The Phonetics of Acehnese and English: Contrastive Analysis, Difficulties, and Its Relevance to the Teaching of Pronunciation

The first language is one of the most significant factors influences the second language acquisition, whether for good or bad that mainly capitalizes the transference process of innate language to the target one. Aimed to benefit the learning material development, this study conducts the formation analysis of the Acehnese innate targeting the English acquisition to find out (1) the difference between the two languages phonologically (2) the consequences of such differences in transference and (3) the exact place where the difficulties occurred due to the dissidence. The study is executed based on the framework of Contrastive Analysis chronologically consist of (1) Selection, (2) Description, (3) Comparison, (4) Prediction, and (5) Verification of the two languages features. The Description and Comparison are performed through the literature study while the verification is confirmed to the 20 participants of the English Teaching Department student of Ar-Raniry SIU selected based on its status and competence as an Acehnese native. The result of this research show the interlanguage differences of Acehnese to English include in the existence of: [ɪ], [ʊ], [ɜ], [æ], [ɑ], [ɒ], [v], [θ], [ð], [ʒ], [tʃ], [dʒ], [ʍ], [e], [ɛə], [f], [z]; rhoticity quality; glides and length quality in vowel; aspirated units; fricative [s]; and [ʃ] hissing quality; the consonant clusters of the final-placed and the initial three-type; the applied isochronal stress-time; the connected speech aspects of Elision and Linking; the allowed of complex coda in syllables structures; and the opaque orthographic systems while the difficulties are mainly confirmed in: (only segmental) [ɒ], [ɜ], [ɪə], [eə], [ʊə], [əʊ], [aʊ], [oʊ], [θ], [ð], [ʒ], [tʃ], [ʊ], [ɑ], [æ], [eɪ], [ɔɪ], [r], and [ðʒ].