The Influence of The Javanese Pronunciation of Javanese People.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT..................................................................................... i
TABLE OF CONTENTS...................................................................................... ii
ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................... iv
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study..............................................................................1
Statement of the Problem .............................................................................4
Purpose of the Study ....................................................................................4
Methods of Research................................................................................... 4
Organization of the Thesis ...........................................................................5
CHAPTER II: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .............................................6
CHAPTER III: THE INFLUENCE OF THE JAVANESE
PRONUNCIATION ON THE ENGLISH
PRONUNCIATION.................................................................12
CHAPTER IV: CONCLUSION ........................................................................29
BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................33
ii
iii
APPENDICES:
Table of data...............................................................................................34
List of English words .................................................................................36
Maranatha Christian University
iv
ABSTRACT
Mempelajari Bahasa Inggris memang terlihat sederhana. Namun ada satu hal
yang sering kali terlupakan saat kita hendak mempelajari Bahasa Inggris, yaitu
bagaimana cara mengucapkan kata dengan pelafalan yang benar dalam Bahasa Inggris.
Seseorang yang telah terbiasa menggunakan bahasa ibunya, akan mengalami
kesulitan saat dia hendak mengucapkan kata dalam bahasa yang lain karena dia telah
terpengaruh oleh bahasa ibunya. Hal inilah yang akan saya bahas dalam tugas akhir
saya yang berjudul The Influences of the Javanese Pronunciation on the English
Pronunciation of Javanese-Speaking People.
Tugas akhir saya akan membahas tentang seberapa besar pengaruh Bahasa Jawa
pada orang-orang yang sehari-hari menggunakan bahasa tersebut saat mereka belajar
Bahasa Inggris, serta kesulitan apa saja yang mereka hadapi saat mereka harus
melafalkan kata dalam bahasa Inggris.
Dari kesalahan-kesalahan itulah nantinya diharapkan mereka yang membaca
tugas akhir saya ini, atau orang Jawa pada khususnya yang ingin mempelajari Bahasa
Maranatha Christian University
v
Inggris bisa belajar untuk tidak melakukan kesalahan yang sama. Dan pada
akhirnya mereka bisa lebih baik saat harus berbicara dalam Bahasa Inggris.
Maranatha Christian University
APPENDICES
Appendix 1
The
Sounds
i:
ı
e
æ
α:
The number of students who can
produce English sounds accurately
13
11
30
11
13
The number of students who
produce English sounds inaccurately
17
19
19
17
ʌ
ɔ:
ɒ
u:
30
14
23
12
16
7
18
ʊ
з:
ə
p
30
11
30
14
9
16
b
m
w
f
15
30
30
30
15
-
v
θ
ð
t
13
5
6
14
17
25
24
16
34
35
The
Sounds
d
The number of students who can
produce English sounds accurately
15
The number of students who
produce English sounds inaccurately
15
l
30
-
n
30
-
r
30
-
s
30
-
z
17
13
∫
10
20
5
25
6
24
6
24
j
30
-
k
20
10
g
21
9
ŋ
30
-
h
30
-
36
Appendix 2
List of English Words
Vowels
[ ί: ]
: eat, see, bee
[ı]
: it, sit, give
[e]
: end, bread, head
[æ ]
: and, back, cat
[ α:]
: ask, class, card
[ɒ]
: box, long, hot
[ ɔ: ]
: tall, door, board
[ʊ]
: good, foot, put
[ u: ]
: blue, moon, two
[ʌ]
: bus, come, once
[ ɜ: ]
: work, hurt, her
[ə]
: ago, police, bitter
37
Consonant
[p]
: pie, open, cup
[b]
: bed, about, club
[m]
: meet, summer, swim
[w]
: wine, win, would
[f ]
: fine, after, half
[v]
: very, river, love
[θ]
: thick, something, bath
[ð]
: this, father, with
[t]
: tea, party, wet
[d]
: dead, body, card
[l]
: list, polite, mile
[n]
: night, money, green
[r]
: rain, forest, ruin
[s]
: stamp, pencil, dress
[z]
: zoo, easy, his
[ ∫]
: ship special, push
[ʒ]
: gigolo, pleasure, garage
[ʧ]
: child, kitchen, catch
[ ʤ ] : jar, danger, age
[j]
: yes, year, young
[k]
: car, ticket, ink
[g]
: go, again, dig
[h]
: high, behind, hot
[ŋ]
: singer, thing, king
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
The use of English has developed over time. English has become an important
language. But actually, about four centuries ago, not so many people used English; only
five million people spoke English as their first language. Beginning in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth the first, English-speaking people were spread all over the world and
they made the English language more widely-known. One country that has made a
remarkable contribution in spreading English is the United States of America. The
United States of America uses English for their everyday communication. As the United
States of America becomes one of the great world powers, many people in the world
have been influenced by its life style. It means that the use of English also increases.
After that, over two hundred million people use English as their first language and
million more read and understand English as their second language. (Dawson 14)
Considering that we are now in the twenty-first centuries, the use of English is wider
than that era.
1
Maranatha Christian University
2
Nowadays, English is regarded as an international language. Someone who can
speak English fluently can be considered a person who can follow the world’s
development. The Globalization era also forces many people to be able to speak
English. For these reasons, many people try to master English language. People start to
learn English language from the early stages of school, and many also take a language
course to develop their English ability.
Learning English does not only deal with vocabulary or grammar. How to
pronounce the English sounds seem to be one of the problems someone who is learning
English has to face. In learning English we have to know how to produce English
sounds correctly, because, in English words, different sounds may have different
meanings, for example in the words sheep [ ∫i:p ] and ship [ ∫ıp ]. These words sound
similar. The only difference occurs in the vowels [ i: ] and [ ı ]. Although the only
difference is a vowel, the meanings of these words are totally different. People who
have grown up without speaking English usually cannot easily pronounce the different
sounds. Non-English speakers may have a tendency to mispronounce English sounds.
(Dawson 4) That is the reason why we have to understand sounds when we are learning
a language, so that we do not make a mistake.
This problem may occur when people who usually speak in their first language
try to learn English as a second language. People from various language backgrounds,
including Javanese, want to learn and understand English. But learning English
pronunciation is not as simple as they think. Javanese-speaking people will find some
difficulties in producing certain English sounds. This is because they are influenced by
their first language, the Javanese language. I would like to analyze this problem in my
Maranatha Christian University
3
thesis. The topic of my thesis is the Influence of the Javanese Pronunciation on the
English Pronunciation of Javanese-Speaking People. I choose this topic because I would
like to know how the sound system of the first language, in this case Javanese, can
influence Javanese-speaking people in learning English pronunciation.
The significance of my topic is to help Javanese-speaking people learn English,
especially in pronouncing English sounds. By reading my thesis, hopefully, Javanese
speaking people who want to learn English will be aware of the common mistakes in
learning English from their own community. Therefore, it is hoped they will not make
the same mistakes.
In writing on this topic, I use thirty Javanese-speaking people as my sources of
data. From these sources, I will find as much useful information as possible to analyze
in my thesis. I will choose Javanese students in Maranatha Christian University. In this
case I choose people from Central Java, especially those speaking in the Banyumasan
Dialect. They have already learnt English for five years. They are Javanese people who
regularly use their first language in their daily life when they speak with those who
come from the same area. I would like to find out how far this language could influence
Javanese-speaking people when they are learning English pronunciation.
My topic belongs to Phonetics and Phonology, that is, the study of speech
sounds. I also use the theory of language transfer from the theory of second language
acquisition, which talk about the process of how humans acquire their second language.
I use the theory of English and Javanese Phonology and also the theory of language
transfer to find the reason of the difficulties in pronunciation.
Maranatha Christian University
4
Statement of the Problem
In this thesis I would like to discuss the following problems:
1. What are the English sounds that are difficult to pronounce by Javanese –
speaking people?
2. What are the factors that influence them so they are faced into these difficulties?
3. If they can produce some English sounds accurately, what factors help them?
Purpose of the Study
In this thesis I would like to show:
1. The English sounds that are difficult to pronounce by Javanese-speaking people.
2. The factors that influence Javanese-speaking people so they are faced with these
difficulties.
3. The factors that help Javanese-speaking people if they can produce some
English sounds accurately.
Method of Research
The method of research that I use to gathering the data consists of six steps. The
first step is to make a list of English words and sentences. These words or sentences
contain different English sounds. The second step is I use an English Pronunciation
cassette as a guidance to compare the accurate and inaccurate sounds. The third step is
to ask Javanese speaking people to read the word list I have prepared. The fourth step is
classifying the data. I make a table to classify all the data that I have already found. The
Maranatha Christian University
5
fifth step is to find out what the difficult English sounds are for Javanese-speaking
people when they speak English. In the last step, I analyze why these sounds are
difficult to pronounce by the Javanese-speaking people.
Organization of the Thesis
Chapter one is the Introduction. This chapter consists of the Background of the
Study, Statement of the Problem, Purpose of the Study, Method of Research and the
Organization of the Thesis. Chapter two consists of the Theory of the Thesis. Chapter
three consists of the Discussion of the Thesis. Chapter four will be the Conclusion of
the Thesis followed by Bibliography and Appendix.
Maranatha Christian University
CHAPTER IV
CONCLUSION
In learning English, Javanese-speaking people are faced with some difficulties.
One of the difficulties when they are going to learn English is how to pronounce the
English sounds accurately. After analyzing the data, I found that Javanese-speaking
people usually could not produce the English sound accurately because they find
differences between the sounds in the English sound system and the sounds in the
Javanese sound system. Javanese-speaking people are used to speaking Javanese as their
first language when they do conversation with others who come from the same area; as a
result, the Javanese-speaking people are greatly influenced by the Javanese language.
In this thesis, I compare the Javanese sounds with the English sounds. There are
some English sounds that are totally different or even extremely new for Javanesespeaking people. These new sounds are difficult to pronounce by the Javanese-speaking
people. This factor causes the Javanese-speaking people not to be able to produce some
English sounds accurately.
29
Maranatha Christian University
30
The following sounds are the sounds that are difficult for the Javanese-speaking people to
pronounce
Vowels:
[ i: ], [ æ ], [ з: ], [ u: ], [ α: ], [ ı ], [ ɔ: ]
Consonants:
[ v ], [ θ ], [ ð ], [ ∫ ], [ ʧ ], [ ʒ ]
The mistakes that are usually made by the Javanese-speaking people is they tend
to replace the difficult English sounds which do not occur in the Javanese-speaking
people with the Javanese sounds that have similarities with these difficult sounds
There are some English sounds that are actually not really difficult to pronounce;
however, Javanese-speaking people could not produce these sounds accurately. Sounds
[ b ], [ d ], [ k ], [ g ] also occur in Javanese pronunciation system, but in some cases,
Javanese-speaking people could not produce it accurately, for example, when these
sounds are at the end of a syllable. In the Javanese language, it is rare to find a word
which ends with these sounds; as a result, Javanese-speaking people would pronounce
these sounds inaccurately.
The other difficulties occur when the Javanese-speaking people have to
pronounce double consonants or consonant clusters at the end of the syllable. A word
with double consonants at the end of the syllable is also rare to find in the Javanese
language. They tend to omit one sound, such as in the word bank, where they will omit
the sound [ k ]; as a result, they will pronounce this word [ bʌŋ ].
The other difficulty that is found when Javanese-speaking people learn English
pronunciation is the aspiration. The use of aspiration in the English sound system and
the Javanese sound system is different. In English sound system, the sounds which have
Maranatha Christian University
31
to be pronounced with aspiration are the voiceless sounds, while in the Javanese sound
system, the sounds that are pronounced with aspiration are the voiced sounds. This
difference leads the Javanese-speaking people into difficulty in pronouncing some
English sounds.
In some cases, Javanese-speaking people pronounce some English sounds
inaccurately because they have a tendency to read a word based on the letters that are
written. They think this would help them in producing some English sounds that are
difficult but actually it will lead them into producing the wrong sounds.
The Javanese-speaking people found that the sounds in their first language are
not the same as English as their second language. They are used to speaking Javanese,
but then when they have to speak English, they have to learn some sounds that are
different from their first language. That is the reason why the Javanese-speaking people
find some difficulties in learning English pronunciation. This situation is called negative
transfer.
We know that there are some difficulties for Javanese-speaking people to
produce some English sounds; on the other hand, we can also see that there are some
English sounds which are produced accurately by Javanese-speaking people because
these sounds occur in the Javanese sound system.
Those sounds are:
Vowels:
[ i ], [ e ], [ ʌ ], [ ɒ ], [ ə ]
Consonants:
[ m ], [ w ], [ n ], [ s ], [ j ], [ h ], [ ŋ ]
Maranatha Christian University
32
The Javanese-speaking people do not find any difficulties in producing these
sounds. These sounds are produced in the same way in both the English and Javanese
sound system.
The similarities between English pronunciation and Javanese pronunciation
make the Javanese-speaking people easy to produce some English sounds. This situation
is called positive transfer.
So, in this case, the first language is actually helpful when someone who usually
speaks in the first language wants to learn a second language, as long as there are
similarities between the first and second languages.
Finally, in learning English, especially to understand the sounds, there are
several things that we have to know as Javanese-speaking people. In my opinion,
Javanese-speaking people are expected to know the differences between the Javanese
sound system and the English sound system. This is important because by knowing the
differences, Javanese-speaking people can practice speaking in English in the right way.
They have to know how to produce the English sounds accurately by understanding the
position of the tongue, the place and manner of articulation when they want to
pronounced the English sounds. After that, Javanese-speaking people are expected to do
a lot of practice to improve.
The other things that are also important when Javanese-speaking people want to
learn English are reading and listening. These two things are really helpful to improve
Javanese-speaking people’s ability to speak English in order that they would not find
any difficulties in learning English pronunciation anymore.
Maranatha Christian University
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aitchison, Jane. Linguistics: An Introduction. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1999.
Deterding, David. The Sound of English. Singapore: Prentice-Hall Pearson Education
Asia Pte Ltd, 1998.
Dulay, Heidi. Language Two. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1982.
Ellis, Rod. The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1997.
Fromkin, Victoria. An Introduction to Language. Orlando: Harcourt Brace & Company,
1998.
Jones, Daniel. An Outline of English Phonetics. Cambridge: W. Heffer and Sons Ltd,
1980.
Katamba, Francis. An Introduction to Phonology. England: Longman Group UK
Limited, 1989.
Mangunsuwito, S.A. Kamus Bahasa Jawa. Bandung: W. Yrama Widya, 2002.
Simanjuntak, Herpinus. Bahasa Inggris Sistem Jilid 1. Bekasi: Visipro, 2006.
Stern, H.H. Fundamental Concept of Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1984.
33
Maranatha Christian University
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT..................................................................................... i
TABLE OF CONTENTS...................................................................................... ii
ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................... iv
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study..............................................................................1
Statement of the Problem .............................................................................4
Purpose of the Study ....................................................................................4
Methods of Research................................................................................... 4
Organization of the Thesis ...........................................................................5
CHAPTER II: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .............................................6
CHAPTER III: THE INFLUENCE OF THE JAVANESE
PRONUNCIATION ON THE ENGLISH
PRONUNCIATION.................................................................12
CHAPTER IV: CONCLUSION ........................................................................29
BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................33
ii
iii
APPENDICES:
Table of data...............................................................................................34
List of English words .................................................................................36
Maranatha Christian University
iv
ABSTRACT
Mempelajari Bahasa Inggris memang terlihat sederhana. Namun ada satu hal
yang sering kali terlupakan saat kita hendak mempelajari Bahasa Inggris, yaitu
bagaimana cara mengucapkan kata dengan pelafalan yang benar dalam Bahasa Inggris.
Seseorang yang telah terbiasa menggunakan bahasa ibunya, akan mengalami
kesulitan saat dia hendak mengucapkan kata dalam bahasa yang lain karena dia telah
terpengaruh oleh bahasa ibunya. Hal inilah yang akan saya bahas dalam tugas akhir
saya yang berjudul The Influences of the Javanese Pronunciation on the English
Pronunciation of Javanese-Speaking People.
Tugas akhir saya akan membahas tentang seberapa besar pengaruh Bahasa Jawa
pada orang-orang yang sehari-hari menggunakan bahasa tersebut saat mereka belajar
Bahasa Inggris, serta kesulitan apa saja yang mereka hadapi saat mereka harus
melafalkan kata dalam bahasa Inggris.
Dari kesalahan-kesalahan itulah nantinya diharapkan mereka yang membaca
tugas akhir saya ini, atau orang Jawa pada khususnya yang ingin mempelajari Bahasa
Maranatha Christian University
v
Inggris bisa belajar untuk tidak melakukan kesalahan yang sama. Dan pada
akhirnya mereka bisa lebih baik saat harus berbicara dalam Bahasa Inggris.
Maranatha Christian University
APPENDICES
Appendix 1
The
Sounds
i:
ı
e
æ
α:
The number of students who can
produce English sounds accurately
13
11
30
11
13
The number of students who
produce English sounds inaccurately
17
19
19
17
ʌ
ɔ:
ɒ
u:
30
14
23
12
16
7
18
ʊ
з:
ə
p
30
11
30
14
9
16
b
m
w
f
15
30
30
30
15
-
v
θ
ð
t
13
5
6
14
17
25
24
16
34
35
The
Sounds
d
The number of students who can
produce English sounds accurately
15
The number of students who
produce English sounds inaccurately
15
l
30
-
n
30
-
r
30
-
s
30
-
z
17
13
∫
10
20
5
25
6
24
6
24
j
30
-
k
20
10
g
21
9
ŋ
30
-
h
30
-
36
Appendix 2
List of English Words
Vowels
[ ί: ]
: eat, see, bee
[ı]
: it, sit, give
[e]
: end, bread, head
[æ ]
: and, back, cat
[ α:]
: ask, class, card
[ɒ]
: box, long, hot
[ ɔ: ]
: tall, door, board
[ʊ]
: good, foot, put
[ u: ]
: blue, moon, two
[ʌ]
: bus, come, once
[ ɜ: ]
: work, hurt, her
[ə]
: ago, police, bitter
37
Consonant
[p]
: pie, open, cup
[b]
: bed, about, club
[m]
: meet, summer, swim
[w]
: wine, win, would
[f ]
: fine, after, half
[v]
: very, river, love
[θ]
: thick, something, bath
[ð]
: this, father, with
[t]
: tea, party, wet
[d]
: dead, body, card
[l]
: list, polite, mile
[n]
: night, money, green
[r]
: rain, forest, ruin
[s]
: stamp, pencil, dress
[z]
: zoo, easy, his
[ ∫]
: ship special, push
[ʒ]
: gigolo, pleasure, garage
[ʧ]
: child, kitchen, catch
[ ʤ ] : jar, danger, age
[j]
: yes, year, young
[k]
: car, ticket, ink
[g]
: go, again, dig
[h]
: high, behind, hot
[ŋ]
: singer, thing, king
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
The use of English has developed over time. English has become an important
language. But actually, about four centuries ago, not so many people used English; only
five million people spoke English as their first language. Beginning in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth the first, English-speaking people were spread all over the world and
they made the English language more widely-known. One country that has made a
remarkable contribution in spreading English is the United States of America. The
United States of America uses English for their everyday communication. As the United
States of America becomes one of the great world powers, many people in the world
have been influenced by its life style. It means that the use of English also increases.
After that, over two hundred million people use English as their first language and
million more read and understand English as their second language. (Dawson 14)
Considering that we are now in the twenty-first centuries, the use of English is wider
than that era.
1
Maranatha Christian University
2
Nowadays, English is regarded as an international language. Someone who can
speak English fluently can be considered a person who can follow the world’s
development. The Globalization era also forces many people to be able to speak
English. For these reasons, many people try to master English language. People start to
learn English language from the early stages of school, and many also take a language
course to develop their English ability.
Learning English does not only deal with vocabulary or grammar. How to
pronounce the English sounds seem to be one of the problems someone who is learning
English has to face. In learning English we have to know how to produce English
sounds correctly, because, in English words, different sounds may have different
meanings, for example in the words sheep [ ∫i:p ] and ship [ ∫ıp ]. These words sound
similar. The only difference occurs in the vowels [ i: ] and [ ı ]. Although the only
difference is a vowel, the meanings of these words are totally different. People who
have grown up without speaking English usually cannot easily pronounce the different
sounds. Non-English speakers may have a tendency to mispronounce English sounds.
(Dawson 4) That is the reason why we have to understand sounds when we are learning
a language, so that we do not make a mistake.
This problem may occur when people who usually speak in their first language
try to learn English as a second language. People from various language backgrounds,
including Javanese, want to learn and understand English. But learning English
pronunciation is not as simple as they think. Javanese-speaking people will find some
difficulties in producing certain English sounds. This is because they are influenced by
their first language, the Javanese language. I would like to analyze this problem in my
Maranatha Christian University
3
thesis. The topic of my thesis is the Influence of the Javanese Pronunciation on the
English Pronunciation of Javanese-Speaking People. I choose this topic because I would
like to know how the sound system of the first language, in this case Javanese, can
influence Javanese-speaking people in learning English pronunciation.
The significance of my topic is to help Javanese-speaking people learn English,
especially in pronouncing English sounds. By reading my thesis, hopefully, Javanese
speaking people who want to learn English will be aware of the common mistakes in
learning English from their own community. Therefore, it is hoped they will not make
the same mistakes.
In writing on this topic, I use thirty Javanese-speaking people as my sources of
data. From these sources, I will find as much useful information as possible to analyze
in my thesis. I will choose Javanese students in Maranatha Christian University. In this
case I choose people from Central Java, especially those speaking in the Banyumasan
Dialect. They have already learnt English for five years. They are Javanese people who
regularly use their first language in their daily life when they speak with those who
come from the same area. I would like to find out how far this language could influence
Javanese-speaking people when they are learning English pronunciation.
My topic belongs to Phonetics and Phonology, that is, the study of speech
sounds. I also use the theory of language transfer from the theory of second language
acquisition, which talk about the process of how humans acquire their second language.
I use the theory of English and Javanese Phonology and also the theory of language
transfer to find the reason of the difficulties in pronunciation.
Maranatha Christian University
4
Statement of the Problem
In this thesis I would like to discuss the following problems:
1. What are the English sounds that are difficult to pronounce by Javanese –
speaking people?
2. What are the factors that influence them so they are faced into these difficulties?
3. If they can produce some English sounds accurately, what factors help them?
Purpose of the Study
In this thesis I would like to show:
1. The English sounds that are difficult to pronounce by Javanese-speaking people.
2. The factors that influence Javanese-speaking people so they are faced with these
difficulties.
3. The factors that help Javanese-speaking people if they can produce some
English sounds accurately.
Method of Research
The method of research that I use to gathering the data consists of six steps. The
first step is to make a list of English words and sentences. These words or sentences
contain different English sounds. The second step is I use an English Pronunciation
cassette as a guidance to compare the accurate and inaccurate sounds. The third step is
to ask Javanese speaking people to read the word list I have prepared. The fourth step is
classifying the data. I make a table to classify all the data that I have already found. The
Maranatha Christian University
5
fifth step is to find out what the difficult English sounds are for Javanese-speaking
people when they speak English. In the last step, I analyze why these sounds are
difficult to pronounce by the Javanese-speaking people.
Organization of the Thesis
Chapter one is the Introduction. This chapter consists of the Background of the
Study, Statement of the Problem, Purpose of the Study, Method of Research and the
Organization of the Thesis. Chapter two consists of the Theory of the Thesis. Chapter
three consists of the Discussion of the Thesis. Chapter four will be the Conclusion of
the Thesis followed by Bibliography and Appendix.
Maranatha Christian University
CHAPTER IV
CONCLUSION
In learning English, Javanese-speaking people are faced with some difficulties.
One of the difficulties when they are going to learn English is how to pronounce the
English sounds accurately. After analyzing the data, I found that Javanese-speaking
people usually could not produce the English sound accurately because they find
differences between the sounds in the English sound system and the sounds in the
Javanese sound system. Javanese-speaking people are used to speaking Javanese as their
first language when they do conversation with others who come from the same area; as a
result, the Javanese-speaking people are greatly influenced by the Javanese language.
In this thesis, I compare the Javanese sounds with the English sounds. There are
some English sounds that are totally different or even extremely new for Javanesespeaking people. These new sounds are difficult to pronounce by the Javanese-speaking
people. This factor causes the Javanese-speaking people not to be able to produce some
English sounds accurately.
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The following sounds are the sounds that are difficult for the Javanese-speaking people to
pronounce
Vowels:
[ i: ], [ æ ], [ з: ], [ u: ], [ α: ], [ ı ], [ ɔ: ]
Consonants:
[ v ], [ θ ], [ ð ], [ ∫ ], [ ʧ ], [ ʒ ]
The mistakes that are usually made by the Javanese-speaking people is they tend
to replace the difficult English sounds which do not occur in the Javanese-speaking
people with the Javanese sounds that have similarities with these difficult sounds
There are some English sounds that are actually not really difficult to pronounce;
however, Javanese-speaking people could not produce these sounds accurately. Sounds
[ b ], [ d ], [ k ], [ g ] also occur in Javanese pronunciation system, but in some cases,
Javanese-speaking people could not produce it accurately, for example, when these
sounds are at the end of a syllable. In the Javanese language, it is rare to find a word
which ends with these sounds; as a result, Javanese-speaking people would pronounce
these sounds inaccurately.
The other difficulties occur when the Javanese-speaking people have to
pronounce double consonants or consonant clusters at the end of the syllable. A word
with double consonants at the end of the syllable is also rare to find in the Javanese
language. They tend to omit one sound, such as in the word bank, where they will omit
the sound [ k ]; as a result, they will pronounce this word [ bʌŋ ].
The other difficulty that is found when Javanese-speaking people learn English
pronunciation is the aspiration. The use of aspiration in the English sound system and
the Javanese sound system is different. In English sound system, the sounds which have
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to be pronounced with aspiration are the voiceless sounds, while in the Javanese sound
system, the sounds that are pronounced with aspiration are the voiced sounds. This
difference leads the Javanese-speaking people into difficulty in pronouncing some
English sounds.
In some cases, Javanese-speaking people pronounce some English sounds
inaccurately because they have a tendency to read a word based on the letters that are
written. They think this would help them in producing some English sounds that are
difficult but actually it will lead them into producing the wrong sounds.
The Javanese-speaking people found that the sounds in their first language are
not the same as English as their second language. They are used to speaking Javanese,
but then when they have to speak English, they have to learn some sounds that are
different from their first language. That is the reason why the Javanese-speaking people
find some difficulties in learning English pronunciation. This situation is called negative
transfer.
We know that there are some difficulties for Javanese-speaking people to
produce some English sounds; on the other hand, we can also see that there are some
English sounds which are produced accurately by Javanese-speaking people because
these sounds occur in the Javanese sound system.
Those sounds are:
Vowels:
[ i ], [ e ], [ ʌ ], [ ɒ ], [ ə ]
Consonants:
[ m ], [ w ], [ n ], [ s ], [ j ], [ h ], [ ŋ ]
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The Javanese-speaking people do not find any difficulties in producing these
sounds. These sounds are produced in the same way in both the English and Javanese
sound system.
The similarities between English pronunciation and Javanese pronunciation
make the Javanese-speaking people easy to produce some English sounds. This situation
is called positive transfer.
So, in this case, the first language is actually helpful when someone who usually
speaks in the first language wants to learn a second language, as long as there are
similarities between the first and second languages.
Finally, in learning English, especially to understand the sounds, there are
several things that we have to know as Javanese-speaking people. In my opinion,
Javanese-speaking people are expected to know the differences between the Javanese
sound system and the English sound system. This is important because by knowing the
differences, Javanese-speaking people can practice speaking in English in the right way.
They have to know how to produce the English sounds accurately by understanding the
position of the tongue, the place and manner of articulation when they want to
pronounced the English sounds. After that, Javanese-speaking people are expected to do
a lot of practice to improve.
The other things that are also important when Javanese-speaking people want to
learn English are reading and listening. These two things are really helpful to improve
Javanese-speaking people’s ability to speak English in order that they would not find
any difficulties in learning English pronunciation anymore.
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