If your native language is Hindi, you might find some sounds in English to be more difficult to express than others. ELSA presents you some of the most common errors made by Hindi-speakers.

1: /v/ vs /w/

Most speakers replace English /v/ and /w/ by [V] — because of this, the difference between “vest” and “west”, or even “vine” vs “wine” is lost.

“I wear a vest when I travel to the west.

2: ‘t’ can sound like ‘d’

Some speakers pronounce “they” like “day”

“Katie drinks a lot of water”

3: “R” is pronounced as a trill /r/

The “r” sound is very trilled — for example, in “Ferrari” there’s quite a bit of vibration of the tongue. You must relax the tongue.“I drive a Ferrari.”

4: Indian speakers sometimes replace /s/ for /z/

“House” has /s/ as the final sound whereas “noise” has /z/. Indian speakers are used to a ‘spelling pronunciation’ — they go by the sound suggested by the spelling.

“Their house is very noisy.”

5: Some Indian speakers have problem with vowels and thus don’t know the difference between “tell” and “tale” or “cot” and “caught”

Indian languages have fewer vowel sounds — so it’s important for speakers to be aware of differences between certain vowel sounds

“He will tell you a tall tale”

6: Indian speakers sometimes place the accent on the wrong syllable of a word.

For example, the word “tournament” might be pronounced “tawr-na-ment”

“The tournament is going to start”

7: ‘Th’ vs ‘da’

To avoid this, the tongue needs to go between your teeth to make the “th” sound.

“That man is very daring and cool”

8: ‘S’ vs ‘sh’

Some new English speakers have this issue — the difference between “Sue” vs “Shoe”“Sue bought herself new shoes”

9: /ɔ:/ sound

Indian learners like to replace the long vowel /ɔ:/ with /ɑ/

“She was born to live in a dorm”

10: Indian speakers have trouble with aspirating sounds such as p, t, and k.

Aspirating while using these sounds makes a big difference in being understood.

“People talk to me all the time.”