scholarly journals On the Development of Speech Resources for the Mixtec Language

2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Santiago-Omar Caballero-Morales
Keyword(s):  
Spectral Analysis ◽  
Automatic Speech Recognition ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
Speech Database ◽  
Speech Corpora ◽  
Written Form ◽  
Correct Pronunciation ◽  
Asr System

The Mixtec language is one of the main native languages in Mexico. In general, due to urbanization, discrimination, and limited attempts to promote the culture, the native languages are disappearing. Most of the information available about the Mixtec language is in written form as in dictionaries which, although including examples about how to pronounce the Mixtec words, are not as reliable as listening to the correct pronunciation from a native speaker. Formal acoustic resources, as speech corpora, are almost non-existent for the Mixtec, and no speech technologies are known to have been developed for it. This paper presents the development of the following resources for the Mixtec language: (1) a speech database of traditional narratives of the Mixtec culture spoken by a native speaker (labelled at the phonetic and orthographic levels by means of spectral analysis) and (2) a native speaker-adaptive automatic speech recognition (ASR) system (trained with the speech database) integrated with a Mixtec-to-Spanish/Spanish-to-Mixtec text translator. The speech database, although small and limited to a single variant, was reliable enough to build the multiuser speech application which presented a mean recognition/translation performance up to 94.36% in experiments with non-native speakers (the target users).

Japanese Language Students' Perceptions on Online Nihongo Partner Program

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 138-158
Author(s):  
Nur Anisah Tan Abdullah ◽  
◽  
Pow Yean Choong ◽  
G. Sharina Shaharuddin ◽  
Nor Rasimah Abdul Rashid ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Public University ◽  
Japanese Language ◽  
Practical Training ◽  
Online Program ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Japanese Students ◽  
Written Form ◽  
Correct Pronunciation ◽  
Future Program

The pandemic that hit in early 2020 has caused face-to-face Nihongo Partner Program to be postponed. As a result, Japanese language lecturers in a public university have come out with an online program to be utilized by students who are learning Japanese and also Japanese students who will be participating in the practical training in teaching Japanese. A study using a quantitative approach was conducted once the program ended. 465 students who participated in the program responded to the survey. The survey questions which consisted of two parts were answered by the respondents. Part A questions related to the background of the respondents while part B has five components which includes (i) respondent reaction during the program, (ii) respondent reaction before the program,(iii) respondent reaction during the program, (iv) respondent reaction after the program, (v) comments and suggestions for improvement. In components i-iv, respondents have to choose five likert scales, while component (v) requires respondents to provide comments and suggestions in written form. The questions of the survey are to answer (1) respondents’ perceptions of this program, (2) strengths and weaknesses of this program, (3) improvements that can be made for the future program. The results of the study found that most of the students agreed that the online NP Program (1) is positive and can be utilized for learning Japanese, (2) improves speaking skills with the correct pronunciation and intonation, increases confidence to speak in Japanese either with Japanese people or classmates, providing an opportunity for respondents to use Japanese language. However, (3) some respondents expressed a fear of making mistakes with the presence of native speakers. From the survey a total of 19 suggestions and improvements were given by the respondents.

scholarly journals Recognition of Emotions in Mexican Spanish Speech: An Approach Based on Acoustic Modelling of Emotion-Specific Vowels

2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Santiago-Omar Caballero-Morales
Keyword(s):  
Automatic Speech Recognition ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
Markov Models ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Mexican Spanish ◽  
Acoustic Modelling ◽  
Speech Database ◽  
Recognition Of Emotions ◽  
Asr System

An approach for the recognition of emotions in speech is presented. The target language is Mexican Spanish, and for this purpose a speech database was created. The approach consists in the phoneme acoustic modelling of emotion-specific vowels. For this, a standard phoneme-based Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) system was built with Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), where different phoneme HMMs were built for the consonants and emotion-specific vowels associated with four emotional states (anger, happiness, neutral, sadness). Then, estimation of the emotional state from a spoken sentence is performed by counting the number of emotion-specific vowels found in the ASR’s output for the sentence. With this approach, accuracy of 87–100% was achieved for the recognition of emotional state of Mexican Spanish speech.

scholarly journals Expert-Like Use of Hedges and Boosters in Research Articles Written by Polish and English Native-Speaker Writers

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Hryniuk
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Research Articles ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
Writing For Publication ◽  
Communicative Strategies ◽  
Text Features ◽  
English Native Speaker

The present study compares the use of main interpersonal metadiscourse markers - hedges and boosters - in a corpus of 40 research articles from the area of applied linguistics, written in English by native speakers and Polish writers. Used as communicative strategies, these words and expressions increase (boosters) or reduce (hedges) the force of arguments. In order to gain an in-depth insight and to achieve greater precision, in the analysis the author utilizes a concordance tool WordSmith 6.0 (Scott 2012). The results point to important discrepancies in the usage of these text features by authors representing different native languages and cultures. The study has important implications for developing competence in writing for publication in English as a Foreign Language.

scholarly journals Accent modification for speech recognition of non-native speakers using neural style transfer

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kacper Radzikowski ◽  
Le Wang ◽  
Osamu Yoshie ◽  
Robert Nowak
Keyword(s):  
Speech Recognition ◽  
English Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Recognition System ◽  
Style Transfer ◽  
Native Speech ◽  
Accent Modification ◽  
Asr System

AbstractNowadays automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems can achieve higher and higher accuracy rates depending on the methodology applied and datasets used. The rate decreases significantly when the ASR system is being used with a non-native speaker of the language to be recognized. The main reason for this is specific pronunciation and accent features related to the mother tongue of that speaker, which influence the pronunciation. At the same time, an extremely limited volume of labeled non-native speech datasets makes it difficult to train, from the ground up, sufficiently accurate ASR systems for non-native speakers.In this research, we address the problem and its influence on the accuracy of ASR systems, using the style transfer methodology. We designed a pipeline for modifying the speech of a non-native speaker so that it more closely resembles the native speech. This paper covers experiments for accent modification using different setups and different approaches, including neural style transfer and autoencoder. The experiments were conducted on English language pronounced by Japanese speakers (UME-ERJ dataset). The results show that there is a significant relative improvement in terms of the speech recognition accuracy. Our methodology reduces the necessity of training new algorithms for non-native speech (thus overcoming the obstacle related to the data scarcity) and can be used as a wrapper for any existing ASR system. The modification can be performed in real time, before a sample is passed into the speech recognition system itself.

The Involvement of Native Speakers in Teaching and Learning Japanese Language at UiTM

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 14
Author(s):  
Choong Pow Yean ◽  
Sarinah Bt Sharif ◽  
Normah Bt Ahmad
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Japanese Culture ◽  
Japanese Language ◽  
Foreign Language Learners ◽  
Lexical Density

The Nihongo Partner Program or “Japanese Language Partner” is a program that sends native speakers to support the teaching and learning of Japanese overseas. The program is fully sponsored by The Japan Foundation. The aim of this program is to create an environment that motivates the students to learn Japanese. This study is based on a survey of the Nihongo Partner Program conducted on students and language lecturers at UiTM, Shah Alam. This study aims to investigate if there is a necessity for native speakers to be involved in the teaching and learning of Japanese among foreign language learners. Analysis of the results showed that both students and lecturers are in dire need of the Nihongo Partner Program to navigate the learning of the Japanese language through a variety of language learning activities. The involvement of native speaker increases students’ confidence and motivation to converse in Japanese. The program also provides opportunities for students to increase their Japanese language proficiency and lexical density. In addition, with the opportunity to interact with the native speakers, students and lecturers will have a better understanding of Japanese culture as they are able to observe and ask the native speakers. Involvement of native speakers is essential in teaching and learning of Japanese in UiTM.

Euro-English: A Swedish perspective

English Today ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marko Modiano
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
The Other ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
European Continent

This survey considers the emergence of English as a language shared across the European Union in particular and the European continent at large, and together with its distinctive ‘lingua franca’ dimension among the mainland European nations. It considers in particular the situation of ‘non-native speakers’ who regularly use the language as well as the concept of a ‘Euro-English’ in general and the Swedish, ‘Swenglish’ and English relationship on the other. It concludes by considering the liberation of non-native users from ‘the beginning of native-speaker norms’.

English language schooling, linguistic realities, and the native speaker of English in Hong Kong

Multilingua ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jette G. Hansen Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Native Language ◽  
Educational Background ◽  
Government School ◽  
The Impact ◽  
At Home

AbstractThe study employs a case study approach to examine the impact of educational backgrounds on nine Hong Kong tertiary students’ English and Cantonese language practices and identifications as native speakers of English and Cantonese. The study employed both survey and interview data to probe the participants’ English and Cantonese language use at home, school, and with peers/friends. Leung, Harris, and Rampton’s (1997, The idealized native speaker, reified ethnicities, and classroom realities.TESOL Quarterly 31(3). 543–560) framework of language affiliation, language expertise, and inheritance was used to examine the construction of a native language identity in a multilingual setting. The study found that educational background – and particularly international school experience in contrast to local government school education – had an impact on the participants’ English language usage at home and with peers, and also affected their language expertise in Cantonese. English language use at school also impacted their identifications as native speakers of both Cantonese and English, with Cantonese being viewed largely as native language based on inheritance while English was being defined as native based on their language expertise, affiliation and use, particularly in contrast to their expertise in, affiliation with, and use of Cantonese.

nr="309"Innere Sicherheit, Sprache und Biographie. : Eine biographietheoretische Perspektive auf einen komplexen Zusammenhang

2021 ◽  
Vol 2019 (1) ◽  
pp. 309-325
Author(s):  
Nadja Thoma
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Security Threat ◽  
Internal Security ◽  
Analytical Perspective ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Innere Sicherheit

Zusammenfassung Im Kontext der zunehmenden Versicherheitlichung von Migration, deren Bedeutung auch für sprachliche Bildung im Kontext nationaler und globaler Sicherheitsagenden diskutiert wird, werden bestimmte Gruppen von Migrant*innen als Sicherheitsbedrohung konstruiert. Die Instrumentalisierung von Sprache für Identitätspolitik, die im Konzept von Sprache als ,Schlüssel zur Integration‘ besonders deutlich wird und unter Rückgriff auf Sprachideologien erklärt werden kann, bleibt nicht ohne Folgen für Angehörige minorisierter Gruppen. Der vorliegende Beitrag geht der Frage nach, was ,innere Sicherheit‘ für Student*innen bedeutet, denen zugeschrieben wird, keine ,native speaker‘ zu sein. Den Bezugspunkt der ,inneren Sicherheit‘ bildet dabei nicht der Nationalstaat, sondern das Subjekt. Aus einer biographieanalytischen Perspektive wird rekonstruiert, mit welchen (Un-)Sicherheitsdimensionen die Subjekte an der Universität und in Hinblick auf ihre beruflichen Pläne konfrontiert sind, wie Sicherheit und Sprache biographisch eingebettet sind und welche Strategien und Wege die Student*innen (nicht) nutzen (können), um ihre Sicherheitsspielräume zu erweitern.Abstract: In light of the increasing securitization of migration, language education is discussed as part of national and global security agendas, and certain groups of migrants have been constructed as a security threat. The instrumentalization of language for identity politics is particularly evident in the concept of language as a ‘key to integration’ and can be explained with language ideologies. These ideologies are not without consequences for members of minoritized groups. The article at hand explores the meaning of ‘internal security’ for university students who are not considered ‘native speakers’. The reference point of ‘internal security’ is not the nation state, but the subject. From a biographical-analytical perspective, the article reconstructs dimensions of security and insecurity which the subjects confront at university with regard to their professional aims. It will explore how the connection between security and language is embedded in their biographies, as well as the strategies and pathways students can and cannot use to expand their security scope.

A Variationist Analysis of Second Language Spanish Trill Production

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
Danielle Daidone ◽  
Sara Zahler
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Opposite Direction ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Phonetic Context

Abstract The current study examines the production of the Spanish trill by advanced second language (L2) learners using a variationist approach. Findings indicate that learners produced less multiple occlusion trills than native speakers and their variation was not constrained by the same factors as native speakers. Phonetic context conditioned the use of the multiple occlusion variant for native speakers, whereas frequency and speaker sex conditioned this variation for learners, and in the opposite direction of effect as expected from previous native speaker research. Nevertheless, the majority of tokens produced by learners were other variants also produced by native speakers, and when the variation between native and non-native variants was examined, learners’ variation was conditioned not only by frequency, but also phonetic context. Some of the phonetic contexts in which learners produced non-native variants were comparable to those in which native speakers were least likely to produce the multiple occlusion trill, indicating that articulatory constraints governed variation in trill production similarly for both groups. Thus, although L2 learners do not exhibit native-like trill variation, they appear to be developing toward a more native-like norm. These insights provide support for adopting a multifaceted variationist approach to the study of L2 phonological variable structures.

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