Pronunciation difficulties encountered by Sinhala native speakers in learning German as a foreign language

Abstract

German is one of the languages much in demand among the foreign languages taught in Sri Lanka. One of the major areas of difficulty in learning German as a foreign language for the Sinhala native speakers is the phonology of German.The fallacy is that English is required to master the language, especiaily its phonology discourages many a monolingual Sinhala native speaker from learning German. This paper attempts to analyse phonological systems of Sinhala and German and identify the areas of difficulty for the Sinhala native speaker. The vowel and consonant phonemes, supra-segmental features and the syllabic structure of the two languages will be analysed to discuss the contrastive aspects of the two phonological systems. The difficulties faced by the monolingual and bilingual Sinhala native speakers in g¡asping the phonology of German are different.Henee this paper concentrates on both groups of speakers. It is also observed that contrary to popular belief, bilingual speakers with a good command of the English language also face difficulties in grasping the phonology of German.Further, it is expected that this paper enlightens the present and future students of German as to how minimal the contrastive aspects of the two phonological systems are.