AN ANALYSIS OF PRONUNCIATION ERRORS MADE BY INDONESIAN SINGERS IN MALANG IN SINGING ENGLISH SONGS Ivana Okta Riyani, Johannes Ananto Prayogo Email: johannes@yahoo.com State University of Malang ABSTRACT: This study is conducted to find out the pronunciation errors made by Indonesian singers in singing English songs.in collecting the data, the writer used the recorded material of the live performances of the singers, found the errors, and analyzed them.the researcher counted that there are 506 pronunciation errors out of the 2,569 words (19.69%) made by the Indonesian singers in singing the English songs. It was revealed that there were three kinds of pronunciation errors. It was found that there were 226 errors in consonant pronunciation made by the singers (44.66%). It was also found that there were 186 vowel errors (36.76%), and the last were 94 diphthong errors (18.58%).Finally, this research is expected to be able to help the Indonesian singers in Malang to improve their pronunciations, to the students and also lecturers to make this study as a reference in mastering the basic knowledge of phonology. Keywords:Pronunciation errors, Indonesian singers, English songs. The different pronunciations or different sounds will cause different meanings. Speaking without considering the pronunciation will disturb and cause misunderstanding in the meaning of the words spoken. Phonology is an aspect of linguistics which studies the sound system of language (Crystal, 1985). In phonology, pronunciation takes the most important role. Pronunciation is the choice of sounds used in forming words (Carrel &Tiffany, 1960:4). It is very important to study pronunciation since what we pronounce reflects the meaning of something. The different ways in pronouncing phonemes in English will cause different meanings of words. In learning English, non-native speakers tend to make errors. Error in the acquiring process is unavoidable and making errors is part of learning (Dulay, Burt &Krashen, 1982) as well as errors which occurs in Indonesian singers pronunciation in Malang. Dulayet al. also stated that one of the factors which cause the error is the influence of first language (L1). For example, many Indonesian singers who sing English songs cannot pronounce the English lyrics in the right way. Mostly it is because of several differences between Indonesian and
English sounds. This reason triggers the researcher to conduct an investigation to reveal the kind of errors that occur in the singers pronunciation. Related to the topic of pronunciation there are two studies concerning this topic. The first study was done by Adhistiani (2004). She studied the pronunciation of English diphthongs by the students of the English Department of State University of Malang who have Javanese language background. The findings are that in pronouncing English diphthongs, Javanese students pronounced only two English diphthongs correctly, they are /iə/ and /eə/. However they made deviations in pronouncing the rest of the diphthongs out of ten English diphthongs. The second one was done by Fatimah (2010). She investigated the pronunciation problems of English segmental sounds among the first graders of SMA Islam. She found that the tendency of the problems are on the vowels and consonants. She concluded that it is caused by the difference between Indonesian and English. All of them suggested further research concerning pronunciation to be conducted. However, those studies focus on language teaching and learning. Therefore, the researcher wants to arise her curiosity about the same issue that is pronunciation but in linguistics field. The study focuses only on the English songs that are being sung by the singers. In this research all the suprasegmental features such as stress, tone and intonation are excluded, since in songs these features are used in the music to make it more attractive or emphasize the meaning of the lyrics. The writer only focuses on the words which deal with the production of the English sounds. All the psychological or emotional factors are also excluded since the subjects are just simply singing the songs. In this study the researcher uses the Standard American English form because it is mostly used by the Indonesian. It is also widespread in through mass media such as TV, videos, movies, etc. The songs that are analyzed are sung by the American singers. The researcher has sorted them.
The subjects are singers in the age range of 20 to 30 years old. They are vocalists of several bands in Malang who regularly perform in several famous cafes in Malang. The writer investigates the error by recording then trascribing the improper pronunciations made by the singers in IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) forms. RESEARCH METHOD The research design of this study is descriptive qualitative research. This research uses the descriptive qualitative method since the writer wants to describe precisely about the errors that are produced by the singers. The writer will describe the data in words, phrases or sentences to obtain general conclusion from the subject of the research. The study focuses to elaborate the pronunciation errors made by the singers in Malang in their live performances. Therefore, the whole condition was not treated, so the researcher just observed the setting of the study in the way it is. In this part the researcher will explain about the setting of the study. Setting is the environment where the study is conducted. Setting includes the place and also the time. The study took place at three cafes in Malang, they are D Lounge at MATOS (Malang Town Square), Monopoli Café which is located on Jl. Merbabu Malang, and Smooth Café at Jl. Terusan Dieng 36 Sukun Malang. Those cafes provide live music show every evening. The main subjects of this study are the vocalists of the band which perform at those cafes. There are four bands. Each band has two to three vocalists. The bands are several famous bands which perform regularly at those cafes. They are Denzuko Band, Nuendo Band, Souverain and Balance Band. The researcher took ten vocalists randomly as the samples of this study. The recordings were taken from February, 26 th 2013 March 5 th 2013. She did not tell the subjects that she was going to take the recordings of the songs because the researcher wanted to get the natural pronunciations from the subjects. The activity that the writer did was observation. In the observation the researcher tried to collect data as many as possible. There were three instruments
that helped the writer gathering the data which this study needed. In doing study, the researcher was the key human instrument that was the person who had to be responsible for collecting, classifying and analyzing the data. Besides, the researcher used cell phone to record the songs which were sung by the Indonesian singers in Malang as the subjects. She used also the real songs sung by the native artists and used the Dictionary of American English published by Longman to analyze the data. She also asked for help from three other English department students who have passed the Phonology class to recheck the result of the analysis done by the researcher. From the data that include the recordings of the songs, later the writer made a transcription using phonetic symbols. After that, the writer wrote and made a list of the singers words and puts all the singers words side by side with the real forms which are sung by the native or real singers words side by side in another column with the help of Longman dictionary. From the comparison between the actual forms and the real forms sung by native, the writer found the errors made by the Indonesian singers. Later on, by gathering the errors into some category, the writer found what consonants, vowels or diphthongs mistakes that appear. After that, the writer asked for help to three students of English department who have passed the phonology class to recheck the result of the analysis. The last is the writer summarized the finding and drew a conclusion of the study. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS The researcher studied ten songs which were performed by ten vocalists of several bands. The ten songs consisted of 2,569 words and from those words the researcher counted that there were 506 pronunciation errors made by the Indonesian singers in Malang in singing the English songs. The errors consisted of three categories; they were the consonant errors, the vowel errors and the diphthong errors. It was found that there were 226 errors in consonant pronunciation made by the Indonesian singers in Malang in singing the English songs. It was also
found that there were 186 vowel errors and the last were 94 diphthong errors. The singers tended to make errors on the consonants since the percentage of the errors was the highest that was 44.66%. The result of the analysis showed that there were eleven consonants which are spoken incorrectly by the singers. They were /t/, /d/, /k/,/v/ /θ/, /ð/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ /, /m/, /r/ and the rest was miscellaneous errors in consonants. The result of the errors can be seen in this table: Table 1: Errors in Pronouncing Consonants No. Consonant Frequency of % Error 1 t 48 21.3 2 d 26 11.6 3 k 6 2.8 4 v 9 3.9 5 θ 23 10.2 6 ð 10 4.4 7 s 11 4.9 8 z 63 27.9 9 ʃ 8 3.6 10 m 2 0.8 11 r 16 7.2 12 miscellaneous error 3 1.4 Total Error 226 100 The next is the vowel errors. the researcher counted 186 errors of the singers in pronouncing the vowels. The percentage of the vowels errors were 36.76%. It took the second position after the consonants errors. The analysis showed that the Indonesian singers in Malang made the pronunciation errors in eleven vowels. They are /ɪ/, /ʌ/, /ɜ/, /ə/, /ɔː/, /æ/, /e/, /ʊ/, /u:/, /i:/ and /a:/. The result can be seen in the table: Table 2: Errors in Pronouncing Vowels No. Vowels Frequency of % Error 1 ɪ 134 72.1 2 ʌ 9 4.8 3 ɜ 4 2.2 4 ə 13 6.9
5 ɔː 3 1.6 6 æ 5 2.7 7 e 1 0.5 8 ʊ 1 0.5 9 u: 4 2.2 10 i: 11 5.9 11 a: 1 0.5 Total Error 186 100 The next is the errors in the diphthong pronunciation which occurred 94 times and the percentage was 18.58%. There were four diphthongs that were mispronounced by the singers; they were /aɪ/, /oʊ/, /eɪ/ and /aʊ/. The result can be seen in the table: Table 3: Errors in Pronouncing Diphthongs No. Diphthongs Frequency of % Error 1 aɪ 79 84 2 oʊ 12 12.8 3 eɪ 1 1.1 4 aʊ 2 2.1 Total Error 94 100 From the data analysis, it was found that mostly the errors occurred because of the influence of the first language. The first possibility is the difference phonological system between bahasa Indonesia as the first language and the English as the second language. The second potential cause of the error is the limited English profiency of the singers or the speaker. It is because the limited knowledge of vocabulary. Therefore, the singers often over generalized in pronouncing the words. The errors in consonants, vowels and diphthongs are some errors that are deletion, addition or insertion, trilling, consonant or vowel changes/substitutions, aspirations, diphthongization and monophthongization. The deletion is the process in deleting the sound. It can be found in the case of plural form in the consonants /z/ and /s/. The singers tended to omit the final sound in plural form. Addition or insertion is a process in which the singers
or the speakers add the sound. It can be found in the case of pronouncing the word every. It should be pronounced /evri:/ yet, the singers or speakers tended to add the sound /e/ so it becomes /everi:/. The next is thrilling. It is the process where the speakers thrill the /r/ sound. The consonants or vowels changes/substitutions is the process in which the speakers or the singers substitute the sounds that they are not accustomed to with the sound that they are familiar with. The next is aspiration, it is the process in which the speakers or the singers do not aspirate the sound. It can be found in the case of pronouncing the sound /k/. The diphthongization is a process in which the speakers or the singers diphthongize a sound. It can be found in the case of pronouncing the word black. It should be pronounced as /blæk/, yet the singers pronounced it using the diphthong /ei/ then it became /bleik/. The last is called as monophthongization. It is a process in which the speakers or the singers monophthongize a diphthong sound. It occurs in most of the errors on the diphthong pronunciation analyzed by the researcher. CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS The conclusions are derived from the discussion of the first to fourth chapters. The conclusions are forwarded to answer the research questions or problems of this study, while the suggestions are directed to the people who are related to this study. The researcher counted that there were 506 pronunciation errors made by the Indonesian singers in singing the English songs. It was revealed that there were three kinds of pronunciation errors. The errors consisted of three categories; they were the consonant errors, the vowel errors and the diphthong errors. There were eleven consonants that were mispronounced. They were /t/, /s/, /z/, /θ/, /d/, /ʃ /, /r/, /ð/, /v/, /k/, /m/ and the rest is miscellaneous errors in consonants. The singers tended to make pronunciation errors of the consonant /z/. It is due to the different phonological system especially in plural form of the first and the second language.
The pronunciation errors in the vowels were eleven. They were /ɪ/, /ʌ/, /ɜ/, /ə/, /ɔː/, /æ/, /e/, /ʊ/, /u:/, /i:/ and /a:/. The singers tended to make errors in the pronunciation of the vowel /ɪ/. It occurred 134 times out of 186 errors in vowel errors. The last was the diphthong errors. There were 4 kinds of diphthong errors. They were /aɪ/, /oʊ/, /eɪ/ and /aʊ/. In the diphthong pronunciation errors, the singers tended to make errors in the diphthong /aɪ/. It occurred 79 times out of 94 diphthongs errors. The words that were mispronounced are I and my. From the data analysis, it was found that the errors occurred potentially because of the influence of the first language. The first possibility is the difference phonological system between bahasa Indonesia as the first language and the English as the second language. The researcher has provided the complete explanation about the different way of pronouncing the consonant, vowel, and diphthong in English and in bahasa Indonesia. The second cause of the error is the English knowledge of the singers or the speaker. It is because the limited knowledge of vocabulary. Therefore, the singers often over generalized in pronouncing the words. For example in the case of pronouncing the word the in the song Girl on Fire by Alicia Keys. The word the should be pronounced as /ði/ before a vowel. But in the song, the word the appears before the word hottest which starts with consonant. The errors in consonants, vowels and diphthongs are some errors that are deletion, addition or insertion, thrilling, consonant or vowel changes/substitutions, aspirations, diphthongization and monophthongization. The suggestions of this study are forwarded to Indonesian singers, students and lecturers of Linguistics, and future researchers. For Indonesian singers/vocalists, the researcher suggests that in the pronouncing English lyrics in the songs the singers have to consider the good pronunciation, since the different pronunciation will cause different meaning since English is a sensitive language according to the researcher. This can be done by
listening to the original songs by the native singers many times and notice the correct pronunciation. This will not only give benefits for the listeners but also to the singers themselves. Good pronunciation in English songs will increase their performance on the stage. For lecturers and students of Linguistics, it is suggested that this study can be also applied in the teaching and learning process as reference for the students in mastering the basic knowledge of phonology. The lecturers are able to create material development for the students based on the data analysis. Thus, the lecturers can provide the songs in the phonology class to be analyzed by the students. It is suggested to the lecturers to pay attention on the pronunciation errors that mostly occurred based on the study. For future researchers, this study needs a lot of improvements. This study needs a deeper analysis on the phonological aspects. The researcher does hope to the other researchers that this study can give benefits for them as a guideline or reference to conduct many other studies in phonology or pronunciation analysis. REFERENCES Adhistiani, L. E. 2004. A Study of Pronunciation of English Diphthongs Used by Students Having Javanese Language Background. Unpublished Thesis. Malang : Graduate Program of State University of Malang. Carrel, J., and Tiffany, W.R. 1960. Phonetics: Theory and Application to Speech Improvement. New York: Mc. Graw-Hill Book Company. Crystal, D. 1985. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd Dulay, Heidi, Burt, M. & Krashen,S. 1982. Language Two. New York: Oxford University Press. Fatimah. S. 2010. The Pronunciation Problems of English Segmental Sounds Among the first Graders of SMA Islam. Unpublished Thesis. Malang : Graduate Program of State University of Malang.