Pronunciation and Accent Clarity for Vietnamese Speakers of English

One of my clients was a wedding singer in Vietnam many years ago. She had a lovely singing voice. When she sang an old love song, “Yesterday Once More”, by The Carpenters to me, I understood all the words perfectly.

But when she spoke English,  she was quite challenging to understand.

Why?

The reason is clear, if you know why spoken English pronunciation is challenging for Vietnamese speakers.

Why is English Pronunciation Challenging for Vietnamese Speakers?
There are a number of reasons why Vietnamese speakers have difficulty with English pronunciation.

But let's start with the good news: the vowels of English are not that difficult for my Vietnamese students to pronounce. They are usually able to distinguish the different vowel sounds and pronounce them accurately or close enough to how they are pronounced in American English.

So that’s the good news. Here's the problem:

Vowels are not pronounced in isolation. Vowel sounds are the basis of syllables. And syllables, especially stressed syllables, are critical to the rhythm of English. If the vowel sound in a stressed syllable is not clear to your listener, you may be difficult to understand.

The Rhythm of American English versus the Rhythm of Vietnamese
What is rhythm in language?

As mentioned, a syllable is a word, or part of a word, with a vowel sound. Rhythm is the timing patterns among syllables.  For example: Tax has 1 syllable because it has 1 vowel sound.  Taxi has 2 syllables because it has 2 vowel sounds.

Different languages have different syllable patterns. Putting these patterns into distinct categories is not so simple, but in essence, there are two rhythms: syllable-timed and stress-timed.

• Syllable-timed rhythm: each syllable takes approximately the same amount of time to say.
• Stress-timed rhythm: some syllables are stressed by making them longer, and other syllables are not stressed. 

Vietnamese is a syllable-timed language. The syllables are spoken with equal length. For example, ba-na-na.

English is a stress-timed language. It alternates between stressed and unstressed syllables. Some syllables are longer. Some syllables are shorter. For instance, we stress the middle syllable in ba-nA-na by making it longer, louder, and at a higher pitch. We do not pronounce all three syllables with equal weight, as Vietnamese speakers  do. 

This image shows the difference between syllable-timed and stress-timed languages.

RMIT Training: https://www.rmittraining.com/news/blog/spoken-english

Are There Other Syllable Stress Challenges for Vietnamese Speakers of English?
Yes. When it comes to syllable stress, there are two additional challenges for Vietnamese speakers of English.

1. Syllable stress in long words: Vietnamese words typically have only one syllable. But English contains many words with multiple syllables. Some examples: drama (2 syllables), dramatic (3 syllables), and dramatically (4 syllables.) There are patterns for syllable stress, but there are also many exceptions. Therefore, knowing which syllable is stressed is something that must be learned.
2. Pitch: Vietnamese is a tonal language. If you change the pitch, you change the meaning of the word. Pitch in English functions differently. It doesn’t change the meaning of the word. It changes the speaker’s meaning. “Mom!” has a different pitch change (downward) than “Mom?” (upward). But both are referring to your mother. Since Vietnamese speakers use pitch differently than English speakers, intonation and even syllable stress can be challenging.

 
As you can see, when it comes to rhythm, Vietnamese and English are very different. So why was my client from Vietnam so much easier to understand when she sang English?
 
Singing English versus Speaking English
When you sing, especially a slow love song, the musical notes are often extended. And when notes are extended, it is almost always on the vowel sound. So vowel length is built into singing. And that length makes English easier to understand. 
 
Look at all the vowels in this snippet from “Yesterday Once More”:

Every sha-la-la-la
Every wo-o-wo-o still shines.
Every shing-a-ling-a-ling
That they're startin' to sing's so fine.

If my client had spoken these lines, she would have 1) given all the vowels equal length and 2) made each vowel very short.

But when she sang the vowels, she extended them. As a result, much of her accent melted away, and she sounded a lot like Karen Carpenter!  Just listen to all those long, gorgeous vowels ...

Consonants Matter, But Some More than Others
What about consonants? Aren't they important for clear English pronunciation?

Yes, they are. But research shows that some consonant sounds impact the listener’s ability to understand you more than others [1]. So it’s important to prioritize.

What’s more, changing individual sounds is an extremely time-consuming process. For many adults, it is not even possible. That is because Broca’s area—the part of our brain that is responsible for speech production—closes as we age. That closure starts as early as puberty.

So before you devote months and possibly years trying to address all the consonant challenges for Vietnamese speakers of English, I suggest you get a pronunciation assessment from a professional teacher. An assessment will identify which consonants are tricky for you, and which ones matter the most.

Based on research of which consonant sounds have the biggest impact, I usually recommend working on the following consonant challenges.

Consonant Priorities for Vietnamese Speakers of English

• Initial Position:  /p/ vs. /b/ (example: party is pronounced barty)
• Final Position:
  • Articulation: Vietnamese speakers often delete consonants that occur at the end of a word (example:  shine is pronounced shy)
  • Voiced vs. Unvoiced Consonants: Distinguishing voiced from voiceless final consonants (example: cap and cap are pronounced identically)
• Consonant clusters: Sometimes, Vietnamese speakers will delete one of the two consonants in a cluster.

So what should a Vietnamese speaker do to improve their English pronunciation?
Here are the steps I suggest:

Step One: Get a Pronunciation Assessment
Have a professional pronunciation teacher who is familiar with intelligibility research conduct an assessment. This will ensure that you have a realistic and achievable learning plan.

Step Two: Work on the “Music” of Your Spoken English
Work on the rhythm, or what I like to call the “music”, of American English.

In addition to syllable stress, the “Music of English” includes key word stress (emphasizing the most important word or words in a sentence) and pausing in logical places, which slows your speech down in a natural way.

You will be amazed at how much more easily people will understand you when you change the “music” of your English. For many of my clients, busy professionals with not a lot of time, we can stop their pronunciation lessons here. But sometimes, it is necessary to address consonant issues as well.

Step Three: Improve Your Pronunciation of High-Impact Consonants
Only work on consonants that have a high impact on your ability to be understood easily. Skip the low-impact consonants. You have better things to do with your free time!

Are You Ready to Work on Your English Pronunciation?
If you’re ready to improve your English pronunciation, Well Said Coaching offers all of the above: a pronunciation assessment, a course on the Music of English, and, for those who need it, additional lessons on consonants.

If you’re interested to learn more, please check out our Accent Coaching services, and then schedule a free consultation. 

We look forward to helping you improve your pronunciation so you can speak English as clearly as you can sing it!
 
[1] Brown, Adam. Pronunciation Models. Singapore, Singapore University Press, National University of Singapore, 1991.