The influence of French on English pronunciation of Algerian_

Abstract

The French colonization has left a huge impact on the Algerian society. It is most noticeable in the status of the French language in Algeria. The latter is the first foreign language in Algerian schools. Besides, it is considered as the language of instruction for advanced science classes. This language is compulsorily taught as the first foreign language in public and private primary, middle and secondary schools, and as early as grade three. English, however, is taught as a second foreign language, starting from first grade in Algerian middle schools. The widespread use of the French language has a strong impact on English pronunciation among Algerian EFL learners. This research attempted to investigate the extent to which the French language pronunciation affects the pronunciation of English among EFL learners at Medea University. The significant scope of this research is the case of English-French cognates, due to the fact that a great portion of the English vocabulary is French. In addition, this study aims to highlight some of the different points of phonological interference between French and English, namely, vowels pronunciation, placement of stress, nasalization. the finding of the study provided answers to the research questions and confirming the hypothesis, the French language had great influence on first year students more than third year students because they are already studied phonetics and phonology module. the influence was clear in mispronouncing some letters like the long /I:/ rather than short /I/ and nasalization besides to the syllabic consonants which were confused case to the first-year students