Phonological peculiarities of English spoken in Iraq with special reference to Basrah University

Abstract

One of the most crucial facts about language is that it is a communicative process by means ofwhich the information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs or behaviors. As a matter of fact, Arabic and English are completely different in most of the linguistic systems. The two languages belong to different languages i.e. each has its own system of phonology, syntax, and orthography (writing system). English phonological system is accordingly different from that of Arabic. The Arabic and English sound systems vary extensively in range and quality of sounds. The topic of this study is utmost important to be investigated; the vowels are not only the central but their characteristic measurements are the mostdifficult aspects in the pronunciation of any language. Iraqi students at university level encounter problems and commit a lot of pronunciation errors more often though they know the correct utterance in principle. newlineThe present study tries to suffice the much needed foundation for the Iraqi university students of RP (Received Pronunciation) English vowels pronunciation, therefore, this study is designed on two bases, the Contrastive Analysis theory and the Error Analysis practice. Theoretically, contrastive analysis looks deeply into the characteristics of vowel systems of the two languages in order to give predictions about the errors that are likely to be committed. Experimentally, error analysis discusses and explores the nature of errors that Iraqi learners are actually commenting during the pronunciation of the RP English vowels. newline