International Journal of Mathematics and Systems Science 2024, 7(8); https://doi.org/10.18686/ijmss.v7i8.8578

The Bai ethnic group in China speaks Bai as their native tongue. The Bai are an ethnic group with a rich history and culture. In Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, the Bai are particularly prevalent in the ethnic Bai villages of the county and lower counties, where they frequently utilize the Bai language for daily communication. However, because their daily language is the first language that native Bai children are exposed to after birth, they do not start learning Chinese until they are in kindergarten (under the instruction of Chinese teachers who have strong Bai characteristics), and they do not start learning English until middle school. For students of Bai, this means that they intuitively pick up the languages of Bai and Chinese from their surroundings, but English is learned later through official schooling. The behaviorist theory holds that existing habits have an impact on the development of new ones. Children in Bai communities learn Bai as their first language, which conflicts with Mandarin and other languages. “Everyone generally receives new speech through the sounds of their own language phonologically (Sun,2004).” “People who study a foreign language like Chinese will unavoidably be influenced by their original tongue’s pronunciation tendencies to some level, and they frequently unwittingly transfer such habits to their foreign language.” Due to the lack of a language environment similar to that experienced when learning a native language, learners’ native thinking that has been implanted in the brain when learning a foreign language may impede the efficient development of foreign language acquisition. When learners come into contact with foreign languages, their mother tongue system has been established and native thinking habits have been formed. Therefore, it is crucial for local students to learn English fluently to investigate the impact of the phonetics of Bai language on English pronunciation acquisition.