The Formants of Monophthong Vowels in Standard Southern British English Pronunciation

1997 ◽  
Vol 27 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 47-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Deterding
Keyword(s):  
Linear Prediction ◽  
Connected Speech ◽  
British English ◽  
English Pronunciation

The formants of the eleven monophthong vowels of Standard Southern British (SSB) pronunciation of English were measured for five male and five female BBC broadcasters whose speech was included in the MARSEC database. The measurements were made using linear-prediction-based formant tracks overlaid on digital spectrograms for an average of ten instances of each vowel for each speaker. These measurements were taken from connected speech, allowing comparison with previous formant values measured from citation words. It was found that the male vowels were significantly less peripheral in the measurements from connected speech than in measurements from citation words.

scholarly journals Categorization of regional and foreign accent in 5- to 7-year-old British children

2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 366-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Floccia ◽  
Joseph Butler ◽  
Frédérique Girard ◽  
Jeremy Goslin
Keyword(s):  
Voice Onset Time ◽  
Onset Time ◽  
Old French ◽  
Foreign Accent ◽  
Connected Speech ◽  
British English ◽  
Acoustic Measures ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Vowel Formants ◽  
Better Than

This study examines children's ability to detect accent-related information in connected speech. British English children aged 5 and 7 years old were asked to discriminate between their home accent from an Irish accent or a French accent in a sentence categorization task. Using a preliminary accent rating task with adult listeners, it was first verified that the level of accentedness was similar across the two unfamiliar accents. Results showed that whereas the younger children group behaved just above chance level in this task, the 7-year-old group could reliably distinguish between these variations of their own language, but were significantly better at detecting the foreign accent than the regional accent. These results extend and replicate a previous study (Girard, Floccia, & Goslin, 2008) in which it was found that 5-year-old French children could detect a foreign accent better than a regional accent. The factors underlying the relative lack of awareness for a regional accent as opposed to a foreign accent in childhood are discussed, especially the amount of exposure, the learnability of both types of accents, and a possible difference in the amount of vowels versus consonants variability, for which acoustic measures of vowel formants and plosives voice onset time are provided.

The North Wind versus a Wolf: short texts for the description and measurement of English pronunciation

2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Deterding
Keyword(s):  
English Speakers ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Acoustic Measurements ◽  
British English ◽  
The North ◽  
North Wind ◽  
English Pronunciation

For many years, the passage ‘The North Wind and the Sun’ (NWS) has been used for phonetic research into different languages. However, there are many shortcomings with the passage for the description of varieties of English, including the absence of some sounds, such as /[zcy ]/ and syllable-initial /θ/, problems with the text for the measurement of rhythm, and issues regarding acoustic measurements of /æ/ and /I/. An alternative passage, ‘The Boy who Cried Wolf’, is suggested, and measurements of the monophthongs based on recordings of the Wolf passage by three RP British English speakers are compared with similar measurements of the vowels in the NWS passage.

scholarly journals Coalescent assimilation across word-boundaries in American English and in Polish English

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kamil Kaźmierski ◽  
Ewelina Wojtkowiak ◽  
Andreas Baumann
Keyword(s):  
Native Speaker ◽  
American English ◽  
Clear Picture ◽  
Second Step ◽  
Final Position ◽  
Connected Speech ◽  
Word Boundaries ◽  
English Pronunciation ◽  
Do So

Coalescent assimilation (CA), where alveolar obstruents /t, d, s, z/ in word-final position merge with word-initial /j/ to produce postalveolar /tʃ, dʒ, ʃ, ʒ/, is one of the most wellknown connected speech processes in English. Due to its commonness, CA has been discussed in numerous textbook descriptions of English pronunciation, and yet, upon comparing them it is difficult to get a clear picture of what factors make its application likely. This paper aims to investigate the application of CA in American English to see a) what factors increase the likelihood of its application for each of the four alveolar obstruents, and b) what is the allophonic realization of plosives /t, d/ if the CA does not apply. To do so, the Buckeye Corpus (Pitt et al. 2007) of spoken American English is analyzed quantitatively. As a second step, these results are compared with Polish English; statistics analogous to the ones listed above for American English are gathered for Polish English based on the PLEC corpus (Pęzik 2012). The last section focuses on what consequences for teaching based on a native speaker model the findings have. It is argued that a description of the phenomenon that reflects the behavior of speakers of American English more accurately than extant textbook accounts could be beneficial to the acquisition of these patterns.

Germans are not aiming for a fossilized form of English: A response to Booth (2015)

English Today ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 30-32
Author(s):  
Carrie Ankerstein
Keyword(s):  
Main Claim ◽  
British English ◽  
Efl Teaching ◽  
English Pronunciation

This is a response to John E. Booth's (2015) article, ‘The fossilization of non-current English pronunciation in German EFL teaching’, published in English Today. Booth makes a number of claims in his paper, but the focus here is on his main claim that German pronunciation of English is based on an archaic accent of British English.

The fossilization of non-current English pronunciation in German EFL teaching

English Today ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 15-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
John E. Booth
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Cell Phone ◽  
American English ◽  
Jet Lag ◽  
British English ◽  
Efl Teaching ◽  
English Pronunciation

The German term Handy is a neat and singular creation, referring to the ‘mobile phone’ (British English) or ‘cell phone’ (American English), in itself a unique and most useful invention – handy, indeed! What is even more remarkable is the pronunciation of this term: /hεndi:/. While the second vowel mirrors the pronunciation of word-final ‘i’ sounds in German (cf. Gabi, Salami, Müsli), the ‘a’ does not. Instead, it appears to reflect a socially generalized view of what a short ‘a’ in English is supposed to sound like. And this is not the front, near-open ‘ash’ vowel [æ], the ‘standard lexical set TRAP’, as defined by Wells (1982: 129), but rather a cardinal [ε], the ‘standard lexical set DRESS’ (128), as found in German in other English borrowings: Jetlag or Jet-Lag /jεtlεg/, Gag /gεg/, relaxen /relεksn/, scannen /skεnǝn/, etc.

scholarly journals The Study of the Effects of Yunnan Yuxi Dialect on Received Pronunciation

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 664
Author(s):  
Yuanfei Yao
Keyword(s):  
Teaching Quality ◽  
Standard English ◽  
English Learning ◽  
British English ◽  
English Teaching ◽  
Detailed Explanation ◽  
English Pronunciation ◽  
Received Pronunciation

In A Brief Analysis of Yuxi Dialect, Fu Chang makes a detailed explanation on dialects’ features and the value of its study. In The General Received Pronunciation of British English by Fengtong Chang, the author dealt with reasons why London English became standard English, and also elaborated on consonants and vowels in British English. Up to today no one has ever made a contrast between the two languages and further diminished the interference from dialect in English pronunciation learning of the Yuxi students. This paper is designed to make a contrast between the two languages: Yuxi dialect in Zhoucheng and Received Pronunciation; as well as the differences between their consonants and vowels respectively can be achieved to rectify the pronunciations’ deviation in English learning. It is intended to improve English teaching quality of Yuxi dialect speakers and enhance the pronunciation standardization of English there.

scholarly journals British English pronunciation preferences: a changing scene

1999 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. Wells
Keyword(s):  
Extended Version ◽  
British English ◽  
Sound Changes ◽  
English Pronunciation

A poll of BrE pronunciation preferences was carried out in late 1998, based on a self-selected sample of nearly 2000 ‘speech-conscious’ respondents, who answered a hundred questions about words of uncertain or controversial pronunciation. The findings allow us to answer questions about lexical incidence and sound changes in progress. (This is a revised and considerably extended version of the report published as Wells 1999.)

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document