A Case Study of English Affricate Consonants Realized by a Two- year-old Indonesian Child

Abstrak

n English, the two affricate consonants are not owned by other
languages. They are [dʒ] a voiced affricate like in the word
jaguar, garage, and jeep, and [tʃ] a voiceless affricate like in the
word chin, cheap, and check. These sounds are phonetic
sequences consisting of a stop with a fricated release. For some
EFL learners, especially children, producing those sounds are
difficult because they don’t have a similar or same sound in their
first or mother language like in Indonesian language. This study is
aimed to explore the realization of English two affricate
consonants produced by a two-year-old Indonesian child who
speaks both English and Indonesian language. This qualitative
case study shows a significant result on the voiced and voiceless
post-alveolar consonant. The child couldn’t produce [dʒ] as in GA
production in an initial sound of the word. She produced [j] sound
instead, but she could pronounce it if the sound is in the final
sound of the word. In contrast, she could pronounce [tʃ] as in GA
production in both the initial and final sound of the word with
ease. This study contributes helping English teachers to teach
their students, especially children in their golden age, to
pronounce English words and to contribute to the field of
phonetics and phonology, specifically in teaching English
pronunciations to EFL learners.