Su Vân E in China

The identifiable characteristics of China English exist in all the linguistic levels:
phonology.
At the Phonological Level
The nativization of English in China appears to be most obvious at the phonological

level. The phonological features of language are reflected in two aspects, segmental
phoneme and supersegmental phoneme. After observing the following sound variation
as the features for many Chinese people to speak English in both aspects:
1,Chinese learners sometimes add a final /ə/ to the words ending with consonants.
2) They have trouble distinguishing the short vowels from the corresponding long ones
and often prolong the short vowels and make them the corresponding long ones, e.g.
both “ship” and “sheep” are pronounced as /ʃ і:p/. This is because the long and short
contrast is not a distinctive feature and makes no difference in meaning in Putonghua
(the standard Chinese pronunciation).
3) The voiced /ð/ and the voiceless /Ө / are usually pronounced as the voiced /z/ and
the voiceless /s/ respectively.
4) In some areas in China, people do not distinguish between /l/ and /n/, the lateral and
alveolar nasal. In their dialects, these two sounds are not two phonemes, but
allophones of one phoneme. The transfer of this feature to their English creates
confusion between word pairs like “night” and “light”.
5) Chinese people also speak in a way that seems over-precise to people in southern
England, who do not give value to short vowels but reduce them to the universal
schwa /ə/. They tend to ignore what linguists call “graduation” and have no “weak
forms” of words such as “as”, “of”, “for”, “and”, “will”, etc. For example, they
employ the same /fɔ :/ or /fɔ :r/ in “What is it for” and “This is for you”.
6) Chinese students tend to ignore the linguistic phenomenon described as “shifting

stress”. In English, a number of words, especially compounds, may have a shift in
stress when they are used before nouns. But Chinese students always use the stress
used when the word is said by itself. For example, in “The soldiers are Chinese in the
Chinese army”, they do not shift the position of primary stress in “Chinese army”.
Loreto Todd and Ian Hancock (1986) points out that the sound variation of China
English is caused by Chinese dialects and the pronunciation of foreign teachers from
different countries.
(Baugh & Cable, 2001, p.309) each English variety has its own peculiarities in
pronunciation. As long as they do not bear such differences in speech that would cause
a change in meaning and by using them people from different nations can
communicate with one another without restraint, they are acceptable and reasonable at
least on the level of phonology, which is the case of China English.
Different English varieties have their own suprasegmental features and their principal
features lie in syllable, stress, tone and intonation, which will naturally express the
speakers’ national identity. Take film as an example, only by hearing, most of the
Chinese audience can find out whether it is an original Chinese film or a film dubbed
from English or Japanese, even though all the film-dubbers are native Chinese. Why?
Because the film-dubbers are not speaking Chinese as native people do. They did some
changes deliberately in syllable, stress, tone and intonation when dubbing helps to
produce a special flavor in line with the foreign atmosphere in film. In other words,
they speak English Chinese or Japanese Chinese, which on the phonologic level
reflects the foreign nation’s style and identity. It is the same case with Chinese film
dubbed into English. In order to preserve the original Chinese flavor, the use of the
sound patterns of China English seems to be a wise choice. By adopting a slow rate of
speech and clearer patterns of articulation while avoiding some of the assimilations
and elisions, Chinese films even dubbed into English can still be distinguished from
the original English film. Natives of English can easily discern that it is from China
even without taking a glimpse at the screen. Therefore, the sound pattern of China
English has nothing to do with standard, it is just a question of appropriateness to the
given situation. China English, a language phenomena with its capacity to voice ideas
clearly and effectively, reveals its cultural style and national identity in a very natural
manner, and therefore should be allowed to exit

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The identifiable characteristics of China English exist in all the linguistic levels:

At the Phonological Level

The nativization of English in China appears to be most obvious at the phonological

6) Chinese students tend to ignore the linguistic phenomenon described as “shifting

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