Reconceptualizing English Language Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century

X A Contrastive Approach to Teaching

Mandarin Pronunciation to Hindi Speakers:
Focusing on the Consonants
Shu-Fen Chen
National Tsing Hua University
chensf@mx.edu.tw
Pronunciation of Mandarin sounds has always been the priority and
difficulty in teaching Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). Many Hindi speakers
have difficulties in pronouncing several Mandarin sounds, and may thus
experience a high level of frustration or even undesirable misunderstandings. This
paper aims at providing a new method for teaching Hindi speakers to have a better
and more accurate pronunciation of Mandarin sounds. First of all, the author
proposes that the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) should be taught to Hindi
speakers. Many people learn Hanyu Pinyin before Chinese characters are
introduced. However, one should notice that Hanyu Pinyin is just a writing
system, not a set of phonetic symbols. Without learning IPA, Pinyin might be a
barrier to correct pronunciation. Second, the author uses a contrastive analysis to
study Mandarin and Hindi consonants with a view to identifying their similarities
and differences. A comparison between the 38 Hindi consonants and 22
Mandarin ones will also be conducted to find out the major problems of
producing Mandarin consonants by Hindi speakers. This paper presents an
innovative paradigm for teaching IPA to Hindi speakers of Chinese. When
students are aware of the differences and similarities of the sound systems of the
two languages, they will monitor their own pronunciation and probable errors.
With sound discrimination abilities, students will be able to improve their
speaking skills.

Keywords: Hindi speakers, Teaching Chinese as a foreign language (CFL),

contrastive analysis, Mandarin, pronunciation

INTRODUCTION
Demand for Chinese language courses has gone up sharply with trade and
diplomtic ties between China and India in the past years. In fact, according to
Gupta (2011), the first regular Chinese class was started at Visva-Bharati in the
late autumn of 1924 by Dr. Ngo-Chiang Lin whom Tagore met in Burma and
invited to teach Chinese language and literature. The Department of Chinese
Language and Culture (Cheena-Bhavana) at Visva-Bharati was founded by
Prof. Tan Yunshan (1898-1983) in 1937. Gu & Yang (2011) points out that
there are about 22 universities which offer degrees in the Chinese language,
including Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), the English
 A Contrastive Approach to Teaching Chinese Pronunciation to Hindi Speakers

and Foreign Languages University and Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. Nowadays

much more universities has started Chinese programs. There are eight Taiwan
Education Centers in India funded by the Ministries of Education and Foreign
Affairs and operated by National Tsing Hua University, including Amity
University, Jamia Millia Islamia, JNU, O. P. Jindal Global University, the
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, IIT Bombay, Sri Ramaswamy
Memorial Institute of Science and Technology, and Manipal University. China
also has established two Confucius Institues in India, one at Vellore Institute of
Technology and the other at University of Mumbai. Not only do universities in
India offer Chinese programs and degrees, there are many private language
schools which cater to the short-term study market and working professionals.
Private institutes offer a greater level of flexibility with weekend classes,
tailored classes and short-term classes. Jetley (2013) states that “According to
Justdial.com, an online directory of business services, there are more than 25
centers teaching Mandarin in Mumbai and a whopping 120 such institutes in
New Delhi and its suburbs.” Moreover, according to statistics provided by
National Immigration Agency, Tawain, R.O.C., there are only about 1670
Indian residents in 2013. The number has doubled in just 5 years to reach
3,287 Indians in 2018. Among them, 979 are students. Thus, more Indians has
the need to learn Chinese.1
India has 23 constitutionally recognized official languages, and among
them Hindi and English are used as official languages by the Central
Government. As stated in 2001 Census of India, there were 53.6% of Indian
population speak Hindi either as first or second language. 2 Hindi is the state
language of Bihar, Chattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand,
Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttaranchal (Kachru, 2006). It
is virtually identical to Urdu, the national language of Pakistan, and the state
language of Jamnu and Kashmir, and additional state language of Bihar and
Uttar Pradesh in India. The two languages are referred to as Hindustaini or
Hindi-Urdu (Kachru, 1990). In this paper the author will adopt a contrastive
approach to teaching Mandarin pronunciation to Hindi speakers, but due to
page limitation, the focus will be a comprehensive analysis of the consonants
in Chinese and Hindi.
A comparison between the 33 Hindi consonants3 and the 22 Mandarin ones
will be conducted to find out the major problems of producing Mandarin
consonants by Hindi speakers. The author proposes that the International
Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) should be taught to Hindi speakers. Many people
learn Hanyu Pinyin (hereafter referred to simply as Pinyin 拼音 "spelling

1
In this paper when the author refer to ‘Chinese,’ it actually means ‘Mandarin Chinese,’ or
‘Standard Chinese.’
2
Wikipedia (2018, January 10). 2001 Census of India. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
3
Kachru (2006: 16) states that there are 38 consonants in Hindi, of which five are only used by
English and Perso-Arabic borrowings. This paper will only discuss the 33 native Hindi ones.
 Shu-Fen Chen

sounds" literally) before Chinese characters are introduced. However, one

should notice that Pinyin is just a romanization system, not a set of phonetic
symbols. For example, Pinyin p is actually a voiceless aspirated bilabial stop
[ph], and b, a voiceless unaspirated bilabial stop [p]. Without learning IPA,
Pinyin might be a barrier to correct pronunciation. This paper consists of four
parts: introduction, literature review, a comparison of Chinese and Hindi
consonant systems and conclusion.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Pronunciation of Mandarin sounds has always been the priority and
difficulty in teaching Chinese as a foreign language (TCFL). Chao (1980: 156)
has long pointed out: “The content of learning a foreign language is divided
into three main parts: pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. The order of
learning should also be carried out in these three steps. Pronunciation is the
most difficult and also the most important because the language itself is
pronunciation. If the pronunciation is wrong, the grammar would also be
wrong, and the vocabulary will be wrong as well. ”4 Although pronunciation
can be the most essential part in learning a language, it does not receive due
attention and importance in TCFL. Most TCFL teachers do not strive to ask
students to attain “perfect” pronunciation since it would take much time and
effort. In most cases, only the first few weeks are devoted to pronunciation
practice. After that, students’ attention is diverted to vocabulary and grammar
learning, the pronunciation control loosens, and native language influence
reappears to produce a speech accent. Moreover, most learners of Chinese
would learn Pinyin before Chinese characters are introduced. Pinyin is a sound
annotation system using Roman letters. It was promulgated by the Chinese
government in 1958 and designed as an aid for character learning and to
popularize Standard Mandarin, or so-called Putonghua 普 通 話 (literally
‘common speech’). Pinyin is widely used to teach Chinese to speakers of other
languages.
Modern Hindi uses Devanāgarī script which can be easily transcribed into
Roman letters. In this way, Hindi speakers of Chinese are prone to confound
Pinyin with their native pronunciation. There are interferences caused by their
native language in the process of Pinyin learning. The negative transfer of
Hindi also makes them speak Chinese with a foreign accent. That’s why
teaching IPA to Hindi speakers to enhance correct pronunciation of Chinese is
propounded in this paper. IPA is an alphabet that was created to represent the
sounds of a language, each symbol representing only one sound and each

4
The quotation is translated from the following sentences by the author: 「學習外國語的內容
分成發音、語法跟詞彙三個重要的部分，學習的次序當然是也應該照這三樣按步進行。
發音的部分最難，也最要緊，因為語言的本身、語言的質地就是發音，發音不對，文法
就不對，詞彙就不對。」
 A Contrastive Approach to Teaching Chinese Pronunciation to Hindi Speakers

sound represented by only one symbol. It is one of the best tools to use when
teaching pronunciation.
IPA is proposed to be used for learning foreign languages by many scholars.
Bowen (1979) says that a professional course in Phonetics for the EFL/ESL
teacher is needed. Thirumalai (2002) states that it is important for the TESOL
teachers to be familiar with IPA or some modified form of it. IPA will help
them to make some comparison between English sounds and sound patterns
with those of the native language of the learners, and to explain in some
graphic details why the learners have difficulty with some sounds and not with
others. Kreitman (2010) points out that an additional tool which many second
language teachers find useful to facilitate teaching proper pronunciation of
Hebrew words is the use of IPA since students can read the texts more fluently
with the help of phonetic transcription in the initial stages of learning a
language which uses a non-Latin based orthographic system. The use of IPA
in the classroom makes the students more phonetically aware and as a result
can improve their pronunciation in the second/foreign language. Maskara’s
study (2013) of teaching English to Indian students also finds that phonetics is
a need for Indian students. She asserts that the IPA phonetic symbols should
be part of an Indian education system. A surface level awareness of phonetics
can bring a lot of uniformity to the various dialects of English in India. Thus,
she proposes a new pronunciation awareness course of IPA to be part of
teacher’s training curriculum in order to improve the students’ pronunciation.
In this paper, the author tries to implement a contrastive analysis of
Mandarin and Hindi consonants. Contrastive analysis plays a very important
role in foreign language learning. Language learning involves transfer of the
native language. Contrastive analysis utilizes the notions of transfer by
comparing and contrasting languages. By studying the differences, we can
predict and explain L2 errors. It is thus essential for language learners to study
and understand the similarities and differences between source and target
languages. Lado (1957: vii) states, “The plan of the book rests on the
assumption that we can predict and describe the patterns that will cause
difficulty in learning, and those that will not cause difficulty, by comparing
systematically the language and culture to be learned with the native language
and culture of the student.” Lado (1964: 215) defines contrastive analysis as
“the comparison of any two languages to discover and describe the problems
that the speakers of the languages will have in learning the other.” Mayor
(2001: 34) asserts that the fundamental tenet of contrastive analysis was that
transfer could explain all errors, and it was possible to predict errors based on
contrastive analysis. However, the predicative power of contrastive analysis
was criticized because many learners did not make all the errors predicted.
Thus, Wardhaugh (1970) puts forward the strong and the weak versions of
contrastive analysis: the strong version predicts errors while the weak version
explained errors after the fact. In the next section, the author will compare and
 Shu-Fen Chen

contrast the consonant systems of Mandarin and Hindi to help students

recognize and discriminate different sounds. When students are aware of the
differences and similarities of the sound systems of the two languages, they
will monitor their own pronunciation and probable errors. With sound
discrimination abilities, students will be able to improve their speaking skills.

A COMPARISON OF CHINESE AND HINDI CONSONANT

SYSTEMS
Consonant sounds are characterized by place of articulation (where the
sound is made), manner of articulation (how the sound is made), and voicing
(whether the vocal cords are vibrating or not). Place or point of articulation is
the point at which the airflow from the lungs is obstructed totally or partially,
and is modified in the vocal tract to produce a sound. Manner of articulation
refers to the manner in which the airstream in the vocal tract is constricted by
the speech organs to produce the sound. The consonant system of Hindi will be
introduced, and then that of Mandarin Chinese. A detailed contrastive analysis
of the two consonant systems will be conducted.
Hindi consonants are listed in a way like Sanskrit to have 25 regular
consonants, four semivowels, three sibilants, and one fricative, as shown in
(1).5 The consonants are divided into five groups (वर्ग vargas) according to
different places of articulation: labial, dental, retroflex (apical post-alveolar),
palatal and velar. Hindi is written in Devanāgarī script which is transcribed in
Roman letters in the chart. Like Pinyin, the Roman letter cannot exactly
represent the pronunciation, and thus IPA is offered in square brackets to show
the actual pronunciation.

(1) Hindi consonants

Voiceless Voiced Nasal

unaspirated aspirated unaspirated aspirated
क ख र् घ [gh] ङ ṅ [ŋ]
Velar [kh]
k [k] kh g [g] gh

च छ [tʃh] ज झ
Palatal [dʒʰ]  ñ
c [tʃ] ch j [dʒ] jh [ɲ]

ट ठ ड ढ [ɖ h] ण ṇ [ɳ]
Retroflex ṭ ḍ
[ʈ] ṭh [ʈh] [ɖ] ḍh

त थ द ध [dh] न n [n]
Dental t [t] th [th] d [ɖ] dh

प फ [ph] ब भ [bh] म m [m]

Labial p [p] ph b [b] bh

5
There are five borrowed sounds in Hindi which will not be discussed in this section, as noted
in footnote 3.
 A Contrastive Approach to Teaching Chinese Pronunciation to Hindi Speakers

Glottal Palatal Dental

Retroflex
Labial Dental Labial
य y [j] र r [r]6 ल l [l] व v [ʋ]
Semivowel

श ś [ʃ] ष ṣ [ʂ] स s [s]

Fricative voiceless

ह h [ɦ]
voiced

The following figure illustrates the places of articulation of the 33 consonants.

(2) The places of articulation: Hindi consonants

च, छ, ज, झ, , य, श

क, ख, र्, घ, ङ
प, फ, ब, भ, म, व
ट, ठ, ड, ढ, ण, र, ष

त, थ, द, ध, न, ल, स

In Chinese, there are 22 consonants in six places of articulation: bilabial,

labio-dental, dental, retroflex (post-alveolar), alveopalatal and velar. Scholars
identify six manners of articulation in the production of Chinese sound: stop,
fricative, affricate, nasal, lateral and approximant. In (3) the 22 Chinese
consonants are listed according to their places and manners of articulation.
Pinyin is shown along with IPA in square brackets.

6
Kachru (2006: 19) considers Hindi र r as a voiced apico-alveolar trill, not a retroflex trill.
This paper follows the tradition which classify र r as a retroflex.
 Shu-Fen Chen

(3) Chinese consonants:

Stop Fricative Affricative Nasal Lateral Approximant

-asp +asp -asp +asp
Bilabial b [p] p [ph] m [m]
Labio-dental f [f]
h
Dental/ d [t] t [t ] s [s] z [ts] c [tsh] n [n] l [l]
Alveolar
Retroflex sh [ʂ] zh [tʂ] ch [tʂh] r [ɹ] 7
Palatal x [ɕ] j [tɕ] q [tɕh]
ng [ŋ]
h
Velar g [k] k [k ] h [x]

The places of articulation of the 22 consonants are shown in (4).

(4) The places of articulation: Chinese consonants

sh, zh, ch j, q, x
g, k, h, ng
b, p, m, f
d, t, n, l

z, c, s

After introducing the Hindi and Chinese consonant systems, a detailed

comparison of the two systems will be presented in the following sections in
terms of the places of articulation.

7
Some older studies would consider the fourth retroflex is a voiced post-alveolar fricative [ʐ].
 A Contrastive Approach to Teaching Chinese Pronunciation to Hindi Speakers

Labial: bilabial and labiodental

A labial is a consonant whose articulation involves movement of one or
both lips. There are two types of labial consonants: bilabial which is
articulated with both lips and labiodental which is articulated with the lower lip
and the upper teeth. In (5) all the labial sounds in Chinese and Hindi are
presented with examples in both languages. Sounds represented by IPA is in
the first column. The second and the third columns are the examples in
Chinese and Hindi. In the Chines Example column, there are three subcolumns:
the first is a word in Chinese character, the second, Pinyin and the third,
English translation. In the Hindi Example column, the first subcolumn is a
Hindi word in Devanāgarī script, the second, the Roman transcription, the third,
English translation. It is obvious that both Chinese and Hindi writing system
does not represent sounds themselves, and that’s why IPA is very important to
be introduced to the Hindi speakers. In (5) we can see very clearly that some
sounds are shared by both languages while some occur only in Chinese, and
some, only in Hindi. Students can compare the sounds with a thorough
knowledge in mind.

(5) Chinese and Hindi labials

IPA Chinese Example8 Hindi Example
‘father’ ‘love’
प्रेम
[p] 爸 bà9 prem
‘be afraid of ’ ‘fruit’
फल
[ph] 怕 pà phal
‘power’
बल
[b] bal
‘devotee’
भक्त
[bh] bhakta
mā ‘root,
मूल
[m] 媽 ‘mother’ mūl10
origin’
[f] 富 fù ‘rich’
‘knowledge’
ववद्या
[ʋ] vidyā

8
The Chinese examples are given by the author while the Hindi examples are taken from
Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary (1993).
9
The Pinyin system uses diacritics placed over the letter that represents the syllable nucleus to
mark the four tones of Chinese. Take [a] as an example, the first tone is marked with a macron
ā, the second tone with an acute accent á, the third tone with an inverted circumflex ǎ, and the
fourth tone with a grave accent à. The neutral tone is without any accent mark.
10
In Hindi, a macron on top of a vowel indicates a long vowel which is held for about twice
the length than their corresponding short vowels. The sound /ā/, /ī/ and /ū/ are long vowels.
However, in Chinese a macron means the vowel is pronounced with the first tone.
 Shu-Fen Chen

Both Chinese and Hindi have voiceless unaspirated bilabial stop [p],
voiceless aspirated bilabial stop [ph] and voiced nasal [m]. It is usually the
case that there is no difficulty of learning sounds which are the same or similar
to those of the native language. Students usually have difficulty pronouncing
and hearing the sounds which are not present in their native language. When
the foreign language uses a sound which does not exist in the learner’s native
language, the student will not be able to produce that sound readily. Chinese
has a voiceless labiodental fricative [f] while Hindi does not have one. It is
assumed that Hindi speakers will have difficulty pronunciation [f]; however, [f]
is not new to the Hindi speakers since it occurs in both English and Perso-
Arbic borrowings in their native language. On the contrary, Hindi students
have problem with [p] and [ph]. One might wonder why as Hindi has these two
sounds. The problem comes with the above-mentioned Pinyin interference.
The sound [p] is written in Pinyin as b, and [ph] as p. As a result, Hindi
speakers would mispronounce these two sounds, thinking Pinyin represents
actual pronunciation. For example, Hindi speakers would pronounce bàba [pa
pa] ‘father’ as [ba ba]; pàpà [pha pha] ‘afraid’ as [pa pa]. This is why the author
promotes IPA to be taught to the Hindi students.

Dental and alveolar

A dental consonant is a consonant articulated with the tongue against the
upper teeth, and an alveolar consonant is articulated with the tongue against or
close to the alveolar ridge. Most of Chinese scholars (Zhang & Liu (2007: 72),
Cheng & Tian (2015: 52), just to mention a few) would distinguish dentals and
alveolars in Chinese, and classify [ts], [tsh] and [s] as dentals while [t], [th], [n]
and [l] as alveolars. However, according to Lin (2007: 26), some Chinese
speakers pronounce [t], [th], [n] and [l] as dentals, and some as alveolars, while
[ts], [tsh] and [s] are mostly dentals, but some speakers may also pronounce
them as alveolars. In this paper, we would simply classify them as all dentals.
Seven Chinese dentals and seven Hindi dentals are listed in (6).

(6) Chinese and Hindi dentals

IPA Chinese Example Hindi Example
dǎ tārā ‘star’
तारा
[t] 打 ‘beat’
tā thāvas ‘patience’
थावस
[th] 他 ‘he’
devī ‘goddess’
देवी
[d]
dhūp ‘incense’
धूप
[dh]
nǐ ‘greeting’
नमस
[n] 你 ‘you’ namas
 A Contrastive Approach to Teaching Chinese Pronunciation to Hindi Speakers

[ts] 租 zū ‘to rent’

[tsh] 詞 cí ‘word’

ु
sǐ ‘beautiful’
सन्दर
[s] 死 ‘die’ sundara
lǎo ‘a hundred
लाख
[l] 老 ‘old’ lakh
thousand, a lakh’

Both Chinese and Hindi have voiceless unaspirated dental stop [t],
voiceless aspirated dental stop [th], dental nasal stop [n], voiceless dental
fricative [s] and dental lateral approximant [l]. However, Hindi speakers
sometimes mispronounce Chinese [t] and [th] due to Pinyin interference effects.
They would pronounce dǎ [ta] ‘beat’ as voiced [da] and tā [tha] ‘he’ as
unaspirated [ta]. Thus, if IPA is taught to Hindi speakers, they would be more
conscious of their pronunciation.
There are two Chinese sounds [ts] and [tsh] which potentially cause a lot
more problems to Hindi speakers since they do not occur in Hindi. Nishant
(2013: 15) conducted a research based on the survey questionnaires which he
gave to 98 beginner level Chinese learners who studied at various Indian
universities. He found that about 45% of the questionnaire participants
responded that among the Chinese consonants the most difficult for them is z
[ts] and c [tsh]. Singh (2013: 11) studied the recorded data by 30 students who
are from Delhi University, JNU and Visva Bharati University and found that
more than 60% of the Indian students make errors with c [tsh] and 53.33% with
z [ts]. The sounds [ts] and [tsh] are voiceless dental affricates which Hindi
lacks. Hindi only has palatal affricates, dental ones are unusual for them to
produce, and thus more errors are made. If the students can be aware of the
different places of articulation of the Chinese and Hindi affricates, they would
pay more attention when pronouncing them.

Retroflex
A retroflex consonant is usually described as a sound articulated with a
bent-backwards tongue tip and post-alveolar place of articulation, e.g. by Trask
(1996: 308) or Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996: 25). However, Hindi speakers
do not usually have the tongue tip curled and the contact is on the apical edge
of the tongue (Ladefoged & Maddieson, 1996:27). Some scholars (Lee & Zee
2003, Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996) maintain that some Beijing speakers
would use the upper side, not the underside, of the tongue tip to approach the
back of the alveolar ridge, and thus Chinese retroflexes are laminal ‘flat’ post-
alveolar ones. This paper adopts Lin’s (2007: 27-28) claim that Chinese
retroflexes are apical post-alveolar sounds which is made by curling the tongue
tip upward and backward and by using the underside of the tongue tip to make
a constriction at the post-alveolar region. In Chinese there are four retroflexes,
 Shu-Fen Chen

including a voiceless unaspirated post-alveolar affricate [tʂ], a voiceless

aspirated post-alveolar affricate [tʂh], a voiceless post-alveolar fricative [ʂ], and
a voiced post-alveolar approximant [ɹ]. Unlike Chinese, Hindi has seven
retroflexes and only one of them is a sibilant, namely [ʂ].

(7) Chinese and Hindi retroflexes

IPA Chinese Example Hindi Example
[tʂ] 知 zhī ‘to know’
[tʂh] 吃 chī ‘eat’
shī ṣaṣṭi ‘sixty’
षवि
[ʂ] 師 ‘teacher’

[ɹ] 日 rì ‘day’
ṭek ‘support, prop’
टे क
[ʈ]

ठाकुर
[ʈh] ṭhākur ‘idol, deity’
ḍosā ‘rice pancake’
डोसा
[ɖ]
ḍhoṭī ‘girl, daughter’
ढोटी
[ɖh]
ḍaṇḍā ‘wand, rod’
डंडा
[ɳ]
‘protection’
रक्षा
[ɾ]/ [r] rakṣā

According to Nishant’s (2013: 15) study, the second difficult series of

sounds for Indian students to pronounce are the retroflexes [tʂ] and [tʂh].
About 30% of the students claim that Chinese retroflexes are tough for them to
pronounce correctly. Actually it is normal as we know one of the biggest
challenge in foreign language teaching is to teach students how to produce
sounds which are not present in their native language. Singh (2013: 11) found
that more than 60% of the Indian students make errors with [tʂ], [tʂh] and [ʂ]
sounds. One might wonder why Hindi speakers have difficulty in articulating
voiceless retroflex fricative [ʂ] as there is also one in Hindi. First of all, Hindi
speakers do not usually pronounce ṣ [ʂ] as a retroflex in normal speech unless it
is followed by another retroflex, like ṭ [ʈ] or ṭh [ʈh]. Second, Kachru (2006: 19)
states that [ʂ] occurs only in the speech of highly educated persons with some
knowledge of Sanskrit, and has merged with the palatal sibilant [ʃ]. Basically
Hindi speakers do not normally use this sound. Third, Chinese retroflexes can
be followed by an apical vowel [ʅ]. Most of the vowels in the world languages
normally involve only the body of the tongue; however, Chinese retroflexes
involve with an apical vowel. That is why Chinese retroflexes are so
problematic for Hindi speakers.
 A Contrastive Approach to Teaching Chinese Pronunciation to Hindi Speakers

Palatal
Palatal consonants are articulated with the body of the tongue raised against
the hard palate. In Chinese the palatals are in fact alveolo-palatal consonants.
According to Recasens (2013: 2) alveolo-palatal consonants are “realized
through the formation of simultaneous closure or constriction at the alveolar
and palatal zones with a primary articulator which encompasses the blade and
the tongue dorsum. Their place of articulation may include the postalveolar
zone and the prepalate, but also a larger contact area extending towards the
front alveolar zone and the back palate surface. The tongue tip is bent
downwards and the tongue dorsum is raised and fronted during the production
of these consonants.” Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996: 150-154) asserts that
Chinese alveolo-palatals are more precisely palatalized post-alveolars. There
are three alveolo-palatals in Chinese: a voiceless unaspirated alveolo-palatal
affricate [tɕ], a voiceless aspirated alveolo-palatal affricate [tɕh] and a voiceless
alveolo-palatal fricative [ɕ].
There are seven palatals in Hindi, one nasal [ɲ], one approximant [j] and
five sibilants [ʃ], [tʃ], [tʃʰ], [dʒ] and [dʒh]. Except for the nasal [ɲ] and the
approximant [j], Hindi palatals are actually palato-alveolar consonants which
are articulated with the main body of the tongue raised towards the palate and
the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge. They are also called
post-alveolar consonants, nearly always sibilants. In phonology, alveolo-
palatals like those in Chinese and palato-alveolars like those in Hindi are
commonly grouped as palatals, since they rarely contrast with true palatals.

(8) Chinese and Hindi palatals

IPA Chinese Example Hindi Example
[tɕ] 雞 jī ‘ckicken’
[tɕh] 妻 qī ‘wife’
[ɕ] 西 xī ‘west’
‘paternal uncle’
चाचा
[tʃ] cācā
‘parasol, umbrella’
छाता
[tʃʰ] chātā
‘victory’
जय
[dʒ] jay
‘delicate, slender’
झीना
[dʒh] jhīnā
śat ‘a hundred’
शत
[ʃ]
‘entanglement, trouble’
जंजाल
[ɲ] jañjāl
‘memory, recollection’
याद
[j] yād
 Shu-Fen Chen

Hindi does not share any palatal consonants with Chinese. The three
Chinese palatals do not occur in Hindi and thus are hypothesized to be more
challenging for Hindi students to pronounce. Indeed, in Nishant’s (2013: 15)
study 16% of his questionnaire participants reported that [tɕ], [tɕh] and [ɕ] are
very difficult for them to tackle with. Singh (2013: 11) found that 30% of the
participants mispronounce q [tɕh], 33.33%, j [tɕ], and 80%, x [ɕ]. Students
usually replace x [ɕ] with s [s] or sh [ʂ] as they are all voiceless fricatives.
However, their places of articulation are different. The sound [s] is a dental
and [ʂ], a retroflex. The teacher can ask the students to put their tongue a bit
further back in the vocal tract, since [ɕ] is an alveolo-palatal. Likewise, j [tɕ]
and q [tɕh] are different from Hindi च [tʃ], छ [tʃʰ], ज [dʒ] and झ [dʒh] in their
places of articulation. If Hindi students are conscious of the different places of
articulation of these sounds, they would pronounce them more precisely.

Velar
Velar consonants are articulated with the back of the tongue against the soft
palate (velum). In Chinese there are four velars: a voiceless unaspirated velar
stop [k], a voiceless aspirated velar stop [kh], a voiceless velar fricative [x] and
a velar nasal [ŋ]. The velar nasal can never occur in the onset position. Hindi
has the same [k], [kh] and [ŋ], but no [x]. Hindi also has the voiced
counterparts [g] and [gh]. The Chinese and Hindi velars are shown in (9).

(9) Chinese and Hindi velars

IPA Chinese Example Hindi Example

gē ‘action’
कमग
[k] 歌 ‘song’ karm
‘reputation’
ख्यावत
[kh] 客 kè ‘guest’ khyāti
‘song’
र्ीती
[g] gītī
‘clarified butter’
घी
[gh] ghī
[x] 喝 hē ‘to drink’
tāng ‘jungle, forest’
जंर्ल
[ŋ] 湯 ‘soup’ jaṅgal

As pointed earlier, the Chinese h [x] does not occur in Hindi. It is

presumably more difficult for Hindi speakers to pronounce them correctly. In
Hindi there is a voiced glottal fricative [ɦ] as in हवा havā ‘air, wind.’ Hindi
speakers would probably replace [x] with their native [ɦ]. Or they might
 A Contrastive Approach to Teaching Chinese Pronunciation to Hindi Speakers

replace h [x] with a voiceless glottal fricative [h], like house [haʊs] in English,
again due to the fact that Pinyin would interference with the real pronunciation.
For example, many Hindi speakers pronounce Chinese 喝 hē [xɤ] ‘drink’, 好
hǎo [xau] ‘good’, 黑 hēi [xei] ‘black’ and 很 hěn [xən] ‘very’ as [hɤ], [hau],
[hei] and [hən]. Both [h] or [ɦ] are glottals, while [x] is a velar. The teacher
should explain the different places of articulation to the students and help them
to distinguish the two sounds from one another.

Discussion
In this section the consonant systems in both Chinese and Hindi are
introduced. Each subsection discusses the differences of the consonants
between the two languages according to their places of articulation, including
labial, dental, retroflex, palatal and velar. First of all, through comparison of
the Chinese and Hindi consonants, it is found that most of the Chinese
consonants are voiceless while most of the Hindi consonants are voiced. There
are 17 voiceless consonants (about 77%) in Chinese, and only five (about 23%)
are voiced. However, there are 20 voiced consonants (61%) and 13 voiceless
ones (39%) in Hindi. Secondly, Hindi has only two voiceless affricates while
Chinese has six. In Hindi the voiceless affricates [tʃ] and [tʃh] are both palatals.
In Chinese the affricates can be dental ([ts]/[tsh]), retroflex ([tʂ]/[tʂh]) and
palatal ([tɕ]/ [tɕh]). Moreover, there are eleven Chinese consonants which do
not occur in Hindi, namely, one labio-dental f [f], two dentals z [ts] and c [tsh],
four retroflexes zh [tʂ], ch [tʂh], sh [ʂ]11 and r [ɹ], three palatals j [tɕ], q [tɕh] and
x [ɕ], and one velar h [x]. Except for [f] which occurs in Hindi borrowings
from English and Perso-Arabic, the other sounds do cause a lot of problems for
Hindi speakers. Finally, there are seven consonants which cause
mispronunciation for Hindi speakers due to Pinyin interference: b [p], p [ph], d
[t], t [th], g [k], k [kh] and h [x]. In total, there are 18 (eleven non-occurring
plus seven Pinyin-interfered) out of 22 Chinese consonants which cause
problems for Hindi speakers. That is about 82%, a very high percentage. No
wonder Chinese pronunciation is quite difficult for Hindi speakers to master.
The following chart illustrates the whole consonant systems in both
languages. If the students can be more conscious of the differences of the
consonants in the two languages, their pronunciation will be greatly improved.

11
Some scholars claim that there is no ष [ʂ] in Hindi which has merged with the palatal sibilant
श [ʃ]. Please refer to the discussion of the Hindi examples in (7).
 Reconceptualizing English Language Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century

(10) A comparison table of Chinese and Hindi consonants

Manner of Articulation
Stop Fricative Affricate Nasal Lateral Trill Approxi-
mant
voiceless voiced voiceless voiced voiceless voiced
-asp +asp -asp +asp -asp +asp -asp +asp
Labial Chinese b [p] p [ph] f [f] m [m]
Hindi
प [p] फ [ph] ब [b] भ [bh] म [m] व [ʋ]
Articulation

Dental Chinese d [t] t [th] s [s] z [ts] c [ts ] h

n [n] l [l]
Hindi
त [t] थ [th] द [d] ध [dh] स [s] न [n] ल [l]
r [ɹ]
h
Retroflex Chinese sh [ʂ] zh [tʂ] ch [tʂ ]

ट [ʈ] ठ [ʈh] ड [ɖ ] ढ [ɖ h] ष [ʂ] ण [ɳ] र [r]

of

Hindi

j [tɕ] q [tɕh]
Place

Palatal Chinese x [ɕ]

श [ʃ] च [tʃ] छ [tʃh] ज [dʒ] झ [dʒʰ]  [ɲ]
य [j]
Hindi
h ng [ŋ]
Velar Chinese g [k] k [k ] h [x]
क [k] ख [kh] र् [g] घ [gh]
Hindi ङ [ŋ]
Glottal Chinese
ह [ɦ]
Hindi
 Reconceptualizing English Language Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century

CONCLUSION
Pronunciation deserves substantial attention in the Chinese class. Poor
pronunciation would cause problems in oral communication no matter how
good the students’ control of Chinese vocabulary and grammar might be.
Besides, it is often believed that adult non-native speakers of Chinese can
never achieve native-like pronunciation competence and that there is no need
for them to acquire it, provided that their speech is sufficiently intelligible to
others for effective communication. Many learners prefer to invest their time
in learning new vocabulary, idioms and grammatical rules instead of
meticulously polishing up their pronunciation. However, the author argues that
a foreign accent is just because of lack of effective and proper practice, and
that the students can improve their pronunciation through being aware of the
main differences between Chinese and Hindi. Most of the Hindi learners of
Chinese are adult learners and they can be taught IPA to easily master the
pronunciation of Chinese consonants. Pinyin is a sound annotation system, not
a set of phonetic symbols, and can be an impediment to learn correct
pronunciation.
As a matter of fact, speech sounds are tangible, and their places of
articulation are physically concrete. The teacher can guide the Hindi students
to the correct places of articulation by describing the production of speech
segments physically, and display vividly the various consonants in the vocal
tract, as shown in diagrams (2) and (4). The students can compare and contrast
the various consonants in both languages. They will become familiar with the
different places of articulation in their own vocal tracts, and know where to
place their tongues properly.
With a clear pictures of the consonant systems in both languages, the
students would have a thorough knowledge in mind that some sounds are
shared by both languages while some are only in Chinese, and some are only in
Hindi. They would pay more attention to those which do not occur in Hindi,
and can monitor their own pronunciation with a certain level of phonetic
awareness. It is expected that this paper would help CFL teachers gain ideas
about how to assist students with metalinguistic sophistication to develop good
pronunciation skills, and help students to use the IPA to promote autonomy to
correct Chinese pronunciation.

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