Home Language Phonologies

These Venn diagrams compare some common home language phonologies with English to help our understanding of students' languages and the influence of those languages on their English acquisition.

Looking for a language that isn't listed here? You can find it by searching "language name + phonology" in Wikipedia, and comparing it to the American English phonology chart on the last tab below.

Note that in addition to individual phonemes, some languages may have consonant clusters or diphthongs that English does not, and vice versa.

Please bear in mind that languages typically have various dialects and accents, and the information shown below is pulled from the standard dialect and accent as represented on the Wikipedia page for each language's phonology. This means that it may not fit a particular student's language exactly, but it should be a helpful starting point. Letters written in parentheses only exist in some dialects of the language.

The dialect and accent of English used for comparison is mid-western American English.

Arabic

The Arabic phonology used here is Modern Standard Arabic. Spoken Arabic and its phonologies vary widely by country, so be sure to look into your student's dialect if you need more specifics.

Students coming from the following countries may speak Arabic: Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Syria

Major differences between Arabic and English are a larger number of fricatives in Arabic as well as many more sounds requiring articulation in the back of the mouth (velar, uvular, and pharyngeal).

Arabic speakers will likely do well with English stops and fricatives. They may need focused practice with vowel sounds and the English 'r'.

French

Students coming from the following countries may speak French: Cameroon, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger, Senegal

In many cases, these students may speak additional languages that may have more phonemic crossover with English.

One major difference between French and English is the vowel sounds. French has many other vowel sounds, several of which are nasal.

French speakers will likely do well with English stops and glides. They may need focused practice with vowel sounds, the English 'r', and voiced & voiceless 'th'.

Rohingya

Rohingya students coming from Myanmar (formerly Burma) speak the Rohingya language, rather than the official language of the country, which is Burmese.

Major differences between Rohingya and English are retroflex sounds in Rohingya requiring the tongue to curl up and back.

Rohingya speakers will do well with vowel sounds as well as stops, fricatives, and liquids. They may benefit from focused practice with voiced & voiceless 'th' as well as the English 'r'.

Russian

Students coming from the following countries may speak Russian: Belarus, Russia, Ukraine

Students from Belarus and Ukraine may also speak Belarusian and Ukrainian, respectively.

Major differences between Russian and English are found in their respective fricative inventories.

Russian speakers will do well with most English vowels and stops. They may benefit from focused practice with the 'ɔ' vowel, the English 'r', and English fricatives.

Spanish

Students coming from the following countries may speak Spanish: Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Venezuela

These students are likely to speak indigenous languages as well, and may have more phonemic crossover with English.

Between Spanish and English, English has more vowel sounds and more fricatives.

Spanish speakers will likely do well with English stops, and may need focused practice with English vowels, fricatives, and the 'r' sound.

How to use phonologies

The phonological Venn diagrams above use the International Phonetic Alphabet symbols to represent sounds. The full chart of these sounds can be seen and heard here, for reference. If you are new to these symbols, they are well worth learning, as they encode all of the possible phonemes that humans can articulate, and are an excellent way to quickly identify differences in phonologies and phonemes that share similarities, etc.

An understanding of home language phonologies can be put to use in your teaching in several ways.

Phonology in Assessing Literacy

When assessing a student, having an understanding of their home language phonology can significantly improve your understanding of their level. Take, for instance, this writing sample from a larger paragraph about The Three Little Pigs:

The lob go to the little piks haus of paja and den ji tiro daun the haus.

There are several important points we can gather from an understanding of the student's home language phonology, which in this case is Spanish.

The letter j in Spanish has the sound /x/, which is very similar to the English h.
The letter i in Spanish has the sound /i/, which corresponds to a 'long e' in English.

Therefore, when the student wrote 'ji,' he was making use of his phonological and orthographic resources to write the word 'he.' Without knowing this, the word would look like gibberish and the student's abilities would fly under the radar.

In addition, there are several other phonological patterns the student is drawing on in their writing:

The /g/ and /k/ sounds are very close in terms of place and manner of articulation, and only differ in their voicing. Therefore, 'piks' is quite close phonetically to 'pigs.'
The student uses the vowel combination 'au' to create the /aʊ/ diphthong in English for the words 'haus' and 'daun,' which orthographically matches up quite well to the sound. They are likely drawing on Spanish orthography, which matches up quite closely with its phonology, unlike English. In addition, they consistently use this spelling across words.

Finally, we can see that the student is on their way to memorizing the spelling of some words that does not match Spanish phonology: 'the,' 'go, 'to, 'little,' and 'of.'

Home Language Phonologies

Arabic

French

Rohingya

Russian

Pashto

Persian

Spanish

English

Vowels

Consonants

For each place of articulation, the consonants on the left are voiceless, and those on the right are voiced.

How to use phonologies

Phonology in Assessing Literacy

The lob go to the little piks haus of paja and den ji tiro daun the haus.