Mother Tongue Influence/Interference of Malayalee Speakers

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Mother tongue influence/interference (MTI) refers to the interference/influence of one’s mother tongue (L1) in learning a second language (L2).

Malayalam is the mother tongue and, as such, is generally the first language of the people of Kerala, a state located at the southernmost tip of India. Most people here learn English as a second language. These second-language learners of English often show some distinct features of their L1 while speaking L2 due to MTI. The interference could be traced to different segments of L2 speech, such as pronunciation, stress, intonation, and sentence formation.  This is mainly due to the fact that English and Malayalam belong to two distinct language families, the Germanic and Dravidian families, respectively. Hence, both have distinct phonological and grammatical rules. Some of the common interferences or influences on Malayalee speakers of English are listed below.

Pronunciation

MTI is mostly seen in the pronunciation of consonants, fricatives, and retroflex sounds. English consonant sounds /p/,/t/, and /k/ are pronounced with a puff of air (aspirated) by native speakers of English. Malayalam has similar sounds – /p/, /t/, and /k/ but they are pronounced without aspiration (unaspirated). So when Malayalee speakers pronounce English words like cat, pen or top where /p/,/t/, and/k/ are to be aspirated, due to MTI, they are likely to pronounce these sounds without aspiration. Thus, ‘pin’ would sound closer to ‘bin’  and ‘pat’ would sound closer to ‘bat’ without aspiration to native speakers of English. English and Malayalam have similar /t/ and /d/ sounds. In Malayalam, the tongue curls back during the production of these sounds, which is why they are called retroflex sounds. Hence, when pronouncing English words like ‘bat’ or ‘dog’, Malayalee speakers often replace the English /t/ and /d/sounds with retroflex Malayalam equivalents. Some consonant sounds in English are pronounced by bringing the mouth into position to block the air passage, but not a complete closure, so that air moves by producing audible friction. These sounds are called fricatives. Examples of fricative sounds are /f/, /v/ and /s/. Fricatives are absent in Malayalam. So there is a tendency for Malayalee speakers to replace these sounds with other sounds like /f/ with /p/ and /v/ with /w/. Thus, when Malayalee speaks, ‘fan ’may sound like ’pan’, and ‘van’ may sound like ‘wan’.

Intonation and Stress

English is a stress-timed language, with stressed syllables at regular intervals and unstressed syllables weakened to match the rhythm of speech. On the other hand, Malayalam is a syllable-timed language, where each syllable takes the same amount of time. Because of this mismatch in stress pattern, Malayalee often speaks English by stressing evenly across syllables. For example, Malayalee would pronounce the words ‘photograph’ and ‘photographer’ in the same way without understanding the difference in stress associated with each word. Some words in English, like ‘record’, are pronounced differently when used as a noun and a verb. Due to MTI, Malayalee speakers pronounce it in the same way. There is a marked rise and fall in intonation in English, which Malayalam lacks. This rise and fall differentiates between questions and statements in English. For example, ‘Are you going?’ has a rising intonation, but most Malayalee speakers speak it as a statement.

Grammar, Syntax and Diction

The sentence structures of English and Malayalam differ, with the major difference being in the word order. English follows the subject-verb-object (SVO) pattern, while Malayalam follows the subject-object-verb (SOV) pattern of word order. So when Malayalee speakers literally translate Malayalam sentence structures into English or English structures into Malayalam, it can end in awkward phrasing. For example, ‘Mother ate the mangoes’ (SVO pattern), when translated literally to Malayalam, could be ‘അമ്മ തിന്നു മാങ്ങ/Amma thinnu manga’, a grammatically incorrect sentence in Malayalam. The grammatically correct version of it would be ‘അമ്മ മാങ്ങ തിന്നു/Amma manga thinnu’, but when we literally translate this sentence into English, it would be ‘Mother mango ate’, which is grammatically incorrect in English. The usage of prepositions is different in Malayalam and English. For example, many Malayalee speakers translate ‘ഞാന്‍ വീട്ടില്‍ ആണ്/Njan veetil aanu’ (meaning ‘I am at home’ in Malayalam) into English as ‘I am in home’, leading to prepositional error. Another common error is the overuse of the present continuous tense. For example, while translating the sentence ‘ഞാന്‍ അവനെ അറിയും/njan avane ariym’ (meaning ‘I know him’ in Malayalam), there is a tendency for Malayalee speakers to translate it as ‘I am knowing him’, which is incorrect. Malayalee speakers use some English words that are not part of standard English. This is due to the influence of the regional language. A typical example is ‘cousin-brother’ and ‘cousin-sister’. Code-switching is a common practice among Malayalee speakers. It is a tendency to insert Malayalam words into an English sentence while speaking. For example, ‘I bought some ela (Malayalam word for ‘banana leaves’) from the market’.

 

 

 

 

 

WORKS CITED

Mohanan, K. P. Aspects of Malayalam Phonology. Centre for Linguistics, University of Chicago Press, 1986.

Mathew, George. “Mother Tongue Influence on English Pronunciation Among Malayalam Speakers.” Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, vol. 16, no. 4, 2020, pp. 2076–2088, www.jlls.org/index.php/jlls/article/view/12345. Accessed 22 Nov. 2024.