); it will also
help the pupil to feel more involved during the lesson and to perceive the
diversity of their language not as an obstacle, but as an enrichment for
themselves and for their classmates.

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Box 5.6 Syntactical Typology: examples

1) Subject (S) - verb (V) - object (O) order :


• SVO:
Italian: La ragazza (S = the girl) ha letto (V=read) il libro (O= the book)
English: John (S) read (V) the book (O)
Vietnamese: Tôi sẽ học tiếng Việt (I will study Vietnamese). In this sentence
“Tôi” means “I” (S), “sẽ học” means “will study” (V), where “sẽ” is a future
marker and “học” means study, “tiếng Việt” means “Vietnamese” (O),
where “tiếng” means language and “Việt” means “Vietnamese”.

• SOV:
Turkish: Kiz kitabl okuyor (Kiz =girl, kitabl= book, okuyor = to read (+ 3p.
sing. fem. pass.)
Japanese Hiromi-ga Naoko-ni tegami-o kaita (Hiromi wrote a letter to
Naoko, where “Hiromi-ga” =Hiromi-nominative (S), “Naoko-ni” = Naoko-
dative, “tegami-o” = letter-accusative (O), and “kaita” = “wrote” (V)
Sinhala: Mama TV baluwa (I watched TV), where “Mama” = “I” (S), “TV” =
“TV” (O), and “baluwa”= “watched” (O)

• VSO:
Welsh: example here
Arabian: Qara’at al-bintu al-kitaba (Qara’at = to read (+ 3p. sing. fem. perf.),
al-bintu = girl, al-kitaba = book.

2) The noun (N) – adjective (A) order


In some languages one of the two orders prevails but the other is also
possible. Italian, for example normally prefers the NA order (“albero (= tree)
verde (=green)”), but AN is also used (“verde albero”).
In languages like English, the AN combination predominates: “black (angel)
coffee (n)”.
The same happens in German the AN combination is preferred, as in “eine
(= a) freundliche (= friendly) Dame (=Lady)”.

3) The use of prepositions rather than postpositions.


Italian, for example, is a language that makes use of prepositions (“A Roma”
= “To Rome”), whereas Japanese uses postpositions (“Yokohama e” = “to
Yokoama”).

4) The genitive (G)– noun (N) order.


In Italian the followed order is NG (“Il gatto di Marta” = “Martha’s cat”),
in English the preferred order is GN (“Martha’s cat”), but often also NG
(“The owner of the factory”). In Vietnamese the order is usually GN: in the
sentence “Martha của mèo” (Martha’s cat) would literally translate as as
“Martha of whom cat”.

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5.4 Examples of comparison between


languages

The range of possible combinations between L1, L2 and other additional


languages that may co-occur in the plurilingual student is extremely wide
and impossible to cover. Below, we have taken the example of Turkish and
considered its main features in order to highlight possible difficulties that
may arise and the most common mistakes that learners are likely to make
in English. We have then looked briefly at Turkish in relation to French and
suggested potentially problematic areas.
This module also includes an appendix that contains a comparison of English
with a number of other first languages spoken by learners attending our
schools. Links have also been made to other European languages where
possible. Please select the sections which relate to languages spoken by your
learners.

5.4.1 Turkish-English

1) Phonetic - phonological aspects:

a. Turkish is a phonologically transparent orthography with regular letter-


sound correspondences
b. Sound systems. Turkish has 21 consonants and 8 vowels. Since 1928,
Turkish has used an adapted version of the Roman script.
c. Unlike in English (where it is only pronounced before a vowel sound, for
example, ‘run’ or ‘story’), /r/ is always pronounced in Turkish. Turkish
speakers tend to pronounce the /r/ in English when it is in the final
position (‘poor’) or when it comes before a consonant (‘hurt’).
d. In Turkish, the letters ‘s’ and ‘z’ are always pronounced as /s/ and /z/
respectively. This is not the case in English and can lead to confusion
with the pronunciation of genitive endings (‘the boy’s ball’), third
person singular present tense verbs (for example ‘lives’) and plurals (for
example, the word ‘trees’ which should be pronounced /tr:z/).
e. Turkish speakers have difficulty pronouncing /æ/ and may often
substitute/e/, for example saying ‘set’ for ‘sat’.

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f. There may also be confusion between /ɔ:/ (‘law’) and /oʊ/ (‘low’).
g. /ð/ (‘clothe’) and /θ/ (‘cloth’) do not exist in Turkish and may cause
significant difficulty.

2) Morphological aspects:

a. Turkish is an agglutinative language. Affixes are added in sequence to


the end of a word. For example, the suffix ‘-di’ is used to express the past
tense and the suffix ‘-mi’ is used to ask a question requiring a yes/no
answer.
b. b. Verb conjugation. A suffix is added to the root of a verb to indicate
tense and person. For example ‘I don’t understand’ is translated as
‘anlamiyorum’ which is made up of the verb root (anla-), the negative
suffix (m(i)), the first person present continuous tense indicator ((i)yor) and
the first person marker (-(u)m). The use of the present continuous here
shows why Turkish students may incorrectly use the present continuous
tense in English.
c. Gender and number in nouns and adjectives.
Nouns do not have gender but they show number, possession and case.
Nouns can be pluralised by adding the suffix ‘-ler’ or ‘-lar’ but the plural is
used less frequently than in English.
d. Other relevant aspects…
There is no separate verb ‘to be’.
There is no definite article and there are differences between indefinite
article usage in English and Turkish.

3) Syntactic aspects:

a. Preferred Subject – Verb – Object order


The usual word order is Subject-Object-Verb (with the finite verb at the
end of the sentence). Word order is sometimes altered to change the
stress: the word immediately before the verb is stressed.
b. Preferred noun-adjective order
Adjectives go in front of nouns.
c. Subject must be expressed or can be omitted
Personal pronouns exist in Turkish but are often omitted.
d. Other relevant aspects…
• ‘He’, ‘she’ and ‘it’ are represented by one third person pronoun in
Turkish.
• In Turkish, commas are often inserted after the topic of the sentence
and learners may also do this in their written English.
• The equivalent of English prepositions come after the noun.

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4) Examples of common errors:

a. My mother teacher.
b. I am watching television every day.
c. When I had finished breakfast, came to school.
d. My brother, is in year 2.
e. My parents have bought new house.
f. I live in the Manchester.
g. I made my homework.
h. Have you a big garden?
i. He knows playing tennis.
j. I went to home after the party.
k. I saw him two week ago.

5.4.2 Turkish- French

For a Turkish speaker learning French in the UK, it will be important to


consider the length of time the student has been learning English. There are
many similarities between English and French, in terms of syntax, vocabulary
and grammar so a student who already has a reasonable command of English
will be at an advantage when they start learning French.

Unlike the transparent spelling system of Turkish, French has a relatively


opaque spelling system. However, unlike English, you can almost always
tell how to pronounce a word from its spelling, for example ‘eau’ is always
pronounced in the same way.

Turkish has quite a lot of loan words of French origin: kuaför (coiffeur/
hairdresser), pantolon (pantalon/trousers), kravat (cravate/tie), bisiklet
(bicyclette/bicycle), enerji (énergie/energy), karakter (caractère/character),
restoran (restaurant), televizyon (télévision/television) and many others.
Similarly there are a number of French words that originate from Turkish.
These include yaourt (yoghurt), chiche-kebab (shish kebab) and kiosque
(kiosk). It will be useful to discuss these and encourage the student to mention
any other similar words that they encounter when learning French.

French and Turkish both have an informal and formal word for ‘you’ so this
concept should not pose any difficulties for Turkish speakers.

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Turkish speakers, like monolingual English speakers, may be expected to have


some difficulties with the gender of nouns in French as these do not exist in
Turkish.

Definite articles do not exist in Turkish so may be problematic in French (although


less so for learners who have become familiar with the concept in English).

Like English, Turkish adjectives stand before nouns and are not modified
according to the number of objects they modify. As a result, Turkish speakers
may have some difficulty with the positioning of French adjectives (as some
go in front of the noun but most stand after) and with the need for adjectival
agreement in terms of number and gender.

Box 5.7 Sources


I
Bayraktaroğlu, S Orthographic Interference and the Teaching of British
Pronunciation to Turkish Learners
http://www.jlls.org/Issues/Volume%204/No.2/sbayraktaroglu.pdf

BBC, A guide to Turkish – 10 facts about the Turkish language


http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/other/turkish/guide/facts.shtml

Jaworski, N, Common Mistakes Made by Turkish Students


turklishtefl.com/for-students/common-mistakes-made-by-turkish-students/

Power, T. Turkish Language Backgrounds: 33 common English pronunciation


problems. http://www.tedpower.co.uk/l1turkish.html

Shoebottom, P The differences between English and Turkish, Frankfurt


International School
http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/turkish.htm

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5.4.3 Final remarks

This section has provided an overview of one of the languages spoken as a


mother tongue by children in our schools and has indicated the type of errors
that teachers might expect from speakers of those languages. However, it
should be borne in mind that a child’s performance in a third (+) language
will also be influenced by factors such as the length of time they have spent
learning the main language of the school and the relationship between the
second and third languages. A child might have Arabic as their first language
but if they have spent several years learning English, they are unlikely to
experience the same difficulties with the French or German script that they
may have experienced when they first started learning English.
In addition, teachers also need to recognise that each child has their own story
and that it is essential to build up as complete a learner profile as possible.
This includes finding out about any gaps in schooling as well as the number
of languages the child has been exposed to and their degree of fluency. It is
important to know when they use each language and who they use it with.
Find out whether they are able to read and write in first and subsequent
languages and, if so, find out when they read and write and for what purpose.
Ensure that you know which languages are used in the family home. It might
be the case that a child’s first language is Somali but that they have spent
several years in Holland and are fluent in Dutch. This will inevitably have an
impact on their experience of learning additional European languages. Do not
assume that siblings share the same learner profiles as, in some cases, their
knowledge of languages may differ considerably.

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References

Best, C. T. (1994). The Emergence of Native-Language Phonological


Influences in Infants: A Perceptual Assimilation Model. In Goodman, J. C. and
H. C. Nusbaum (eds.) The Development of Speech Perception: The Transition
from Speech Sounds to Spoken Words. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. (pp.167-
224). Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL0890.pdf

Daloiso, M. (2009) I Fondamenti neuropsicologici dell’educazione linguistica.


Libreria editrice Cafoscarina, Venezia (in italian) Retrieved December, 14,
2013 from http://lear.unive.it/bitstream/10278/1188/1/DaloisoR.pdf

Fabbro, F., (2004) Neuropedagogia delle lingue. Come insegnare le lingue ai


bambini, Astrolabio, Roma. (in italian)

Goldstein, L. & Fowler, C.A. (2003). Articulatory phonology: A phonology


for public language use. In Schiller, N.O. & Meyer, A.S. (eds.), Phonetics
and Phonology in Language Comprehension and Production, pp. 159-207.
Mouton de Gruyter. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL1318.pdf

Goswami U.,(2004) Neuroscience and Education, British Journal of


Educational Psychology, 74, pp. 1-14. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
www.pnarchive.org/plat2006/assets/presentations/Goswami/Goswami7.pdf

Knudsen E.I., (2004)“Sensitive Periods in the Development of the Brain


and Behaviour”, in Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16, pp. 1412-1425.
Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://faculty.washington.edu/losterho/knudson_critical_periods_jcn_2004.pdf

Krashen, S.D., Scarcella, R., Long, M., (eds.), (1982) Child-Adult Differences
in Second Language Acquisition, Newbury House, Rowley.

Kuhl, P. K. (2004). Early language acquisition: cracking the speech code.


Nature Reviews Neuroscience 5, 831-843

Lenneberg, E.(1967) Biological foundations of language. New York: Wiley

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Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages

Links and further readings


http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/ UCLA Phonetics Lab Data: Tavole fonetiche
sonore per molte lingue. Utili per imparare i suoni nuovi.
Retrieved December, 14, 2013.

Bayraktaroğlu, S. (2008). Orthographic interference and the teaching of British


pronunciation to Turkish learners. The Journal of Language and Linguistic
Studies, 4(2), 107-143. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://www.jlls.org/Issues/Volume%204/No.2/sbayraktaroglu.pdf

BBC, A guide to Turkish – 10 facts about the Turkish language. Retrieved


December, 14, 2013 from
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/other/turkish/guide/facts.shtml

Begotti, P. (a cura di), Tabella di analisi contrastiva tra alcune lingue straniere/
italiano L2. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://win.retetantetinte.it/files/7_analisi_contrastiva_begotti.pdf

Begotti, P. Didattizzazione di materiali autentici e analisi dei manuali di


italiano per stranieri. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://venus.unive.it/filim/materiali/accesso_gratuito/Filim_didattizzazione_analisi_teoria.pdf

Best, C. T. (1995) A direct realist view of cross-language speech perception:


New Directions in Research and Theory. In Winifred Strange. Speech
perception and linguistic experience: Theoretical and methodological issues.
Baltimore: York Press. pp. 171–204.

De Marco, A. Aspetti tipologici della lingua Italiana: implicazioni


glottodidattiche. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://venus.unive.it/italdue/80/mod_8_de_marco.pdf

Jaworski, N, Common Mistakes Made by Turkish Students. Retrieved


December, 14, 2013 from
http://turklishtefl.com/for-students/common-mistakes-made-by-turkish-students/

Power, T. Turkish Language Backgrounds: 33 common English pronunciation


problems. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from h
ttp://www.tedpower.co.uk/l1turkish.html

Shoebottom, P The differences between English and Turkish, Frankfurt


International School. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/turkish.htm

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APPENDICES

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Appendix A - Arabic

Arabic is an official language in over 20 countries including Algeria, Iraq,


Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia. It also operates as
a second major language in a number of additional countries such as Chad,
Djibouti and Bangladesh. There are also many more Muslims throughout
the world who regardless of nationality have some knowledge of the Arabic
language due to their study of the Koran.

The following section highlights some of the features of Arabic which may
account for specific difficulties faced by individuals learning English and
other west European languages.
In Arabic, the script is written from right to left and the verb is positioned
first and followed by the subject of the sentence. However, in colloquial
Arabic, the word order is Subject Verb Object.

There is no separate upper and lower case in Arabic so errors in


capitalisation can be expected when learners write in European languages.
There may be difficulties learning capitalisation rules for English and then
contrasting rules in a language such as German where nouns are capitalised.

Arabic speakers sometimes confuse similar letters (p/q and b/d) when
learning the Roman alphabet and also experience difficulties learning cursive
writing. When reading and writing, Arabic speakers may also mis-sequence
letters within words because of right to left eye movements.

The written Arabic script comprises consonants and long vowels. There
are three short vowels but these are not written in Arabic script. It is not
therefore surprising that learners may frequently omit vowels when writing
in European languages.

Arabic uses the conjunction ‘wa’ (equivalent to ‘and’) to list a series of items
whereas English uses commas and ‘and’ before the final item. Learners may
produce English with the ‘and’ repeated rather than using commas.

The English present simple and present continuous are represented by one
present tense in Arabic. This may cause difficulties for the Arabic speaker
learning English (‘She is studying now’ v ‘She studies for three hours every
evening’) but will not be an issue when learning French or German which do
not have a separate present continuous form either.

In Arabic, the object of a verb in a relative clause must be included and this
leads to errors in English (‘The cottage, which we stayed in it last summer,
was by the sea’.) Personal pronouns are often added to verbs in Arabic and
this can lead to mistakes in English such as ‘My sister she works in a school’.

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Abstract nouns are preceded by a definite article in Arabic so unnecessary


definite articles may be expected in learners’ writing in English. In contrast,
there is no indefinite article in Arabic so omissions of indefinite articles in
English may be expected.

Relative pronouns do not distinguish between human and non human so


learners may find it difficult to decide whether to use ‘who’ or ‘which’.

In Arabic, there is no equivalent of the auxiliary verb ‘do’ so learners are likely
to have initial difficulties with forming interrogatives and negative statements.
Errors such as ‘He go to the mosque?’ are to be expected.

Arabic does not have a verb ‘to be’ in the present tense. This leads to errors
such as ‘He going to the football club’.

Because the Arabic spelling system is phonetic, Arabic speakers often


pronounce English words phonetically.

Arabic word stress is regular so Arabic speakers struggle with languages such as
English where different stress can affect the meaning of a word.

Pronunciation. Some particular vowel confusions occur in English, for example


between:

Some particular vowel confusions occur in English, for example between:


/ ɪ/ / sit and /e/ set
/ɒ/ cot and /ɔ:/ caught
/æ/ man and /e/ men
/e/ sell and /eI) sale
/ɒ/ cot and /a:/ cart
/ʊ/ full and /u:/ fool

Consonant confusions occur between:

/p/ pit and /b/ bit


/g/ game and /k/ came
/v/ vine and /f/ fine (eg fillage instead of village).
/θ/ think and /s/ sin or /t/ tin
/ ð/ they and /d/ day
/ʒ/ as in leisure and pleasure and /s/, /ʃ/ and /z/

Arabic does not have initial consonant clusters such as pr, pl, gr, gl, thr, spr or
spl and also has far fewer consonant clusters than English. Sometimes Arabic
speakers will insert a vowel in order to make pronunciation easier.

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Difficulties faced by Arabic speakers learning English – feedback from a


teaching assistant in a Manchester primary school

1. Confusion over pronouns, gender and tenses


• Him went home (He went home.)
• Me go to the shop (I went to the shop.)

2. Difficulties with phonics


• i/e confusion
• b/p confusion
• o/u confusion
• ch/sh confusion

3. Difficulties with writing


• Where to start writing on the page
• Sentences do not flow – pupils keep starting a new line
• Pupils may miss a line after each sentence
• Incomplete sentences (because spoken sentences are
incomplete)
• Capital letters appear in the middle of a sentence and full
stops are frequently omitted.

A sample of Arabic script

‫؟ةءارقلا رسع وه ام‬

‫ةديج ةموهفم نآلا حبصا دق ةءارقلا رسع نا‬، ‫دق نيذلا كئلوأل اكبرمو اريحم لازي نأ نكمي هنكل و‬
‫هب اورثأت‬.

‫ءاجهلاو ةءارقلا تاراهم ملعت ىلع يسيئر لكشب رثؤي ةءارقلا رسع نا‬. ‫نوناعي نيذلا لافطألا نا‬
‫تاملكلا نم توصل ةيتوصلا ةقيرطلا مادختسا يف ةبوعص نودجي ةءارقلا رسع نم‬، ‫نودجي مهناو‬
‫ ةقوطنملا تامولعملا ركذت يف ةبوعص دجت ام ابلاغو تاملكلا تاوصأ رسك يف ةبوعص‬، ‫لثم‬
‫تاميلعتلا نم ةعومجم‬.

[Courtesy of The Dyslexia-SPLD Trust]

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Box 5.8 Sources


I

Abi Samra, N (2003) An Analysis of Errors in Arabic Speakers’ English


Writings. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://abisamra03.tripod.com/nada/languageacq-erroranalysis.html

Ahmed, J (2011) Pronunciation Problems Among Saudi Learners, A Case


Study at the Preparatory Year Program, Najran University Saudi Arabia in
Language in India (Volume 11). Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://www.languageinindia.com/july2011/jalalsaudilearnersfinalpaid.pdf

Sunderland, H, Klein, C, Savinson, R, Partridge (1997), T Dyslexia and the


Bilingual Learner, Assessing and Teaching Adults and Young People who
Speak English as an Additional Language, London Language and Literacy
Unit

Swan, M and Smith, B (2001) Learner English, A teacher’s guide to


interference and other problems, third edition, Cambridge University Press

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Appendix B - Chinese

Chinese is an official language in China, Taiwan and Singapore and is also widely
spoken in Malaysia. There are many Chinese communities throughout the
world. There is much debate about whether Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, Kan and
the other Chinese mother tongues are dialect groups or separate languages.
Modern standard Chinese is based on Mandarin which is considered the
national language. The Chinese dialects/languages share a written language and
have many features in common. Consequently, the difficulties they face with
English and other west European languages are likely to be similar.

Pronunciation of English is a major area of difficulty for Chinese speakers.


Mandarin does not have the contrasting vowel sounds /I/ and /i:/ or / ʊ/ and
/u:/ and so learners find it difficult to distinguish between ‘ship’ and ‘sheep’
and between ‘full’ and ‘fool’. Similarly, Mandarin has no / æ/ sound and a word
such as ‘man’ may be pronounced as ‘men’, ‘mun’ or ‘marn’. The sound /v/
which does not exist in Mandarin may be replaced by /w/ (for example ‘wet’ for
‘vet’) or by /f/ (‘fan’ for ‘van’). Learners also struggle with voiced consonants
and tend, for example, to pronounce /b/ as /p/ (‘pill’ for ‘bill’) and /d/ as /t/
(‘made’ as ‘mate’). Like many other languages, Mandarin has no /ð/ and /θ/ and
learners may pronounce /ð/ as /z/ (‘close’ for ‘clothes’) and /θ/ as /s/ or /t/ (‘sin’
for ‘thin’, ‘tin’ for ‘thin’).

One of the most common difficulties for Chinese (and Japanese) speakers
is distinguishing between /l/ and /r/ and can lead to misunderstanding (for
example ‘fright’ and ‘flight’). Final consonant sounds are rare in Mandarin and
learners struggle with words such as ‘hill’ which they may pronounce as ‘hee’
(dropping the consonant) or as ‘hill-er’ (adding an extra syllable). Chinese
speakers find initial consonant clusters difficult and may add a vowel sound
(‘sipoon’ for ‘spoon’). For final consonant clusters, they made omit the last
consonant (‘dog’ for ‘dogs’) or add an extra syllable (‘doggers’ for ‘dogs’).

Chinese languages/dialects use a varying number of tones to distinguish


between the meaning of words. They do not use pitch to change the emphasis
or to express emotion and tend to struggle with intonation in English.

Chinese does not use verb conjugation to express time. Time can be conveyed
through word order, context or, like Vietnamese, by using a time marker such
as ‘yesterday’. Chinese students find English verb conjugation very difficult and
will often make mistakes such as ‘He has gone to London last Sunday’ or ‘I live in
England for a long time’ (when they mean ‘have been living’).

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There are no definite or indefinite articles in Chinese so errors can be expected


in this area in English and other west European languages.

Pronouns are likely to be an area of difficulty as spoken Chinese does not


distinguish between gender with the word ‘tā’ meaning ‘he’, ‘she’ and ‘it’. A
typical error would be ‘I’ve got a sister. He is studying at university’. In Chinese,
there is no distinction between ‘I’ and ‘me’ or between ‘my’ and ‘mine’ so
learners may find it difficult to select the correct type of pronoun in English. In
addition, learners may omit pronouns as this is permitted in Chinese when the
meaning is clear.

Chinese does not generally pluralise its nouns so learners are very likely to omit
plural endings in English.

Chinese has a logographic writing system where a picture or single character


represents a whole word and can be decoded holistically. It can be difficult for
Chinese speakers to get used to alphabetic scripts where they must visually
decode words that are spread out over a series of letters. This is likely to have
an impact on the speed of reading in the early stages. Where learners have
already become familiar with an alphabetic language (for example a Cantonese
speaking child in a UK school), they should have less difficulties when faced
with an additional language which may have slight variations in terms of
alphabet (for example é, ú, ¿ in Spanish, ß and umlaut in German etc) but
basically employ the same system. Finally, it should be recognised that a newly
arrived learner’s writing might appear to suggest motor difficulties when it is
really just indicative of a lack of unfamiliarity with the new script.

Research (for example, Holm and Dodd (1996) in Sze (2008)) suggests that
students who are literate in a non alphabetic first language are likely to have
limited phonological awareness and will perform poorly on tests of non word
decoding. This suggests that they will struggle to read new or unfamiliar words.
It is likely that they will rely on whole word visual decoding unless they are
given explicit instruction in phonological awareness.

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Box 5.9 Sources


I

Gregory M., Foreign Teachers Guide to Living and Working in China.


Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://middlekingdomlife.com/guide/teaching-english-chinese-students.htm

Plump, A (2007) Language Group Specific Fact Sheet Mandarin Chinese


Speakers. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://www.ric.edu/tesl/pdf/factsheet_mandarin.pdf

Power, T. English Language Learning and Teaching Retrieved December,


14, 2013 from http://www.tedpower.co.uk/l1chinese.html

Shoebottom, P The differences between English and Chinese. Retrieved


December, 14, 2013 from
http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/chinese.htm

Sunderland, H, Klein, C, Savinson, R, Partridge T. (1997), Dyslexia and the


Bilingual Learner, Assessing and Teaching Adults and Young People who
Speak English as an Additional Language, London Language and Literacy
Unit

Sze, P (2008) Teaching Phonics through Awareness-Raising Activities.


Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://paulsze.wikispaces.com/file/view/Teaching+Phonics+through+Awareness+formatted.pdf

Zhang, F, Yin, P (2009) A Study of Pronunciation Problems of English


Learners in China, Asian Social Science, Volume 5, No. 6

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Appendix C - Bulgarian
Bulgarian is a Slavic language, and belongs to the group of Indo European
languages. It is spoken in Bulgaria and by ethnic Bulgarians all over the world.
There are several big emigrant waves in 20th century in addition to those from
previous times. Now the biggest Bulgarian communities live in the USA, Spain,
UK, Italy, Russia, Canada, Australia, etc.

Bulgarian has a Cyrillic based alphabet, which causes specific difficulties for
children studying English. In Bulgarian alphabet there are 30 letters, 12 of them
are the same shape as some Latin letters, but some of them represent different
sounds. For example: In Bulgarian the letter “B” is for the sound [v], while in
English it is for the sound [b]; in Bulgarian the letter “H” is for the sound [n]
while in English it is for the sound [h], etc. In addition there are two letters in
Bulgarian letters that looks like two reversed letters from the Latin alphabet (И
– N and Я – R). All this is quite confusing for the students. In Bulgaria children
start to study English (or other foreign language) from 1st, or latest – from 2nd
grade, it means that children have to learn two alphabets together, and to learn
to read and write using two different graphic systems.

In Bulgarian nouns are divided into masculine, feminine and neuter. There is
one more sub-division of the masculine and feminine nouns into two groups:
Personal nouns and Non-personal nouns. All this affects the characteristics
of each noun, and depending on that we change the form of the noun in
the sentence. The fact that in English there is no such division of the nouns
causes some confusion and often learners use personal pronouns (he/she/it)
incorrectly. Learners (especially beginners, or those who have difficulties, like
dyslexia) could say:
“In the room there is a table. SHE is new.” (in Bulgarian “table” is feminine).
Or “I have a child. It is a boy.” (in Bulgarian “child” is neuter).

Significant difficulty for a Bulgarian who is learning English comes from the
rules when and how to use the articles (a/an or the). In Bulgarian articles are
added to nouns or adjectives depending on their role in the sentence. It is a
definite article if the nous takes a role of the subject, or indefinite article if
it is an object. In the case we have a combination of an adjective + a noun at
first we need to make the adjective consistent with the noun in gender and
number, and then to add the article to the adjective. The articles are added
as an indivisible ending of the noun or the adjective. The form of the article
changes Depending on the gender, the number and the conjugation of the
noun/adjective. Very specific case is the one when we use a personal pronoun
before the noun (or combination of adjective + noun), as in Bulgarian we add
the article at the end of the personal pronoun.

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A Bulgarian learner may have difficulties when a Bulgarian word could be


translated into English with two or even more words. For example, the word
“много” could be translated as “many”, “much”, “lots of”, “a lot of”, “plenty of”
and very often learners use these words incorrectly. The opposite is also true –
there are cases when one English word could be translated with more than one
word in Bulgarian. For example, “stage” could be translated as „сцена”, „етап”,
„фаза”, „скеле”, etc. In all these cases the learner should be very aware of the
context, so he can choose the correct word.

The same mistake is often made with the usage of pairs of words like “some/
any”, which have different grammatical usage in English, but have only one
form in Bulgarian. It is especially valid for questions: “Are there some people in
the room?”

In terms of tenses, Bulgarian has 9 tenses, divided into three main groups:
present, past and future tenses. The system of tenses is quite complicated, but
it is completely different from the English one. It causes serious problems to all
learners, but especially to those with dyslexia, because of their difficulties with
the time management.
For example: A sentence in English that is in Present Perfect could be translated
into Bulgarian using different tenses depending on the context.

I have studied English for five years. – Уча английски от пет години. (Present)
I have done my homework. – Написах си домашното. (Past Complete)
I have read this book. – Чел съм тази книга. (Past Indefinite)

The opposite is also true: a sentence in Bulgarian that is in Present Tense could
be translated using different tenses in English depending on the context.

Уча английски от пет години.- I have studied English for five years.(Present
Perfect)
В момента уча английски.- I am studying English at the moment.(Present
Continuous)
Всеки ден уча английски. – I study English every day.(Present Simple)

It is therefore not surprising that learners struggle to select the correct


English tense. Especially young pupils (because in Bulgaria children start their
English lessons at 2nd grade the latest) are not able to understand the system
of English tenses, because they don’t have knowledge about this grammar
category in Bulgarian at this point. And even if they learn the rules, it is not
easy to implement them in their speech or writing.

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In Bulgarian each verb has different forms depending on the subject, these
forms contain all the information about who is taking the action and when.

e.g. Аз ходЯ на училище. – I go to school.


Ти ходИШ на училище. – You go to school.
Ние ходИМ на училище. – We go to school.

This makes possible the omission of the subject in the sentence, which is not
the case in English and often causes mistakes, like “Mary is 12. Goes to school
every day.”

The sentence structure in English follows strict rules, while in Bulgarian it is


much more flexible.

e.g. In English “She is coming tomorrow morning.”

But in Bulgarian you could say: “She is coming tomorrow morning.”


Or: “Tomorrow morning she is coming.”
Or: “Is coming tomorrow morning (she).”
Or: “Morning tomorrow she is coming.”
without changing the meaning.

For this reason learners very often use incorrect structures in English, which
make their speech or writing unclear, or even ununderstandable.

Questions in Bulgarian, like in other Slavic languages, are formed by adding


an initial question word or by changing the intonation. Negatives are formed
by putting „не” (no) in front of the verb. As auxiliary verbs do not exist in
Bulgarian, they can be quite challenging in English and lead to mistakes such
as “We not want cake” or ‘When the film start?’ In English it is impossible to
have two negative forms in one phrase/sentence, while in Bulgarian it is quite
common.
You can’t say “Nobody isn’t here”, or “There aren’t no apples on the table”, but
this is the way it is said in Bulgarian.

One of the most serious problems for all Bulgarians who try to learn English
is the spelling. Bulgarian language is completely transparent, with clear rules
for pronunciation and spelling, which is not the case with English. This causes
problems not only with writing, but with reading as well.

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A sample of Bulgarian writing

Що е дислексия?

“Дислексия” е първият и основен термин, използван, за да бъдат


назовани най-различни проблеми, свързани с овладяването на учебния
процес. Обикновено тя се свързва с проблеми с четенето, писането и
математиката, уменията за организация на дейностите, или с това, че
бавно и трудно усвояват учебния материал. Но трудностите в училище
са само част от проявленията на дислексията. Всеки случай е различен,
няма двама души, които да развият абсолютно еднакви форми на
дислексия. Това, което е важно да се знае е, че дислексията не е резултат
от умствено или неврологично увреждане, нито е причинена от мозъчна
малформация. Дислексията е продукт на мисленето и на особения начин,
по който някои хора реагират на чувството на объркване.

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Appendix D - Indo-Aryan languages of


South Asia (with sub-sections on Hindi/
Urdu and Bengali)

In Bulgarian each verb has different forms depending on the subject, these
forms contain all the information about who is taking the action and when.

The Indo-Aryan languages are a branch of the Indo-European family which has
its origins in Sanskrit. They include the national languages Hindi (India), Urdu
(Pakistan), Bengali (Bangladesh), Nepali (Nepal), Sinhala (Sri Lanka) and Divehi
(The Maldives) as well as some regional languages including Gujarati, Marathi,
Kashmiri and Panjabi. Urdu and the other Pakistani languages use variants
of the Arabic script whereas the other South Asian languages have their own
scripts which are written from left to right.

Pronunciation difficulties occur where the first language has no equivalent


or near equivalent sound. For example Sinhala (like German) does not have
separate phonemes for the English sounds /w/ and /v/. Whether the word is
‘wet’ or ‘vet’, learners tend to produce a phoneme that is close to the English
/v/.

Bengali and Gujarat speakers may struggle to distinguish between ‘self’ and
‘shelf’ because those languages only have one phoneme in the area of s/ and /
ʃ/.

Other areas of difficulty for speakers of many of the Indo-Aryan languages may
include:
/e/ ‘said’ and / æ/ ‘sad’
/ ɔ/ ‘law’, / ɒ / ‘lorry’ and /a:/‘lard’ with the latter often being used for all
three sounds.
/ ʤ/ ‘bridge’
/ ʒ/ ‘pleasure’

Because South Asian scripts are generally phonetic, learners are likely to over-
rely on the written form. This leads to difficulties when they come across silent
letters or past tense regular verbs such as ‘cooked’ and ‘helped’ which they
may pronounce with a final ‘d’ sound rather than a ‘t’ sound. Another common
error is to pronounce the plural‘s’ as /s/ even in words such as ‘toys’ and
‘brothers’ where the plural ‘s’ should be pronounced as /z/.

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South Asian languages have less consonant clusters and this is an area that
learners can struggle with. Like Portuguese learners, they may put an /i:/ in
front of consonant clusters starting with an ‘s’ and say ‘istation’ or ‘istreet’.
They may also insert an extra vowel (‘salow’ for ‘slow’) or omit the last
consonant in a final consonant cluster (‘toas’ for ‘toast’). Similar difficulties
can occur in German with initial consonant clusters and, in particular, final
consonant clusters at the end of a word (‘Arzt’, ‘zuletzt’) where the final
consonant may be omitted.

South Asian languages are syllable-timed whereas English is stress-timed


and has unpredictable word stress. Related words can be particularly
difficult to learn as, for example, in ‘PHOtograph’, ‘phoTOgrapher’ and
‘photoGRAPHic’.Learners may have less difficulty with languages such as
French which have a much more regular system of word stress.

South Asian speakers tend to use full vowels instead of a schwa even when
a syllable should be unstressed for example ‘Oxford’ instead of ‘Oxfərd’.
They also tend to stress words such as ‘and’, ‘was’ and ‘than’ when they are
meant to be weak forms.

South Asian scripts do not distinguish between upper and lower case so this
can be an area of difficulty with English. Punctuation may also be difficult
as South Asian scripts originally only used a full stop equivalent and other
punctuation marks were introduced later but with little consistency. This
inconsistent use of punctuation is also a feature of learners’ written English.

Hindi and Urdu

The everyday spoken languages of Hindi and Urdu are very similar but
academic and technical vocabulary can be different as Urdu has more
Persian, Central Asian and Arab influences whereas Hindi has more Sanskrit
influences. In terms of grammatical structure, Hindi and Urdu are almost
identical and Punjabi has very few differences. The other Indo-Aryan
languages listed above have a lot of similarities with Hindi and Urdu and
many of the points made below will be applicable to them as well. However,
Bengali has quite a lot of differences.

Like English, Hindi and Urdu have simple and progressive forms of past,
present and future tenses but their usage does not always correspond to
English usage. A common feature of learners’ English is the incorrect use
of the present continuous in a sentence such as ‘I am coming from India’
instead of ‘I come from India’. In addition, there is no equivalent of the
auxiliary verb ‘do’ and this leads to mistakes with negative statements and
interrogatives. Sometimes learners will simply change their intonation when
they want to ask a question and may say ‘she is married?’

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In Hindi and Urdu, nouns have a masculine and feminine form. For example,
‘Kelaa’ (banana) is a masculine noun whereas ‘bher’ (sheep) is a feminine
noun.
Nouns have single and plural forms. The plural may be formed by adding
an ending to the noun or by modifying the final vowel. For example, the
masculine noun ‘kuttaa’ (dog) becomes ‘kutte’ (dogs) and the feminine noun
‘machlee’ (fish) becomes ‘machliyaan’. However, some masculine nouns
have the same form for singular and plural. This could partly explain why
learners sometimes omit English plural endings.

As in English, adjectives precede the nouns that they are describing.


However, they also have to agree with the relevant noun. For example
‘chotaa larkaa’ means ‘ small boy’ whereas ‘chotee larkee’ means ‘ small
girl’. This familiarity with the inflexion of adjectives means that the Hindi/
Urdu speaker learning French is at an advantage over the monolingual
English speaking child (as long as the teacher makes a link between the two
languages).

Verbs have to demonstrate gender and number agreement. The endings


‘taa’, ‘tee’ and ‘te’ represent masculine singular, feminine singular and
plural respectively. The sentence ‘Main sotee hoon’ translates as ‘I sleep’
(literally meaning ‘I sleep am’ and used only when the ‘I’ is female). Again,
this knowledge of verb endings may facilitate the learning of an additional
language.

Hindi and Urdu do not have definite articles. The word ‘ek’ (one) can be used
to express the indefinite article but it is used much more infrequently that
the English ‘a(n)’. South Asian

speakers struggle with articles in English and may wrongly omit them or
over-compensate and use them too much.

As far as sentence structure is concerned, the standard word order of Hindi


and Urdu is Subject- Object-Verb.

Where English uses prepositions, Hindi and Urdu use postpositions where
‘by bus’ is ‘bas se’ (bus by) and ‘on the table’ is ‘mez par’ (table on). Learners
do not have major difficulties with the positioning of prepositions in English
but tend to struggle to select the correct preposition.

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Examples of errors made by Urdu speakers in Manchester/Oldham

• Now I coming here and I learn here many things.


• wathe is very cold
• Now every house is very good condishen.
• My fast dather born 1979 in OLDHAM hand my son born 1980.
• Then Farwa and my brother and my cousins we where playing
blindfold.
• Then went fun fair Then it was finshed fun fair
• I played in the garden football.
• My sister said to dad less go to fun fere.
• Me and my sister went on a rid it was very scere.
• it tast wary nise and i eat barger cheken and cresp
• then my dad dropet me at school
• After a while the man gave us some jeuice to drink, I could tasted
the pizza in my mouth.
• I cod see the river and people cnowing and relee happee fasis entrin
Kings wood and people sad leving kings wood.
.

The Urdu script

Urdu uses a Perso-Arabic script which is based on the Arabic script. It is fully
cursive and is read from right to left.

‫؟ےہ ایک )یمالک صقن ( ایسکیلسڈ‬

‫نا ہی نکیل۔ےہ اکچ اج اھجمس ھچک یفاک با ںیم ےراب ےک ایسکیلسڈ‬


‫ےہ نک ناشیرپ یفاک یھب یھبا ےئل ےک ںوگول‬، ‫ےتوہ رثاتم ےس سا وج‬
‫۔ںیہ‬
‫اتوہ رپ تیحالص یک ےنھکیس ےنرک ےجہ روا ےنھڑپ رثا اک ایسکیلسڈ‬
‫شیپ لکشم ںیم ےنھکیس زاوآ یک ںوظفل وک ںوچب ےلاو ایسکیلسڈ ۔ےہ‬
‫وک نا۔ےہ یتآ‬

[Courtesy of The Dyslexia-SPLD Trust]

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The Hindi script

Hindi uses the Devanagari script which is read from left to right. It is an
abugida or syllabic writing system which means that each consonant has an
inherent vowel (a schwa) which can be changed to another vowel or muted by
using diacritics. Vowels can be written on their own if they are at the beginning
of a word or stand alone. The Devanagari script is also used for writing other
languages including Nepali and Marathi.

A number of other languages use a syllabic script, for example Bengali,


Gurmukhi (Punjabi), Malayalam, Kannada, Sinhala and Tamil.

Bengali

Bengali shares of number of features with other South Asian languages. This
section will look briefly at aspects that are known to cause difficulty for Bengali
speakers when learning English and can be attributed to the influence of their
first language.

Learners frequently omit the third person singular verb ending in the present
simple tense. In Bengali, ‘they eat rice’ is ‘tara bhat khai’ (they rice eat) and
‘she/he eats rice’ is ‘she (/tʃe/) bhat khai’ (she/he rice eat).

Learners often confuse pronouns in English because Bengali does not have
gender-based pronouns. As in the previous example, the word ‘she’((/tʃe/)
means both ‘he’ and ‘she’. Similarly ‘him’ and ‘her’ are represented by one
word.

In Bengali, the plural is formed either with a plural marker or with an ending on
the noun. For example, the word for ‘man’ is ‘manush’. ‘Men’ can be expressed
by ‘onek manush’ (literally ‘many man’) or by a plural form ‘manushera’
or .manushgulo’. It is not possible to use a plural marker with an ending in
Bengali. This would explain English mistakes such as ‘many visitor’.

Bengali does not have an expression for the impersonal form ‘there is/are’. This
leads to errors such as ‘in Dhaka many university are’ (Ariful Islam 2004).

Bengali has Subject Object Verb with adverbs positioned before the verb. This
can cause mistakes such as ‘I fast swim’ or ‘I very much football like’.
Bengali speakers often stress vowels which should be unstressed, for example
saying ‘næʃonal (instead of ‘næʃnəl’) for ‘national’.

Unlike in English, the Bengali pronunciation of ‘r’ does not depend on its
position in a word. This leads to words such as ‘personal’(/pɜ:sənl/) and
‘river’(/rivə/) being pronounced as /personal/ and /rivar/ respectively. (Ariful
Islam 2004).
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A sample of Bengali writing


িডস্েলিক্সয়া কােক বেল?

িডস্েলিক্সয়ার কথা এখন ভাল ভােব জানা আেছ, িক� যােদর এটা আেছ, তােদর কােছ তবুও এটােক
িব�লকারী ও িব�াি�কর বেল মেন হেত পাের।
পড়ার ও বানান করার দক্ষতা েশখার ওপর �ধানত� িডস্েলিক্সয়ার �ভাব পেড়। েযসব বা�ােদর
িডস্েলিক্সয়া আেছ, তােদর পেক্ষ শ��িল ��ার� করার জনয্ �িন বয্বহার করা কিঠন হয়; শে�র
�িন�িল েভে� বলেত তােদর অসুিবধা হয় এবং অেনক সময়ই, িনেদর্ শাবলীর মত েমৗিখক তথয্ মেন
রাখা তােদর পেক্ষ কিঠন হয়।
 

[Courtesy of The Dyslexia-SPLD Trust]

Box 5.10 Sources


I

Ariful Islam, SM (2004) L1 Influence on the Spoken Engllsh Proficiency of Bengali


Speakers. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:517729/FULLTEXT01.pdf
Ariyatne, W,M (2011) A contrastive study of word order in Sinhala and English.
Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/3263/14/14_chapter%205.pdf
Frankfurt International School The differences between English and Hindi/Urdu.
Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/hindi.htm
Karim, SMS English and Bengali Interrogative Sentences, A Comparative Study,
Language in India (2006) Volume 6. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://www.languageinindia.com/feb2006/bengaliinterrogative1.html
Learning Hindi! Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://www.learning-hindi.com/post/1042765159/lesson-39-nouns-part-2-the-plural-case
Maniruzzaman, M (2008) Learning Efl by Bengali Speaking Learners: Major
Linguistic Problems and Possible Solutions. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
LINK
Persian alphabet. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perso-Arabic_script
Premawardhena, N, C (2005) Pronunciation difficulties encountered by Sinhala
native speakers in learning German as a foreign language. Retrieved December, 14,
2013 from:
http://english6.net/p/pronunciation-difficulties-encountered-by-sinhala-native-speakers-e6644-pdf.pdf
Swan, M and Smith, B (2001) Learner English, A teacher’s guide to interference
and other problems, third edition, Cambridge University Press
Syllabic alphabets. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/syllabic.htm
UsingEnglish.com Pronunciation tips for Hindi speakers. Retrieved December, 14,
2013 from
www.usingenglish.com/forum/pronunciation-phonetics/102882-pronunciation-tips-hindi-speakers.html

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Appendix E - Polish

Polish, like Czech and Slovak, is part of the West Slavic sub-branch of
Indo-European languages. It is spoken in Poland and by large numbers of
ethnic Poles in Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. In addition, there are Polish
communities in many other countries including the UK, the USA, Canada,
Ireland and Brazil.

Polish has a Latin-based alphabet but uses some diacritics such as the ‘line’ or
‘kreska’ ( for example ć), the ‘overdot’ or ‘kropka’ (for example ‘ż’) and the ‘tail’
or ‘ogonek’ (for example ‘ą’). The letters ‘q’, ‘v’ and ‘x’ are only used for writing
foreign words.
Like German, Polish nouns are divided into masculine, feminine and neuter.
The masculine gender is more complicated than German as it is then further
sub-divided by personhood (personal or non-personal) and animacy (animate
or inanimate). So there are in effect three masculine gender classes: personal
masculine, animate (non-personal) masculine and inanimate masculine. This
means that, in terms of familiarity with gender classes, the Polish child learning
German is actually at an advantage over the monolingual English-speaking
child but, for the dyslexic child, it is essential that the teacher explicitly makes
the link between the languages.

Polish learners may face difficulties when a Polish word has more than one
meaning in English. For example, the word ‘sztuka’ means both ‘art’ and ‘play’.
If the learner has only come across one of the meanings, they may use it
incorrectly as in the (real) example quoted by Arabski ‘In this art, Hamlet died
in the fight’. Other pairs of words that are represented by one word in Polish
include ‘age/century’, ‘earth/land and do/make (as with ‘faire’ and ‘machen’ in
French and German respectively).

Polish learners of English benefit from the fact there are a lot of words that
are identical or very similar in English and Polish. However, in some cases,
the meaning of the words is different. For example, the Polish word ‘parking’
actually means ‘a car park’. For a useful list of ‘false friends’, please refer to
http://en.blackfreighter.com/wiki/Polish_False_Friends

Other errors may be made when a pair of words have a different grammatical
usage in English but only have one form in Polish. These include ‘so/such’,
‘who/which’ and ‘something/anything’ and lead to mistakes such as ‘It was not
such bad’ and ‘The film who was interesting…’ (Arabski).

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In terms of tenses, Polish has 3 tenses, namely the past, the present and the
future. The verb form ‘Ja poszedłem’ encompasses the English simple past
(‘I went’), present perfect (I have gone’) and past perfect (‘I had gone’). It is
therefore perhaps not surprising that learners struggle to select the correct
English tense as in the examples quoted by Arabski:

Some weeks ago I have seen an English film.


I have learned English before I came to Canada.

Questions are formed in Polish by adding an initial question word or by


changing the intonation. Negatives are formed by putting ‘nie’ (no) in front
of the verb. As auxiliary verbs do not exist in Polish, they can be quite
challenging in English and lead to mistakes such as ‘She not does it’ or ‘Where
they live?’

Polish has 7 cases, including the nominative, accusative, genitive and dative
which are also found in German. So, once more, as long as this is explicitly
pointed out, the Polish child learning German is in a more favourable position
than those children who have never experienced a case system.

Polish has a significant number of loan words from various languages


including French (‘ekran’ from ‘écran’ (screen), ‘ekipa’ from ‘équipe’ (team),
‘meble’ from ‘meuble’ (furniture), German (‘handel’ from ‘Handel’ (trade)
and ‘dach’ from ‘Dach’ (roof) and Italian (‘pomidor’ from ‘pomodoro’
(tomato), ‘autostrada’ from ‘autostrada’ (motorway). Lexical borrowings from
English include ‘babysitter’, ‘driver’, ‘sweter’ (sweater), ‘fair play’ and ‘bizness’
(business). In some cases, there can be confusion over the meaning of a
word. For example, ‘magazyn’ means ‘TV programme’ in Polish and Arabski
cites the example of a student mistakenly using the English word ‘magazine’:

They can watch some magazines connected with this subject.

Polish learners make errors with singular and plural nouns as they tend to
apply Polish rules to English words. Examples include ‘porady’ (advice) and
‘informacje’ (information) which are uncountable in English but often used in
the plural in Polish. As Polish has grammatical gender, learners also struggle
with pronouns and make errors such as:

The orchestra was playing and the king was listening to her. (Arabski).

Because the subject or object of the sentence can be omitted in Polish if the
context makes them clear, students may also make omissions in English:

We have a lot of nice shops where can buy food.

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by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages

Basic word order in Polish is subject-verb-object but words are frequently


moved around in a sentence. A sentence such as ‘“Today, we went to the
market to buy fruit” could be re-ordered as ‘“To buy fruit, today we went to
the market” without losing the original meaning and learners may not realize
that English does not allow such flexibility. One difficulty concerns the position
of adverbs and can lead to sentences such as ‘I eat often cakes’.

Polish has consistent stress on the penultimate syllable of a word and Polish
learners can find the various stress patterns in English quite confusing. There
is a tendency not to recognise weak forms and for words such as ‘and’, ‘a’ and
‘the’ to be pronounced with the same prominence as more important words in
a sentence.
Polish does not have any weak vowels. Where native speakers would use a
schwa (/ə/), Polish speakers often use a full vowel (for example in the word
‘banana’). Like speakers of other West European languages (including French
,Italian, Spanish and Portuguese), Polish speakers experience difficulty
distinguishing between /i/ and /I/ , and this leads to confusion between words
such as ‘ship’ and ‘sheep’. Other possible pronunciation difficulties include
distinguishing between /e/ (men) and /æ/ (man) and between /a:/ (father)
and / æ/ (fan). In terms of consonants, Polish speakers may struggle with final
letter sounds which tend to be devoiced in Polish (bed/bet, dog/dock) and with
/ð/ and / θ/ which do not have equivalents in Polish.
There are no articles in Polish and this can lead to them being overused, used
in a random way or being omitted altogether. This difficulty is likely to occur
when Polish speakers write in other European languages such as Italian,
Spanish and French which all have their own rules relating to the use of
definite and indefinite articles.

A sample of Polish writing

Czym jest dysleksja?

Dysleksja jest teraz dobrze rozumiana, ale osobom, których ona dotyczy, może
nadal wydawać się zagadkowa i zagmatwana.

Dysleksja wpływa głównie na umiejętności uczenia się czytania i literowania.


Dzieciom z dysleksją trudno posługiwać się fonetyką aby wymówić słowa;
mają trudności z dzieleniem słów na głoski i często jest im trudniej zapamiętać
informacje podawane w sposób ustny, takie jak zestaw instrukcji.

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Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages

I Box 5.11 Sources

Arabski, J A Linguistic Analysis of English Composition Errors made by


Polish Students. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://ifa.amu.edu.pl/sap/files/1/06_arabski.pdf

Discovering Polish and Poland. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from


http://perfectpolish.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/loanwords-in-polish-zapozyczenia.html

Polish False Friends. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from


http://en.blackfreighter.com/wiki/Polish_False_Friends

Omniglot Polish (jezyk polski). Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from


www.omniglot.com/writing/polish.htm

Polish Alphabet. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_alphabet

Polish Language. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_language

Shah, S (2007) Polish, A Profile, London SIG Bilingualism. Retrieved


December, 14, 2013 from
http://www.londonsigbilingualism.co.uk/

Snopek, D 5 English mistakes commonly made by Poles. Retrieved


December, 14, 2013 from
http://www.linguatrek.com/blog/2011/04/5-english-mistakes-commonly-made-by-poles

Sztencel, M (2009) Boundaries Crossed: The influence of English on


Modern Polish. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://newcastle.academia.edu/MagdalenaSztencel/Papers

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Appendix F - Portuguese

Portuguese is spoken by over 200 million native speakers and is the official
language of Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-
Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe. It also has joint official status (with
Chinese and Tetum respectively) in Macau and East Timor.

Although Portuguese has some irregularities, it is a relatively transparent


language with fairly predictable grapheme-phoneme correspondence.
It is likely that (non dyslexic) Portuguese children will have fairly well
developed phonological awareness whereas what appear to be visual
processing difficulties might actually be attributable to the fact that they are
unaccustomed to writing in a less transparent language such as English.

There are significant differences between European Portuguese and


Brazilian Portuguese. European Portuguese has many words of Arabic origin,
particularly for food items (for example limáo (lime) from al-laymun, azeite
(oil) from al-zayt, laranja (orange) from al-naranj, arroz (rice) from al-aruzz)
and place names (Albufeira (‘the lake’) from al-buhayrah and Aldeia (‘the
small village’) from al-day’ah. In contrast, Brazilian Portuguese has many
loan words from Indian languages (especially geographical names, plants
and animals) and American English.

Vocabulary differences (Shah,2007)

Angola and Brazil Portugual


Mozambique

autocarro
Bus machimbombo- ônibus bazar (from Kimbundu
‘kubazar’ – to break,
leave with rush)
Slum musseque favela bairro de lata or ilha

To go away bazar (from Kimbundu


Vazar (from
bazar (from Kimbundu
(Bantu language from ‘kubazar’ – to break,
Portuguese
northern Angola) – kubaza - leave with rush)
‘to leak’)
to break, leave with rush)

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Portuguese speakers may have difficulties with some of the following areas
of pronunciation:

/i:/ and / ɪ/ (‘rich’ and ‘reach’, ‘hit’ and ‘heat’)


/a:/ and / æ/ (‘cart’ and ‘cat’)
/æ/ and /e/ (‘’man’ and ‘men’)
/ ʊ / and /u:/ (‘full’ and ‘fool’)
/ʌ/ and /æ/ (‘luck’ and ‘lack’)
/ɔ:/ and /ɒ/ (‘sport’ and ‘spot’)
/ɪə/ and /eə/ (‘hear’ and ‘hair’)
/ ə ʊ/ and / ɔ:/ (‘bone’ and ‘born’)

Unstressed vowels at the ends of words may be almost inaudible (‘sit’ for
‘city’, ‘part’ for ‘party’)

/ð/ and /θ/ (‘clothe’ and ‘cloth’)


/z/ and /s/ (‘rise’ and ‘rise’)
/p/ and /b/ (‘pig’ and ‘big’)
/k/ and /g/ (‘Kate’ and ‘gate’)

The initial /h/ in words may be omitted (‘ear’ for ‘hear’) as there is no
equivalent in Portuguese. Learners may insert additional vowels in certain
consonant clusters
(‘closis’ for ‘clothes’, ‘estudy’ for ‘study’)

Because Brazilian Portuguese is syllable-timed (unlike European Portuguese


and English which are stress-timed), Brazilian Portuguese learners may have
difficulty with English intonation patterns and may stress syllables which
should be unstressed. For example, they might say ‘I saw them yesterday’ in
response to the question ‘when did you see them?’

Portuguese grammar has many similarities with English and other western
European languages. Like English, it has a range of past, present and future
tenses and uses active and passive forms. It does not have the equivalent
of the auxiliary verb ‘do’ and questions are formed by changing intonation
or word order while negatives are formed by placing the word ‘não’ in front
of the verb. Portuguese speakers may therefore have difficulties with direct
and indirect questions and negatives in English. They may also make errors
with the short responses ‘yes I do’ and ‘no I don’t’ as these are formed in
Portuguese by repeating the verb contained in the question (‘Do you like
swimming?’ ‘Yes I like’). As with French (n’est-ce pas?) and German (nicht
wahr?), there is only one question tag in Portuguese (‘não é verdade? –
which literally means ‘is it not truth?’) and is likely to lead to mistakes such
as ‘they are leaving after breakfast, isn’t it?’

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Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages

Typical Mistakes

• She had a lot of exit. (‘êxito’ is a false friend as it means ‘success’ and not
‘exit’)
• I pretend to buy a new car. (‘pretender’ is the Portuguese verb which
means ‘to intend’)
• She is very sensible. (intended to mean ‘sensitive’ rather than ‘sensible’.
The Portuguese for ‘sensitive’ is ‘sensível’)
• I speak english. (no capitalisation of languages, nationalities, days in
Portuguese)
• I have done my homeworks. (homework is pluralised (‘trabalhos de
casa’) in Portuguese)
• I play tennis in my free times. (free time is pluralised ( (tempos livres) in
Portuguese)
• She likes very much to read. (This follows Portuguese word order (‘Gosta
muito de ler’)
• She has twenty years ( Portuguese, like French, uses the verb ‘to have’ to
talk about age ‘tem vinte anos’)
• Has wonderful beaches in Rio (Portuguese uses the verb ‘to have’
(‘haver’ and ‘ter’) to express ‘there is/are’.
• I wonder where is your office. (the verb follows the question word in
indirect speech in Portuguese)
• The life is difficult. (definite articles are used in Portuguese for proper
nouns, nouns used in a general sense, names of streets, places such as
church and school etc)
• She didn’t speak why she was shy. (Portuguese has the same word
‘porque’ for ‘why’ and ‘because’.

[Source: Frankenberg-Garcia and Pina (1997) and Swann and Smith (2001)]

45
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Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages

I Box 5.12 Sources

Cary, L, Verhaeghe, A, Marchand, H Reading errors of Portuguese-English


bilingual children learning to read in English via a phonics based approach:
a comparison with errors from monolingual English children. Retrieved
December, 14, 2013 from
http://ler.letras.up.pt/uploads/ficheiros/8439.pdf

Frankenberg-Garcia, A, Pina, M, Portuguese-English Crosslinguistic


Influence. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
www.linguateca.pt/Repositorio/Frankenberg-GarciaPina1997.doc

Frankfurt International School. The differences between English and


Portuguese. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/portuguese.htm

Power, T English Language Learning and Teaching. Retrieved December,


14, 2013 from http://www.tedpower.co.uk/l1portuguese.html

Salloum, H (2001) A legacy in language. Retrieved December, 14, 2013


from
www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200102/arabian.memories.in.portugal.htm

The Portuguese Language. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from


http://www.brazil-help.com/port_lang.htm

Shah, S (2007) Portuguese, A Profile, London SIG Bilingualism. Retrieved


December, 14, 2013 from
http://www.grafixdesign.net/www.sig.co.uk/pdf/PORTUGUESE.pdf
http://www.londonsigbilingualism.co.uk/ Accessed 14/12/2013

Sunderland, H, Klein, C, Savinson, R, Partridge (1997), T Dyslexia and the


Bilingual Learner, Assessing and Teaching Adults and Young People who
Speak English as an Additional Language, London Language and Literacy
Unit

Swan, M and Smith, B (2001) Learner English, A teacher’s guide to


interference and other problems, third edition, Cambridge University
Press

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Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages

Appendix G - Somali

The Somali alphabet (based on the Latin script) became the official script in
1972. The script contains all the letters of the English alphabet apart from
‘p’, ‘v’ and ‘z’. The consonants ‘c’, ‘q’, ‘r’ and ‘x’ are likely to cause some
difficulties as their pronunciation is very different in Somali. Some Somali
consonants can be doubled and are then pronounced with extra force. This
means that Somali learners are likely to pronounce words such as ‘bigger’
and ‘middle’ with too much force. There is one-to-one correspondence
between Somali vowels and letters so learners are likely to struggle with
English where letters represent more than one sound and sounds represent
more than one letter. Learners will often pronounce vowels the way that
they would be pronounced in Somali and typical errors include ‘my’ for
‘may’ and ‘bow-at’ for ‘boat’. Somali has single consonants and learners
often insert vowel sounds when trying to pronounce English consonant
clusters, for example saying ‘filim’ for ‘film’ and ‘ispeed’ for ‘speed’.

The basic word order in Somali is subject-object-verb but there is significant


flexibility which means that subject-verb-object, object-verb-subject and
verb-object-subject are also possible. Learners may tend to put the verb at
the end of English sentences or fail to appreciate the lack of flexibility of
English word order.

Learners may also have difficulties with adjectives as they follow nouns
in Somali. There are some stand-alone adjectives but most adjectives are
formed by taking a noun or a verb and adding a particular ending, often ‘án’
or ‘sán’. For example, the word for ‘beautiful’ is ‘quruxsan’ which is formed
by taking the word for ‘beauty’ (‘qurux’) and adding ‘sán’.

A sample of Somali writing

Waa maxay disleksiya?


Disleksiya hadda si fiican ayaa loo fahamsanayahay, laakiin wali way jaha
wareerin kartaa dadka ay ku dhacdo.
Disleksiya sida badan waxay saamaysaa barashada xirfadaha aqrinta iyo
higgaadinta. Caruurta ay hayso Disleksiya waxaa ku adkaado isticmaalka
foonikiska si ay erayada usoo saaraan; waxaa ku adag kala googoynta
dhawaaqa erayada sida badanna waxaa ku adkaada xasuusashada wax lagu
hadlay, sida waxa la faro oo kale.

[Courtesy of The Dyslexia-SPLD Trust]

47
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Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages

I Box 5.13 Sources

Kahin, M (2011) Areas of Difficulties for the Speakers of Somali in Learning


English as a Foreign Language. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://awdalpress.com/index/?p=6488

Shah, S (2007) Somali, A Profile, London SIG Bilingualism. Retrieved


December, 14, 2013 from http://www.londonsigbilingualism.co.uk/

Somalia Holland Online. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from


http://somaliaholland.free.fr/somali_language.htm

Somali Language. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_language

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Appendix H - Tamil

Tamil is an official language in South India, Sri Lanka and Singapore and there
are many Tamil communities throughout the world. The difficulties faced
by Tamil speakers learning English are generally applicable to speakers of
Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu which, like Tamil, are Dravidian languages.

Tamil speakers may struggle with certain aspects of English pronunciation,


including consonants such as /z/ and /f/ which do not exist in Tamil.
Learners may pronounce ‘pool’ as ‘fool’ and ‘maze’ as ‘mace’. Because
some consonants are doubled in Tamil, learners may also pronounce some
English consonants twice. Words such as ‘pin’, ‘ten’ and ‘cot’ are likely to be
pronounced as ‘bin’, ‘den’ and ‘got’ respectively because Tamil and other
Dravidian languages do not have aspirated consonants (consonants which
are pronounced with a burst of air).

Tamil is an agglutinative language which means that distinct morphemes


are added to a root word and each morpheme represents a unit of meaning
such as past tense, number or plural. A Tamil word may contain several
suffixes which would be represented by completely separate words in
English. For example, the suffix ‘il’ which means ‘in’ is added to a noun such
as ‘ka:lay’ (morning) to make ‘ka:layil’ (‘in the morning’). The plural suffix is
‘(k)kal’ and is added to singular nouns including a number of nouns such as
‘news’ and ‘advice’ which are uncountable in English.

Tamil does not have definite or indefinite articles although the number ‘one’
can sometimes be used as an indefinite article. Articles are often omitted in
English but may also be over-used by some learners.

Tamil learners do not face as many difficulties with English pronouns as


some other language speakers as there are separate Tamil words for ‘he’,
‘she’ and ‘it’.

Learners may produce incorrect sentences such as ‘I very enjoyed the show’
because there is one word in Tamil which can be used in front of nouns,
verbs, adjectives and nouns to express both ‘very’ and ‘very much’.

Some Tamil sentences contain no verb. For example, (idu


puttaham) literally translates as ‘This book’ but the sentence means ‘This
is a book’. Similarly, the subject of the sentence may be omitted in Tamil
so it is likely that Tamil speakers will produce English (or French, German
equivalents) sentences such as ‘went to park’ instead of ‘I went to the park’.

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Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages

Tamil is a syllabic script. The consonant ‘k’ (and ‘g’) is represented by


= k (with the dot over the symbol muting the schwa sound). The table
below shows how diacritics can be added to change the vowel which is
accompanying the consonant.

ka க kaa/kA கா
ki கி kii/kI கீ
ke கெ kE/kae கே
ko கொ kO கோ
ku கு Koo/kuu/kU கூ

The vowels have their own separate symbols when they occur at the
beginning of a syllable. They are represented as follows:

a அ Aa/A ஆ ai ஐ
i இ Ii/I ஈ
u உ Uu/U ஊ
e எ Ae/E ஏ
o ஒ Oa/O ஓ ow/ou/au ஔ

Box 5.14 Sources


Chidambaram, K (2005) A Study on the Learning Process of English by
I Higher Secondary Students with Special Reference to Dharmapuri District
in Tamilnadu, Language in India (Volume 5). Retrieved December, 14, 2013
from http://www.languageinindia.com/dec2005/chidambaramthesis1.html

Devore, D, Jones, K, Kim, G, Mailhes, J (compilers) Tamil Language and


Culture Guide. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from http://languagemanuals.
weebly.com/uploads/4/8/5/3/4853169/final_tamil_manual.pdf

Maniam, M (2010) The influence of First language Grammar (L1) on the


English Language (L2) Writing of Tamil School Students: A Case Study from
Malaysia, Language in India, Volume 10. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://www.languageinindia.com/april2010/mahendrandissertation.pdf

Swan, M and Smith, B (2001) Learner English, A teacher’s guide to


interference and other problems, third edition, Cambridge University Press
Tamil alphabet, pronunciation and language. Retrieved December, 14, 2013
from http://www.omniglot.com/writing/tamil.htm

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Appendix I - Vietnamese

Vietnamese used to have a Chinese-like script but in the seventeenth century,


a Latin-based orthography was introduced by missionaries. The orthography
uses diacritics (symbols added to letters or characters to change their meaning,
function or pronunciation) to represent additional sounds and the different
tones. Nevertheless, the fact that the orthography is Latin-based means
that Vietnamese learners are likely to have less difficulty with European
orthographies than learners whose orthographies have completely different
derivations.

Vietnamese has a large number of Chinese loan words and also a significant
number of French loan words. These include ‘pho mat’ from ‘fromage’
(cheese), ‘ga to’ from ‘gateau’ (cake), ‘phim’ from ‘film’ and ‘phot’ from ‘faute’
(mistake).

Vietnamese is a tonal language with a word’s meaning determined by its tone.


For example, the word ‘ma’ has 6 different meanings depending on the tone:

ma - ghost
má - mother
mà - which
mả - tomb
mã - horse
mạ - rice seedling

Vietnamese is made up of monosyllabic words and compound words which


have their own separate syllable and tone. For example, ‘bảng’ means ‘table’,
‘ghế’ means ‘chair’ and ‘bảng ghế’ means ‘furniture’. Vietnamese speakers
generally give full stress to all syllables and can therefore face difficulties
when learning foreign words where different syllables may require primary,
secondary or no stress.

Vietnamese learners face particular difficulties with pronunciation including


the following sounds:

/ ʃ / (pronouncing ‘she’ as /si:/ (sea) and struggling with ‘nation’, ‘should’ ,’


shut’ etc
/ ʒ/ (pronouncing ‘measure’ /me ʒə/ as /mezə/
/ ʧ/ (struggling to pronounce / ʧi:p/ (cheap) or /ti: ʧ/ (teach) and other words
such as ‘cheese’, ‘chicken’, ‘question’, ‘which’
/ ʤ/ (tending to pronounce ‘judge’ / ʤ ʌ/ ʤ/ as /z ʌ z/ or /z ʌ s/ and struggling
with ‘job’, ‘general’, ‘age’, ‘village’
/θ/ (‘thing’) and /ð/ (‘then’)

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Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages

Consonant clusters do not exist in Vietnamese so can be difficult, for example /


tr/ and /str/.
Final consonants exist in Vietnamese but are never pronounced or heard so
learners may often omit the final consonants of words in other languages.

Vietnamese does not use verb inflections to indicate tense. Sometimes a word
may be put in front of the verb to indicate tense (for example, đã, to represent
the past tense or sẽ to represent the future). ‘Tôi đã ăn’ means ‘I ate’ and ‘Tôi
sẽ ăn’ means ‘I will eat’. However, these words are often omitted because the
tense can be inferred by the use of a time word such as hôm qua (yesterday) or
mai (tomorrow). This means that Vietnamese learners may find the tenses in
English and other European languages quite complicated.

In Vietnamese, nouns do not show plurality. (For example, ‘a dog’ is ‘ một con
chó’ in Vietnamese – ‘một’ means ‘one’, ‘con’ is a classifier for animals and
‘chó’ means dog. ‘Two dogs’ would be ‘hai con chó’ (literally ‘two classifier
dog’). So it is not surprising that Vietnamese learners often omit plural
endings.

In Vietnamese, adjectives follow nouns. ‘A small table’ would be ‘một bảng


nhỏ’ (‘one table small’) so Vietnamese learners may have difficulties with
languages in which adjectives precede nouns.

Most Vietnamese pronouns are kinship terms and are used according to the
relationship between the speaker and the listener. For example, a girl talking
to an older girl would address the older girl as ‘chị’ which literally means
‘older sister’. She would refer to herself as ‘em’ which means ‘younger sister’.
Vietnamese does not draw a distinction between first, second and third person
(I, me, you, he, she, it) or between number (‘I’ or ‘we’; ‘he/she’ or ‘they’) or
between pronouns in subject and predicate position (‘she’ versus ‘her’) so
learners studying languages which do make these distinctions may face some
difficulties.

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Box 5.15 Sources

I Lan, T. T. (2008) Essential English Pronunciation in the Vietnamese


Context. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
www.britishcouncil.org/9_essential_english_pronunciation_in_the_vietnamese_context.doc

Nu, D. T. (2009) Mistake or Vietnamese English VNU Journal of Science,


Foreign Languages 25 41-50 Available on line. Retrieved December, 14,
2013 from http://js.vnu.edu.vn/nn_1_09/b6.pdf

Tang, G. M. Cross-Linguistic Analysis of Vietnamese and English with


Implications for Vietnamese Language Acquisition and Maintenance
in the United States Journal of Southeast Asian American Education &
Advancement Volume 2. Retrieved December, 14, 2013 from
http://jsaaea.coehd.utsa.edu/index.php/JSAAEA/article/viewFile/13/8

*Special thanks to Shami Mahmood, Wendy Albon, Kim Wigley, Liz Rose, Pavel Vesely
and Sam Orton for providing examples of their learners’ writing.

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Module 5
COMPARISON AMONG LANGUAGES

Authors
Claudia Cappa: researcher at CNR, supervisor of the research
module “ Didactic methodologies and technologies for specific
learning disabilities”.
Visiting professor at the University of Turin.
e-mail: claudia.cappa@cnr.it

Jill Fernando: teacher with experience in teachers’ education and in


English teaching as foreign language (TEFL).
Projects’ supervisor at the British Dyslexia Association.
e-mail: JillF@bdadyslexia.org.uk

Sara Giulivi: researcher in linguistics at the Department of Teaching


and Learning - SUPSI (Locarno Switzerland).
Professor in Italian at the Franklin College (Lugano).
e-mail: sara.giulivi@supsi.ch

Authors are in alphabetical order. All authors have contributed equally to the
1

write up of the present module.

This project has been funded with support from the European
Commission. This publication reflects the views of the author only,
and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which
may be made of the information contained therein.

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