Phonological Issues Encountered by Thai Students Learning German: A Case Study

Abstract

        Contrastive analysis between German and Thai phonetics and phonology reveals certain areas which may be potential difficulties encountered by Thai students learning German, however, individual differences and previous learning may be important factors contributing to either hindrance or facilitation to language development.

         In this paper, we studied 10 students; 5 first and 5 fourth year, all majoring in German at the Faculty of Humanities, Kasetsart University, Bangkok. We seletively studied certain consonants, vowels, and phonological rules which are predicted to be problematic due to first language interference, especially, items which are oblibatory in German and do not exist in Thai (James, 1980).