Craig Dodge Taiwan

In general, for most learners of English as a foreign language, spending a lot of energy on pronunciation does not need to be a high priority. After all, which accent would you choose?  There are so many English speaking countries and so many different accents within each of those countries, who could say which is "correct"? In English, even though you may use a non-standard, non-native pronunciation , the listener will often know what you mean by context, so minor pronunciation differences do not interfere with communication.

There are times, however, when pronunciation differences can interfere with communication. This happens to me all the time in Chinese. Because I often use the wrong "tone" (there are 4 in Mandarin Chinese) , people have a hard time understanding me since the wrong tone changes the meaning of the word, and if I've used the wrong tone on several words in the same sentence, then it's a mess. In English, even "native" speakers from different English speaking countries, or different regions in the same country, might have a hard time understanding each other. On a summer study program I went on to France, I had a classmate from rural England whose accent was so different and so heavy, it took me nearly 2 weeks to be able to fully understand her.

There are other reasons why you may want to focus some effort on pronunciation. You may be far enough along in your language learning that choosing a target "native" pronunciation and more closely reproducing it is your goal. You might have some significant pronunciation differences that make it difficult for other people to understand you. Or, you have some obvious non-native pronunciation differences that you'd like to get rid of.

It's this last issue that has been on my mind recently, specifically the /th/ sound.  There is no /th/ sound in Chinese, so it seems to be a particular challenge for Chinese speaking learners of English.  Many Chinese speakers don't stick the tip of their tongue between their teeth to correctly make the /th/ sound, so it sounds like /s/; 'I think' becomes 'I sink'.

Come on guys, I know you can do it. It is not physically impossible to stick your tongue out. In fact, it's pretty easy but you just need to break the habit. If it helps, look in a mirror and make sure you can see your tongue when you make the /th/ sound. Generally, we will understand you when you say 'I sink' or 'San-Q' (3Q), but this would be an easy thing to fix.