A Phonetic Research Of Finnish Chinese Learners, Based On The Phonetic Comparison Between Chinese And Finnish

This study makes a phonetic test to five Finnish-speaking Chinese learners based on a phonetic comparison between Chinese and Finnish, investigating their phonetic performance of speaking Chinese and analyzing the difficulties in their learning process, in order to give some advice to the teaching of Chinese for Finnish-speaking learners.Through the study, the following problems are found:In the aspect of yunmu (the simple or compound vowels of a Chinese syllable):several simple vowels of Chinese syllables are mixed up with Finnish vowels which have similar pronunciations; several simple vowels of Chinese syllables which only exist in Chinese are not well-handled; the boundaries between vowels in compound vowels of Chinese syllables are too distinguished when pronounced.In the aspect of shengmu (initial consonant of a Chinese syllable):the opposition of aspirated consonants and unaspirated consonants; the pronunciation of blade-palatal consonants and the distinction between blade-palatal consonants and lingua-palatal phoneme consonants; the confusion of x/c/and s/s/; the confusion of Chinese h/x/and Finnish h/h/.In the aspects of Chinese syllables and word stress:the stress tend to be set on the first syllable of a word; the rules of disyllabic and polysyllabic word stress are not well-handled; the soft voice is not well-handled; the length of each syllable tend to be pronounced equal.In the aspects of Chinese tones:the pitch of first tone is not high enough; the rising range of the third tone and the descend range of the forth tone is not enough.Lots of problems also appear in the aspect of intonation.