Abstract
Pronunciation of Mandarin sounds has always been the priority and difficulty in teaching Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). Many Hindi speakers have difficulties in pronouncing several Mandarin sounds, and may thus experience a high level of frustration or even undesirable misunderstandings. This paper aims at providing a new method for teaching Hindi speakers to have a better and more accurate pronunciation of Mandarin sounds. First of all, the author proposes that the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) should be taught to Hindi speakers. Many people learn Hanyu Pinyin before Chinese characters are introduced. However, one should notice that Hanyu Pinyin is just a writing system, not a set of phonetic symbols. Without learning IPA, Pinyin might be a barrier to correct pronunciation. Second, the author uses a contrastive analysis to study Mandarin and Hindi consonants with a view to identifying their similarities and differences. A comparison between the 38 Hindi consonants and 22 Mandarin ones will also be conducted to find out the major problems of producing Mandarin consonants by Hindi speakers. This paper presents an innovative paradigm for teaching IPA to Hindi speakers of Chinese. When students are aware of the differences and similarities of the sound systems of the two languages, they will monitor their own pronunciation and probable errors. With sound discrimination abilities, students will be able to improve their speaking skills.