A guide to phonological phenomena in the Persian language constituting a problem for Polish students

The aim of this article is to provide an outline of modern Persian phonetic and phonological factors with a special focus on elements Polish learners of the Persian language shall find challenging and hard to master, mainly due to their L1 interference. Such an outline is intended to be a helpful tool advising teachers which questions require special explanation and practice. Descriptions of Persian consonants and vowels inventories shall be presented to identify speech sounds not existing in Polish, followed by essential phenomena related to Persian speech sounds in various contexts, such as assimilation, reduction and dissimilation, occurring especially in casual speech. Theoretical considerations are supported by the field work; an analysis of pronunciation errors made by a group of Polish students of Persian aged 20, from Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, who participated in articulatory study.Due to its universal nature the article can be further modified and adapted to the needs of other learners of Persian whose L1 is not Polish.

Keywords:

Phonology , Persian , Polish , assimilation , teaching