Prediction of phonetic interference in speech of Ghanaian students studying Russian language in the context of language contacts

Statement of the problem. The Ghanaian student studying Russian language has a large repertoire of sounds due to the multilingual nature of the country. However, the contact of the mother tongues, English and French, in the process of learning the Russian language brings about interference. The purpose of the article is to analyze the most probable phonetic interferences among Ghanaian students studying the Russian language. Methodology. The research materials are based on the scientific literature of Russian and foreign authors on the research topic, statistical data of the population of Ghana, phonetic errors in the speech of Ghanaians studying Russian language. The following methods were used in writing the work: theoretical and descriptive (description of the features of the phonetic systems of Akan, English, French, and Russian languages); survey and diagnostic (observation of phonetic errors in the speech of Ghanaians and their generalization); graphical (visual representation of the studied phenomena in the phonetic systems of the Akan, English, French, and Russian languages). Research results. Analysis of the phonetic systems of the native and studied languages of Ghanaians, observation of the speech of Ghanaians studying Russian language, made it possible to predict the phonetic difficulties of this category of learners in the study of the Russian language: distinction between soft and hard consonants, pronunciation of the vowel [ы]. From a methodological point of view, this indicates the importance of the formation of hard-back and soft-front modes as one of the main features of the articulatory base of the Russian language. Prosodic phenomena such as reduction and intonation cause less problems for Ghanaians, however, there are errors of this kind in their speech, which indicates insufficient attention paid to working on the rhythm of the Russian word and intonation.