Contrastive Analysis of the Vowel Sound System of Urdu and English Languages

Abstract

Phonemic awareness plays a pivotal role in getting mastery and competence in second language or foreign language. English and Urdu languages both have different distinctive phonemic features. Both languages have their peculiar phonetic attributes. However, it is often seen that ESL learners face problems in picking up the pronunciation of the second language articulation process. The contrastive analysis approach was selected to analyze the vowel sound systems of English and Urdu languages. The contrastive approach is effective in analyzing the similarities and differences between two languages. The findings of the study reveal that there is a significant difference between the numbers of phonemic sounds of monophthongs and diphthongs in both languages. Some features were found similar while, some dissimilar features were also examined in both languages. Researchers observed the distinctive properties of nasal sounds in both languages. Findings of the study indicated that the ‘h’ sound is treated as consonant (in some cases as semi-vowel) in English language; however, in Urdu language it is considered as vowel sound and if ‘h’ sound follows a vowel in Urdu and the syllable is terminated, the vowel is pronounced with a breathy voice. On the other hand, in English language this feature of breathy voice is not present. Moreover, the findings of this study would be beneficial for personals of academic sectors, second language learners and teachers as well.