The Phonetic Comparison Between the Yi Language and English
Abstract: People in Liangshan Yi Minority Autonomous Prefecture speak the Yi Language, which is a completely different language from English. The writer of this paper carried out a research to make a comparison and a contrast of the two languages in phonetics, for the purpose that the result of the research could not only help Yi students to understand the phonetic characteristics of the two languages and clear the obstacles in learning English, but also help English teachers in Liangshan design some scientific teaching methods and improve the foreign language teaching conditions there. The writer has been to middle schools in Puge County, Liangshan Prefect. to do some investigation with questionnaires and mini-type meetings, where she discussed the differences of the phonetics in the two languages and the difficulties Yi students face, from which she has got precious first-hand materials. The writer found that, apart from the different phonetic symbols in the two languages, some more differences exist in their intonation, tune and phoneme. As the writer focuses on the difference of phonetic symbols, she will discuss in this paper the following points: 1. some phonetics symbols in the Yi language and English are the same both in form and pronunciation; 2. some phonetics symbols in the Yi language and English are the same in form but different in pronunciation; 3. some phonetics symbols in the Yi language and English are different in form but the same in pronunciation; 4. apart from vowels and consonants, the Yi language has some initial consonants and vowels；5. English has some diphthongs，but the Yi language hasn’t. Finally, the writer proposes a few co