Towards a near-native speaker’s pronunciation: The most challenging aspects of English pronunciation for Polish learners and ways of dealing with them: The consonants

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to present an overview of the most common and notorious consonant-related mispronunciations committed by Polish learners of English, which result mainly in a foreign accent, but also occasionally cause confusion or misunderstandings. Apart from identifying the errors, I will try to indicate possible sources of the “favoured” substitutions, as well as suggest a number of practical solutions to solve these errors. Making improvements in the areas discussed below is of paramount value if a near-native pronunciation is to be attained, since at the segmental level it is the consonants that are the basis of a native speaker’s pronunciation. For this and other reasons, I will argue that the consonants should be given the greatest care at least by professionals such as English teachers and interpreters, whose English should be near-native not only for the benefit of their students and clients, but also for greater ease and better quality of communication among the entire English speaking community.