Comparison Among Languages: C. Cappa, J. Fernando, S. Giulivi
Comparison Among Languages: C. Cappa, J. Fernando, S. Giulivi
Comparison Among Languages: C. Cappa, J. Fernando, S. Giulivi
Module 5
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.
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
unmodified version may be found. It should also be clear that the original author
may not endorse the derived version.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Volfgang Sahlfeld del DFA-SUPSI Locarno for the comments
and contribution to the present Module.
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
Contents
INTRODUCTION 1
REFERENCES 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
INTRODUCTION
In the interstices of language lie powerful secrets of the
culture.
Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born
1
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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.
2
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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.
3
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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
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)
4
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
I
Box 5.2 Assimilation of new sounds to native sounds
5
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
6
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.
8
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
9
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
I
Box 5.5 Morphological Typology: exemples
10
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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
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.
11
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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.
12
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
I
Box 5.6 Syntactical Typology: examples
• 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.
13
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
5.4.1 Turkish-English
14
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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:
3) Syntactic aspects:
15
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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.
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.
16
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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.
17
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
18
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
References
Krashen, S.D., Scarcella, R., Long, M., (eds.), (1982) Child-Adult Differences
in Second Language Acquisition, Newbury House, Rowley.
19
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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
20
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
APPENDICES
21
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
Appendix A - Arabic
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.
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’.
22
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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’.
Arabic word stress is regular so Arabic speakers struggle with languages such as
English where different stress can affect the meaning of a word.
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.
23
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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.
24
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
25
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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.
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 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’).
26
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
Chinese does not generally pluralise its nouns so learners are very likely to omit
plural endings in English.
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.
27
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
28
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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.
29
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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)
30
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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.
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.”
For this reason learners very often use incorrect structures in English, which
make their speech or writing unclear, or even ununderstandable.
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.
31
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
Що е дислексия?
32
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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.
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/.
33
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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 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.
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?’
34
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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.
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.
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.
35
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
Urdu uses a Perso-Arabic script which is based on the Arabic script. It is fully
cursive and is read from right to left.
36
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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.
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).
37
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
ি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।
38
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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).
39
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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:
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 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:
40
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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.
Dysleksja jest teraz dobrze rozumiana, ale osobom, których ona dotyczy, może
nadal wydawać się zagadkowa i zagmatwana.
41
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
42
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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.
autocarro
Bus machimbombo- ônibus bazar (from Kimbundu
‘kubazar’ – to break,
leave with rush)
Slum musseque favela bairro de lata or ilha
43
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
Portuguese speakers may have difficulties with some of the following areas
of pronunciation:
Unstressed vowels at the ends of words may be almost inaudible (‘sit’ for
‘city’, ‘part’ for ‘party’)
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’)
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?’
44
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
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
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
46
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
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’.
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’.
47
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
48
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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 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.
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’.
49
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
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
50
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
Appendix I - Vietnamese
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).
ma - ghost
má - mother
mà - which
mả - tomb
mã - horse
mạ - rice seedling
51
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among 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.
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.
52
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
*Special thanks to Shami Mahmood, Wendy Albon, Kim Wigley, Liz Rose, Pavel Vesely
and Sam Orton for providing examples of their learners’ writing.
53
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Dyslang Module 5 Comparison among languages
Note
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
54
by Claudia Cappa, Jill Fernando, Sara Giulivi, November, 2012
Note
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
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
Authors are in alphabetical order. All authors have contributed equally to the
1
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.