上星期，我們看了「altruistic」這個單字（一個形容詞，意思是「願意幫助別人、令別人受益，即使這樣做不會直接令自己得益」）。

今天，我們就將對這個單字的討論再延伸一點，看一下廣東話母語人士在發這個字的時候，自然會遇到的一些發音陷阱，就像我們之前看「perceptive」和「fallible」這兩個字時那樣。

今次，主要的陷阱和第一個音節有關，因為這個音節涉及英文母音音素 /æ/。正如我之前指出過，廣東話的母音系統入面沒有這個音。

在這個字入面，這個 /æ/ 不是單獨出現，而是後面有子音 /l/，為這個母音帶來「修飾」效果。廣東話母語人士很自然會傾向將整個 /æl/——也就是母音加上這個帶有「修飾」效果的結尾子音的單位——錯誤換成廣東話入面的一個雙母音。

大家要有意識避免這個自然錯誤！

Last week, we looked at the word “altruistic” (an adjective meaning ““willing to help or benefit other people, even when doing so does not directly benefit oneself”).

Today, let’s extend our discussion of this word a bit further and look at some of the pronunciation traps that native Cantonese speakers would naturally face when trying to pronounce it, just like we did previously with the words “perceptive” and “fallible.”

This time, the main trap has to do with the first syllable, which involves the English vowel phoneme /æ/, which, as I previously pointed out, Cantonese does not have in its vowel inventory.

In this word, this /æ/ is not just standing alone but has the consonant /l/ after it to “color” its vowel quality. Cantonese speakers would naturally tend to replace the whole /æl/ -- vowel and “coloring” consonant unit -- wrongly with a diphthong vowel from Cantonese.

Try to avoid this natural mistake!