A Phonological Contrastive Analysis of Persian and Serbian

Abstract

One of the primary and crucial steps in teaching or learning a second language is the initial familiarization of adult learners with the major structures of the target language, i.e., its phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic features. To this end, contrastive analysis (CA) can help learners gain a good understanding of the linguistic similarities and differences between two languages. Persian and Serbian both belong to the Indo-European language family, and although some similarities can be found between the two languages, there are also significant differences in their structures. In this paper, the phonological system and syllable patterns of Persian and Serbian are reviewed and compared to determine which phonemes are present in Persian that are absent in Serbian and to investigate the challenges that Serbian learners of Persian face in producing the unique Persian phonemes. The paper also presents and discusses some examples of phonological errors made by Serbian learners that can be reflected and identified in orthography, using the Salam Farsi Learner Corpus. The results of the study can be used by researchers in theoretical linguistics and especially by instructors of Persian for Serbian learners.