Many investigations have reported that many pronunciation problems vary according to the native languages of the learners, it is also true that many problems of a more general nature can be found. For example, learners from Asian language backgrounds (Korea, China, Taiwan) have difficulty with the Japanese plosive sounds (/d/, /t/, /g/, /k/). This is because every language has a different inventory of sounds, different rules for combining these sounds into words, and different stress and intonation patterns. The pronunciation errors that the learners make are not just random attempts to produce unfamiliar sounds. Rather, they reflect their L1 sound inventory, rules of combination, and the stress and intonation patterns of the native language. As a consequence, the error pattern by L1 can be expected to instruct the pronunciation problems of non-native learners.
