THE INFLUENCE OF BAHASA MANDAR TOWARDS STUDENTS’ ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION

Pronunciation is one of language elements which plays an important role. By having fluentpronunciation, it makes communication more intelligible. This research analyzes the influenceof Bahasa Mandar towards students’ English pronunciation. It focuses on the sound apects andtheir distribution. The objectives are to find out how BM affects students’ English pronunciation, why the students fail to pronunce certain English sounds, and what phonemes orsounds that students find them difficult to be pronunced. This reasearch is a case study researchand conducted in the second grade of Junior High School 1 Tinambung, West Sulawesi. Thetotal sample is 20 students. The researcher provides 50 words for students to be pronuncedtaken by oxford dictionary and Field Linguistics book. The results show that most students are affected of phonemes that BM has. The students change the sound they do not know into anothersound which exist in BM such as sound [z] into [s]. The students are not able to pronuncedouble consonant phonemes in final position, such as ‘sand’. They are failed in all vowelswhich are not exist in BM, alveolar-plosive sound [t] and [d], trill sound [r], and fricativesound [v], [θ], [ð], [s], [z], [ʃ]