The Sounds of Bengali and French

Contents: Preface. 1. Introduction. 2. Vowels. 3. Consonants. 4. Word and sentence stress. Appendices. Bibliography. Index.

"\'Negative transfer\' or interference of prior learning experience on subsequent ones is considered one of the main obstacles in the way of successful acquisition of language. Analysing the source and target language contrastively, locating the areas of difference between the languages in question, helps predicting the problem areas and consequently overcoming the problem. This book employs the techniques of contrastive analysis to look into the sound structure of Bengali and French in order to find out the hurdles that a native Bengali speaker is likely to encounter in pronunciation while learning French. It also suggests ways of overcoming them making the book useful for language teachers and linguists." (jacket)