Sylheti Bengali - Bangladeshi children in Hampshire schools

Languages

According to the data we received from Hampshire schools in 2000 there were, within the LEA, at least 200 pupils at Key Stages 1-4 whose families originated from the Sylhet region in north-eastern Bangladesh. Over 90% of the 220,000 Bangladeshi people in Britain can trace their roots back to this one district.

Most of the families speak Sylheti, which is usually defined as a dialect of Bengali, the sixth most widely spoken language in the world. Sylheti has never been recognised as a language in its own right, even though it is quite different from standard Bengali, in its sound system, the way in which its words are formed and in its vocabulary. This is at least partly because its script, Sylheti Nagari, was never officially recognised, despite having been widely used by ordinary people for about 600 years until its decline in the twentieth century.

Nowadays, children living in Bangladesh would learn standard Bengali, the national language and official medium of education. However, in Britain, Bangladeshi children will probably enter the school with a degree of fluency in Sylheti, but with a very limited knowledge of Bengali and often, with little exposure to the written word.

This presents an enormous dilemma for teachers of Bangladeshi children. Bengali is so different from Sylheti that, when dual language texts are read, it is quite possible that they will barely be understood by young children. However, this difficulty will be overcome if the story-teller is given time to prepare, so that the stories are told in Sylheti, (possibly alongside the reading).

If children have not begun to acquire literacy skills in their heritage language by the time they start school, they may soon believe that their home language does not have equal status with English. It is very important, therefore, for schools to find ways of valuing the heritage languages of EAL pupils through their use in the classroom and around the school. A few suggestion of how this can be achieved are through:-

• displaying dual language topic glossaries and labels around the school

• holding dual language story sessions

• ensuring that the library contains books in languages other than English

It is also important to persuade bilingual parents of the efficacy of developing their children’s literacy skills in their heritage language, both to promote self-esteem and to provide the child with transferable literacy skills.

If literacy must be developed through English alone, it should never be through a programme of phonics. Emphasis on phonics before the child has acquired fluency in, and understanding of, spoken English will be detrimental to progress. However, progress may also be delayed if teachers postpone exposure to literacy until the child is able to use English effectively. Account should be taken of the English the child needs in order to understand the curriculum. Scaffolding, DARTS and other collaborative activities can be designed both to promote understanding and to provide the framework the child needs to express that understanding.

In Hampshire, Bangladeshi parents are increasingly expressing a desire for their children to learn Bengali. Where pupils are learning to write, it is likely that they will spend several years learning to form the characters of the Bengali alphabet and copying, before being able to write freely. There are 52 basic letters, 10 shortened vowel forms and many conjoined letters whose calligraphy represents none of the original forms.' (p16, Bangladeshi Children in Our Schools- A Guide for Teachers, Humanities Education Centre, Tower Hamlets, 1995).

It is useful to be aware that:-

• Bengali hangs from the lines, rather than sitting on them. in Bangladesh, children are taught the names of letters rather than the sounds.

• Bangladeshi children learn to read by spelling out the name and not the sound of each letter.

In addition to studying Bengali, pupils may be learning to recite from the Qu'ran, or preparatory booklets, in Arabic.

Implications for Schools

It is important, therefore:-

• to reassure parents that encouraging their children to develop literacy in Bengali (e.g. through teaching them to write their own names, to help with shopping lists and through reading simple story books or from letters to the family), will help them to develop transferable literacy skills and enhance their self-esteem.

• to acknowledge the differences in approach and to ensure that parents are aware of the teaching methods use by the school.

Differences between Sylheti and English which may cause difficulties for Bangladeshi pupils.

Sound systems

Most English vowel sounds are quite different from their closest Sylheti equivalents. Long English vowel sounds may be made too short. In Sylheti, there are two types of 't' and 'd', 'retroflex' pronounced with the tip of the tongue turned back and striking the palate and 'dental' with the tip of the tongue at the back of the teeth as in the French word 'tout'. It is common, therefore for Sylheti speaking children to have difficulty in spelling words with 't' and 'd'.

Initial consonant clusters in English may cause difficulty to Sylheti speakers and a vowel sound may be added, e.g. eschool or sacool (school).

Implications for Schools

It is fruitless and discouraging to focus too much attention on confusing vowel sounds until a child has reached a good level of fluency in spoken English and can hear the differences clearly.

Differences in grammar

Children learning English often make errors through applying some of the syntactical rules of their heritage language. Correct English structures need to be taught, but will be more effectively learned if this is done in meaningful contexts, eg through scaffolding unfamiliar genres in every curricular area.

Word order

The basic word-order in a sentence subject-object-verb, unlike the basic English structure subject-verb-object.

Typical errors :-

• 'I many friends have.' ('I have many friends.')

• 'I book am reading.' ('I am reading the book')

Questions

The word-order of a question is exactly the same as for a statement. As in English, the rising intonation indicates that it is a question, although the interrogative particle 'ni' is generally added at the end of the question, e.g:

tumi musulman (You are a Muslim.)
tumi musulman ni? (Are you a Muslim?)

Articles

Sylheti does not have articles such as the 'a' or 'an' (e.g. Gor (house) can mean house or the house). Quite often, Sylheti speakers use ekta (one), where English would use the indefinite article.

Typical errors :- 'He give me book' or 'He give me one book' ('He gave me a book.')

Zero verb

Present tense in Sylheti subject-complement statements do not use an equivalent to the verb 'to be'.

Typical errors :- 'Mrs Brown English' ('Mrs Brown is English') or 'The cup dirty' ('The cup is dirty')

Auxiliary verb- omission

Typical errors :- 'She not going.' (She isn't going') or 'We going Bangladesh.' (We are going to Bangladesh.')

Gender

The third person pronoun is the same for masculine and feminine gender. However, gender is used for neutral/natural nouns e.g. sun (masculine), moon/river (feminine).

Typical errors :- Incorrect use of third person pronouns, especially overuse of 'he' and 'him'.

'Polite' pronouns

'Polite' pronouns are used with elders/strangers and 'familiar' pronouns for friends or young people. Sylheti has three levels of politeness and also distinguishes between familiar and polite in the third person.

Plurals

Typical errors :- all the 'childrens' are playing or 'bigs girls'

Adverbs

Adverbs are usually placed in front of the verb they qualify.

Typical errors :- 'They quickly finishing' ('They are finishing quickly')

Prepositions

Post positions are used instead of prepositions like to, from and on, that is they go after the noun e.g.

room in (in the room),
shop from (from the shop)

Implications for Schools

Correct English structures should be taught, through scaffolding, wherever they are needed to communicate ideas, knowledge or understanding.

Grammar should not normally be taught in isolation, as the purpose of new constructions will be far more readily grasped where the context is clear and meaningful.

Decontextualised exercises should generally be avoided, as they are unlikely to equip students to apply new structures appropriately. Writing frames and collaborative activities, where the meaning and the structure of the language conveying them is discussed, as in DARTs (Directed Activities Relating to Texts) will both teach correct grammar and enable the child to understand the curriculum.

Collaborative learning, where planned peer discussion provides exposure to good models of English, will enable pupils to use and to extend English structures in all curricular areas.

Chinese

According to data we received from Hampshire schools in the Autumn of 2000, there are over 225 Chinese pupils in our schools. The majority of these children's families originated from Hong Kong, although a small number have come from mainland China and from Taiwan.

Languages

There are eight main varieties of Chinese, which are different enough from each other to be referred to as separate languages and, although the dialects do have many features in common, they are not mutually intelligible.

The main and official language of China is Mandarin, but most Chinese students in local schools and colleges speak Cantonese, which is the main language of Hong Kong. In addition, there are a few Mandarin and Hakka speakers.

Writing

Despite the differences between spoken Chinese languages, they share a common writing system with thousands of distinctive characters (ideographs) which have no relation to the sound of the word. Just as 3 can be read as 'three' in English, 'trois' in French and 'drei' in German, Chinese ideographs can be read in all of the Chinese languages and, to some extent, to Japanese speakers as well.

The total number of Chinese characters is not known, but is estimated as being around 60,000, although the number in regular use is about 8,000. A Chinese child learns about 2,000 characters by the time s/he is ten, but would need to know two or three times that number to be considered literate.

The earliest Chinese characters were pictographs, such as a circle with a dot in its centre to represent the sun. These developed into ideographs which could also represent abstract concepts. Nowadays two characters can be used together to form a third e.g. the pictograph for sun can be combined with the ideograph for one to make festival day. No matter how many single characters are combined to form a new one, the aggregate always has the same square appearance and is the same size as any other character.

However, most characters consist of two elements, a radical which conveys the meaning of a word and a phonetic which indicates its sound.

Characters are composed from a series of basic writing strokes which must be made in a prescribed order. The number of strokes in one character can vary from one to sixty-four , but twelve is about average. In the 1950s, the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China, initiated a plan to simplify many of the characters, so that they could be formed with fewer strokes. However, in Taiwan and Hong Kong, the traditional fonts are still used for writing.

Chinese can be written in vertical columns when it is read from right to left, or in horizontal lines when it is read left to right.

Differences between Cantonese and English which may cause difficulties for Chinese pupils.

Sound systems

The phonological system of Chinese is very different from that of English, which may cause pupils to have problems in understanding and producing spoken English. Some English phonemes do not exist in Chinese languages, others are similar but not identical. Fewer sounds are used in Cantonese than in English, so there are far more homophones.

Vowels

There are more vowel contrasts in English than in Cantonese. Long/ short vowel distinctions are especially difficult, as Cantonese only has such distinctions with the vowel a.

Typical errors :- confusion between such words as ship and sheep, eat and it or bean and bin.

Consonants

In Cantonese, 'b', 'd', 'g', 'r', 'v' and 'z' are not used. Neither is 'th' (as in thin nor as in that). Consonants at the ends of words are also a problem and are often omitted. Words ending in 'l', such as bill, are particularly difficult to pronounce.

Many Cantonese speakers will have difficulty pronouncing consonant clusters because these rarely appear in Chinese languages.

Typical errors :- addition of a slight vowel sound between the consonants e.g. pronouncing spoon as sipoon.

Syllables

Cantonese is monosyllabic and each single syllable has meaning, but syllables are combined to form polysyllabic words. In other words, coal and man could be combined to form coalman, but no equivalent to trousers or sharpener would exist in Cantonese, as the individual syllables are meaningless.

Intonation

Cantonese is a tonal language, with pitch changes used mainly to distinguish meanings of individual characters. Thus the intonation used in English to communicate the meaning of a whole sentence may sound strange to Cantonese speakers and is difficult for them to grasp. Often, worried about using the wrong intonation, they suppress any variation in tone, causing their English to sound clipped.

Implications for schools

• Teachers need to be conscious of the words they use which that can easily be confused by Cantonese speaking children so they can ensure that children have understood what has been said.

• Chinese children, like all EAL pupils, will acquire good English more effectively if they are encouraged to work collaboratively with pupils who speak good, clear English.

• It can be fruitless and discouraging to focus too much attention on individual English phonemes, particularly until a child has acquired a good level of fluency in spoken English.

Reading

As alphabetic scripts 'spread' information more widely than do compact ideograms, pupils accustomed to reading in Chinese may initially find learning to read in English a slow, laborious process, as the eye can not take in so much text at a time.

Differences in Grammar

Children learning English often make errors through applying some of the syntactical rules of their heritage language. Correct English structures need to be taught, but will be more effectively learned if this is done in meaningful contexts, e.g. through scaffolding unfamiliar all the genres in every curricular area.

Parts of Speech

In Chinese, parts of speech are not always formally distinguished and the same word can often serve several structural functions in a sentence. Thus, the parts of speech of related English words like excited and exciting are often confused.

Typical errors :-

It very excited football match. (It's a very exciting football match.)
He likes swim.
It very difficulty to persuade her.

Verbs

Cantonese verbs are almost all regular and do not change tense to express the concept of time. Whereas English changes verb forms, Chinese uses context, word order and adverbials to indicate time, and space.

Adjectives and verbs are often exactly the same word in Cantonese.

Typical errors :-

I sit here for long time. (I have been sitting here for a long time.)
I have seen the film last week.
What do you eat? (What are you eating?)
I very happy.
She waiting.

Irregular verb formation e.g. flied, eated, goed and hurted.

Question tags

Tags meaning Is that so? or Is that right? are frequently used in Cantonese and are often translated as is it?/isn't it?

For example:- He liked it, isn't it?

Articles

There are no articles in Chinese, so pupils may omit them in English, e.g. I can play violin, or confuse the definite and indefinite articles,e.g. Lucy is a fastest girl in the race

Gender

The Cantonese word is the same for he, she and it.

Number

No distinction is made between singular and plural nouns. The Chinese do not share our concept of uncountable nouns.

Typical errors :-

I've got a lot of friend.
I have seen some film about animals.
We've got some new furnitures.
Can I tell you an interesting news?

Pronouns

Cantonese speakers tend to drop pronouns where the context gives a clear meaning, e.g. She put the shoe on foot.

Cantonese personal pronoun categories are different from those used in English.

Typical errors :- The pencil is my.

Word order

Cantonese usually establishes the topic first, e.g. 'This restaurant, can eat how many people?'

Time comes before place and both come before action, e.g. Tomorrow afternoon 3 o'clock, bank outside see you' ('I'll meet you tomorrow afternoon outside the bank at 3 o'clock'.)

'This is yesterday buy car person.' ('This is the man who bought a car yesterday.')

Other examples of Cantonese sentence structures:

You are what time come London?
Please with me come.
This from Hong Kong student study here.
I don't know to go where.
He is necessary to practise.
On the table have book.
The you carry books are mine.

Implications for Schools

• Correct English structures should be taught, through scaffolding, wherever they are needed to communicate ideas, knowledge or understanding.

• Grammar should not normally be taught in isolation, as the purpose of new constructions will be far more readily grasped where the context is clear and meaningful.

• Decontextualised exercises should generally be avoided, as they are unlikely to equip students to apply new structures appropriately.

• Writing frames and collaborative activities, where the meaning and the structure of the language conveying them is discussed, as in DARTs (Directed Activities Relating to Texts) will both teach correct grammar and enable the child to understand the curriculum.

• Collaborative learning, where planned peer discussion provides exposure to good models of English, will enable pupils to use and to extend English structures in all curricular areas.

Chinese words used in English

tea
typhoon
kaolin
kumquat
kowtow
sampan

French children in Hampshire schools

The data we received from Hampshire schools in 2000 indicated that there were, within the LEA, at least 65 pupils at Key Stages 1-4 from French-speaking families who had been living in Britain for at least 6 months. At this time, just under 45% of these pupils were achieving below the expected National Curriculum levels for English. This was most noticeable in Year 1, where it had been predicted that 6 of the 9 pupils would achieve below Level 2 in their end of Key Stage SATS.

General

Hampshire Hampshire EMA Service bilingual assistants working with French children attribute this, at least in part, to differences between the English and the French education systems.

In France:-

• pupils generally start school at 6 years old.

• there is a different approach to the education of 6 and 7 year olds, who spend more time than English children on handwriting, with great emphasis on presentation.

• French children usually start by using handwriting paper with two lines, progressing to five lines once they have acquired skill in basic letter formation. 'emergent' writing is not encouraged and much of the first year in school is spent on phonology and on learning the alphabet.

• the maths syllabus is quite different, with more time being spent on computation and little on investigative work.Older pupils joining schools in England, may feel that the 'number' element of the curriculum here is too easy.

Implications for schools

• If parents and class teachers meet when the child is admitted to the school, background information can be shared and any differences in expectations can be discussed and clarified.

• Young children may be reassured if they are offered, at least initially, the kind of lined writing paper with which they are familiar.

• Extra support may be needed to ensure that French children understand the purpose of investigations and how to set about them.

• Extension activities in 'number' work, may both help French pupils to maintain their rate of progress and raise their self esteem.

Differences in French which may cause difficulties

Children learning English often make errors through applying some of the syntactical rules of their heritage language. The syntax of French is similar enough to English for most pupils to acquire without any great difficulty. However, phonological differences between the two languages may cause French speakers to have problems in understanding and producing spoken English as well as in making links between spelling and pronunciation.

Sound systems

Words containing vowel sounds which may present difficulty include:-

• sit and seat

• full and fool

• hot and hut

• sank and sunk

Phonemes such as 'th' (as in think), 'th' (as in that) and 'h' do not exist in French.

Implications for schools

• Teachers need to be conscious of the words they use which that can easily be confused by French speaking children so they can ensure that children have understood what has been said.

• French children, like all EAL pupils, will acquire good English more effectively if they are encouraged to work collaboratively with pupils who speak good, clear English.

• It can be fruitless and discouraging to focus too much attention on these phonemes, particularly until a child has acquired a good level of fluency in spoken English.

Grammar and punctuation

Children learning English often make errors through applying some of the syntactical rules of their heritage language. Correct English structures need to be taught, but will be more effectively learned if this is done in meaningful contexts, eg through scaffolding unfamiliar all the genres in every curricular area.

General

The French and English grammatical systems are broadly very similar:-

• word order is similar

• there are singular and plural verb forms, definite and indefinite articles, regular and irregular verbs, auxiliary verbs, active and passive forms and past, present and future tenses.

• French has grammatical gender : nouns, pronouns, adjectives and articles are masculine or feminine.

Adjectives and nouns

In French, adjectives usually follow and, agree with, the noun that they are describing, the feminine generally being formed by adding e to the masculine form e.g. Le livre bleu (The blue book) but La maison bleue (The blue house).

To form the plural of a French noun or adjective, 's' is usually added to the singular e.g. Les livres bleus and Les maisons bleues.

Verbs

There are many minor differences between English and French verbs forms, but if scaffolding is used to teach the correct English constructions, these should not present any great difficulty to French children. Here are a few of the differences, with examples of how they may translate into English, if no models are provided :-

• French uses the verb 'avoir' (to have) to express many ideas which are expressed in English using the verb to be, e.g. 'I have hunger.'

• There is no equivalent in French to the auxiliary do, which we use to form the interrogative, e.g .'You go there every week?'

• In English a question tag must agree with the main verb. This is not the case in French, e.g. 'You've finished, isn't it?'

• In French, the present tense is used to talk about actions that began in the past and are continuing in the present. e.g. 'He is swimming since he was five.'

• French has no present progressive form, e.g. 'Anne can't go out now. She has her lunch.'

• In French, the future is often used for instructions, e.g. 'You will go to the staffroom and you will knock on the door.'

• There is no French equivalent to the English -ing form used in constructions like 'I love to watch children playing'

Word order

In French, an adverb frequently comes between a verb and its object, e.g. 'I forget always the way to do that. '

Implications for Schools

• Correct English structures should be taught, through scaffolding, wherever they are needed to communicate ideas, knowledge or understanding.

• Grammar should not normally be taught in isolation, as the purpose of new constructions will be far more readily grasped where the context is clear and meaningful.

• Decontextualised exercises should generally be avoided, as they are unlikely to equip students to apply new structures appropriately. Writing frames and collaborative activities, where the meaning and the structure of the language conveying them is discussed, as in DARTs (Directed Activities Relating to Texts) will both teach correct grammar and enable the child to understand the curriculum.

• Collaborative learning, where planned peer discussion provides exposure to good models of English, will enable pupils to use and to extend English structures in all curricular areas

Portuguese

Portuguese is spoken not only in Portugal but also in Brazil, the islands of Madeira and the Azores; Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, Macao, Angola and Mozambique.

Spelling and pronunciation

The Portuguese alphabet has twenty-four letters. k is used for European words such as kilogram and kilometre. W and y are not used.

Word endings

There are only five possible consonant endings in addition to the vowels They are l m r s z.

There is a tendency for this to influence spelling of new words in English where /t/ or /d/ are heard.. The letter e may be added. This is easily recognisable in inteligente, permanente but can cause confusion in mad/made, hat/hate, fat/fate and so on. (Care needs to be taken in dictionary work.).

k and ck as in cheque

Making plurals

Generally, words ending l drop it and add is; those ending in m change to ns; those ending r and es;

Blends

In Portuguese the blend ch always has the soft pronunciation as in wish. This often causes confusion with ship/chip/sheep/cheap/shop/chop and many more. In some words this sound is represented by the letter x (initially or in consonant clusters). This occurs more often in the language of Brazil.

th does not occur. This sound is not represented. Learners of English may attempt to express it as d.

ph does not occur in Portuguese spelling. The sound is always represented by f as in telefone, fotógrafo, elefante, física

Accents

Accents are used to change syllable stress and vowel quality. The spoken language has a nasal quality which is represented in spelling by following vowel sounds with m or n . Also, ã and õ are nasal vowels.

education/educação intention/intenção profession/profissão

Misc

h at the beginning of a word is 'silent' but influences the vowel which it precedes.

There are numerous vowels and diphthongs. The following patterns are often used by learners: Thailand, weight

Reading aloud

As there is no w the 'question words may present some difficulty for beginners and they are likely to need models.

Brazilian speakers may read te and de as tch and dj. Initial r or - rr -may sound like a throaty h.

Grammar

Nouns, pronouns, adjectives, articles and determiners all have gender.

it may be expressed as he or she.

The first person pronoun is not always necessary. It is normally written with a small letter.Pupils may need to be reminded to use the capital I

The same word is used to express the indefinite article and the number one. There are exceptions, but generally adjectives follow the noun as in educação física / physical education; They agree in number and gender, as in sapatos pretos / shoes black(s).

Vocabulary

Bilingual dictionaries usually indicate (Braz.) or (Port) where there are variants. It is important to be aware of these. An everyday word in one country may have different connotations in the other. Apart from this, younger pupils may be offered a translation that has no meaning for them.

Handwriting

Children may have beautiful cursive handwriting but have difficulty trying to adapt it to the style used by their helpers. Some print as they try to identify the letters of unknown words. Practice may be needed for joining k, w and y as these letters do not occur in Portuguese. The letter r is written Continental style.

Numbers

Note the use of point and comma are the other way round:-

One thousand 1,000 becomes 1.000

Decimal place 0,5

Calendar

Weekdays are numbered; Monday being the second day of the week, through to Friday which is the sixth.

• Sunday - domingo

• Monday - segunda-feira / segunda / 2a

• Tuesday - terça-feira / third / 3a

• Wednesday - quarta-feira / fourth / 4a

• Thursday - quinta-feira / fifth / 5a

• Friday - sexta-feira / sixth / 6a

• Saturday - sábado

Sunday is written with a small 'd' unless it is the name of a special Sunday.

The calendar months are easy to recognise because they start with the same letters as the English names.

A hora de brincar - playtime

A hora de recreio - break

A hora de almoço - lunch/dinner-time

Related information

Subject spelling lists (in MS Word format) - lists vocabulary for a variety of subjects including Maths, English, Art and DT.

Turkish

Turkish is spoken by about 50 million speakers; the majority in Turkey and the remainder in Cryprus and the areas surrounding Turkey. Turkish used to be written in the Arabic script but this changed in 1927 when Turkey chose the parliamentary republican system under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk ( 1881- 1938 ). Since 1927 a modified Roman alphabet has been used. The alphabet is made up of 21 consonants and 8 vowels.

The alphabet

In Turkish there are 8 vowels : Aa Ee Ii Oo Öö Uu Üü and 21 consonants, making the total 29 letters.

Two consonants are never together in a word, a vowel is always between them e.g.:

• okul = school

• bicak = knife

• catal = fork

Pronouns

• I = ben

• you = sen, siz

• he, she, it = o ( In Turkish only one word is used for these three pronouns)

• we = biz

• they= onlar

Adjectives

An adjective is used in exactly the same way as in English e.g.:

• yellow Mercedes = sari mersedes

• white rose = beyaz gul

• happy man = mutlu adam

Conjunctions

The conjunctions (and, but, yet, or, nor, although, unless, if, because etc.) are used in the same way as in English.

Sounds

The letters in Turkish always have the same sound unlike English e.g. c can have the sound s or k depending upon the letters which follow. In Turkish no letters are silent, every letter is sounded. The sign over g softens the sound.

Sentence structure

English	I	will go	to school	tomorrow
	1	2	3	4
Turkish	Yarm	ben	okula	gidecegim
	4	1	3	2

Urdu

Urdu is the national language of Pakistan and therefore the language of schooling. It is similar to Hindi, although Urdu is written in Arabic script and has borrowed many words from Persian and Arabic. Hindi on the other hand, has borrowed both the script and many words from Sabskritt.

Urdu is written from right to left, unlike Hindi and Punjabi which are both written from left to right but under the line rather than on it.

Word order

The main verb comes at the end of a sentence

e.g.; in English: 'I see you'; whereas in Urdu: 'I you see'

in English: Who is there?; in Urdu: 'There who is?'

Definite, indefinite articles and nouns

There are no definite or indefinite articles so 'a', 'an and 'the' will initially be missed out altogether when working in English.

Nouns have gender so it is possible that pupils may refer to objects as 'he' or 'she'.

Vowels

In Urdu there is a limited range of vowel sounds. A long 'o' as in hole can be difficult and may be written as 'haul' or 'whorl'. The 'a' in 'and' can often be confused with 'e' as in 'end', so 'very' could be presented as 'vary' and 'happy' as 'heppy'.

Consonants

There are about 30 consonants in the Urdu alphabet. However, there is no 'w' or th' sound. 'W' is usually rendered as 'v', especially when speaking. 'Th' as in 'Thin is spoken as a 'T' while the 'Th' in 'That' is spoken as 'D'.