Phonological Differences and the Phonological Problems of Meranaw Second Language Speakers of English

Abstract

English language teaching and learning is vital for the development of a country and its people especially in the Philippines where English is used as a second language and is the medium of instruction used in the country's educational system. Meranaws, an ethnic group in the southern Philippines, speaking English can be both challenging and useful. Meranaw language is especially interesting from a phonetic perspective because it includes four "heavy”

consonants /p' t' k' s'/ which have peculiar effects of raising and tensing vowel sounds. This can have an effect on how Meranaws would use such sound in the English language especially the fricatives /f / and / v /. Having this as a prelude to this research, this study therefore would like to present and investigate Phonological differences and the phonological problems of Meranaw second language speakers of English. Specifically, this aims to present the phonological differences of English and Meranaw languages with ample Phonological

Production of Meranaw users/ speakers of the English language through contrastive analysis applied to Meranaw and English languages; and to preliminarily investigate the problems arising from the phonological production of sounds based on few recorded production of

English sounds by Meranaw speakers of English. This study found out that misformations of sounds in English are largely due to the high number of phonemes and possibility for reduction and replacements of certain sounds. This study opens more possibilities for the strengthening of the Meranaw language because of the timely implementation of the mother-tongue based education in the Philippines.