Phonetic Factors Influencing the Speech Intelligibility of Putonghua by Cantonese Native Speakers and Teaching Implications

This study investigates the Putonghua pronunciation of Cantonese-speaking students in a Chinese communication course at a Hong Kong university, focusing on the phonetic elements that impact “speech intelligibility” (Smith & Nelson, 1985; Munro & Derwing, 1995). The analysis of 126 low-intelligibility syllables produced by 19 speakers revealed that (1) Among single-component errors, vowel errors were the most prevalent, followed by consonant errors; (2) In error combinations, “consonant + vowel” were the most common; (3) Within consonant errors, mispronunciations of “sh” occurred most frequently, followed by errors involving “h,” “x,” “r,” “j,” and “zh”; (4) For vowel errors, “i” was the most commonly mispronounced, particularly in vowels with medial glides; (5) Tone errors were dominated by mispronunciations of the fourth tone, with occasional confusion between the second and third tones. The findings suggest that in Putonghua teaching aimed at Cantonese native speakers with communication as the goal, teaching initials and finals could take precedence over tones, focusing on teaching apical post-alveolars and alveolo-palatals (especially the initials “sh” and “x”), the initial “r”, the monophthongs “i” and “u” and syllables containing medial sounds. Tone teaching should revolve around the fourth tone. This research provides empirical insights and perspectives for exploring the phonetic “Common Core” (Zhu, 2019) under the context of Global Chinese (Lu, 2005, 2015; Li, 2017).

Keywords

Speech intelligibility, Putonghua, pronunciation teaching, Cantonese native speakers

source

International Journal of Chinese Language Education; Jun 2025; Issue No. 17; p. 199-222

Language

Chinese