scholarly journals Foreign (a) in North American English: Variation and Change in Loan Phonology

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-71
Author(s):  
Charles Boberg
Keyword(s):  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
American English ◽  
The United States ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Sociocultural Factors ◽  
Canadian English ◽  
National Differences ◽  
Vowel Shift ◽  
Vowel Phoneme ◽  
American English Speakers

Previous research has shown that Canadian English displays a unique pattern of nativizing the stressed vowel of foreign words spelled with the letter <a>, like lava, pasta, and spa, known as foreign (a), with more use of /æ/ (the trap vowel) and less use of /ah/ (the palm vowel) than American English. This paper analyzes one hundred examples of foreign (a), produced by sixty-one Canadian and thirty-one American English-speakers, in order to shed more light on this pattern and its current development. Acoustic analysis is used to determine whether each participant assigns each vowel to English /æ/, /ah/, or an intermediate category between /æ/ and /ah/. It reports that the Canadian pattern, though still distinct, is converging with the American pattern, in that Canadians now use slightly more /ah/ than /æ/; that men appear to lead this change but this is because they participate less than women do in the Short Front (Canadian) Vowel Shift; that intermediate vowel assignments are comparatively rare, suggesting that a new low-central vowel phoneme is not emerging; that the Canadian tendency toward American pronunciation is not well aligned with overt attitudes toward the United States and American English; and that the national differences in foreign (a) assignment result not from structural, phonological differences between the dialects so much as from a complex set of sociocultural factors.

Evaluation of Equivalency in Two Recordings of Monosyllabic Words

2006 ◽  
Vol 17 (05) ◽  
pp. 350-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret W. Skinner ◽  
Laura K. Holden ◽  
Marios S. Fourakis ◽  
John W. Hawks ◽  
Timothy Holden ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
American English ◽  
Test Material ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
Research Platform ◽  
Monosyllabic Words ◽  
Implant System ◽  
The University ◽  
American English Speakers

Thirty "new" lists of monosyllabic words were created at the University of Melbourne and recorded by Australian and American English speakers. These new lists and the ten original CNC lists (Peterson and Lehiste, 1962) were used during the feasibility study of the Nucleus Research Platform 8 Cochlear Implant System (Holden et al, 2004). Performance was similar across original and new lists for six implanted Australian subjects; for four implanted U.S. subjects, mean performance was 23 percentage points lower with the new than with the original lists. To evaluate differences between original and new lists for the American English recording, 22 CI recipients were administered all 40 CNC lists (30 new and 10 original lists). The overall mean word score for the new lists was significantly lower (22.3 percentage points) than for the original lists. Acoustic analysis revealed that decreased performance was most likely due to reduced amplitudes of certain initial and final consonants. The new CNC lists can be used as more difficult test material for clinical research.

scholarly journals HOW TO TEACH AMERICAN ACCENT// International Journal of Educational and Scientific Research 4(12), 2021/ Chief Editor K. Kumpulainen /OEAPS OU - Tallinn, Estonia (Open European Academy of Public Sciences). Vienna, Austria 30.04.2021: OEAPS OU., 2021. P. 9-12.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rano Mukhtarovna Parkhatova ◽  
Zhanna Borisovna Erzhanova
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chief Editor ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
European Academy ◽  
The North ◽  
American English Speakers

It is no secret that people intuitively understand the level of English proficiency by the accent, and this happens in the first seconds of a conversation. Each dialect of English has its own unique pronunciation – from British to Australian. And in countries where the dialect is spoken, having an appropriate accent will help you sound more natural. Do you want to feel more confident speaking English without a foreign accent in the United States? One way to do this is to speak with an American accent, although this is by no means easy. Just as having a British accent will help you fit in better in England, an American accent will help you communicate fluently with native American English speakers. The North American English accent is one of the most popular among students of English as a foreign language, and there are a huge number of resources that will help you master it. Here are several steps to help you improve your American accent and sound like native speakers.

The emergence of a new phoneme: Foreign (a) in Canadian English

2009 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Boberg
Keyword(s):  
Regional Variation ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
American English ◽  
Canadian English ◽  
British English ◽  
Intermediate Outcome ◽  
Vowel Phoneme

AbstractThe nativization or phonological adaptation of words transferred from other languages can have structural-phonological consequences for the recipient language. In English, nativization of words in which the stressed vowel is spelled with the letter <a>, here called “foreign (a)” words, leads to variable outcomes, because English <a> represents not one but three phonemes. The most common outcomes historically have been /ey/ (as inpotato), /æ/ (tobacco), and /ah/ (spa), but vowel choice shows diachronic, social, and regional variation, including systematic differences between major national dialects. British English uses /ah/ for long vowels and /æ/ elsewhere, American English prefers /ah/ everywhere, whereas Canadian English traditionally prefers /æ/. The Canadian pattern is now changing, with younger speakers adopting American /ah/-variants. This article presents new data on foreign (a) in Canadian English, confirming the use of /ah/ among younger speakers, but finds that some outcomes cannot be classified as either /æ/ or /ah/. A third, phonetically intermediate outcome is often observed. Acoustic analysis confirms the extraphonemic status of these outcomes, which may constitute a new low-central vowel phoneme in Canadian English.

scholarly journals Similar frequency of the McGurk effect in large samples of native Mandarin Chinese and American English speakers

2015 ◽  
Vol 233 (9) ◽  
pp. 2581-2586 ◽  
Author(s):  
John F. Magnotti ◽  
Debshila Basu Mallick ◽  
Guo Feng ◽  
Bin Zhou ◽  
Wen Zhou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
American English ◽  
Mcgurk Effect ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Similar Frequency ◽  
Large Samples ◽  
American English Speakers

scholarly journals Forum: Serving African American English Speakers in Schools Through Interprofessional Education & Practice

2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Monique T. Mills
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Interprofessional Education ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
American English ◽  
Community Based Participatory Research ◽  
African American English ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Education Practice ◽  
Literacy Outcomes ◽  
American English Speakers

Purpose African American English (AAE) speakers often face mismatches between home language and school language, coupled with negative attitudes toward AAE in the classroom. This forum, Serving African American English Speakers in Schools Through Interprofessional Education & Practice, will help researchers, parents, and school-based practitioners communicate in ways that are synergistic, collaborative, and transparent to improve educational outcomes of AAE speakers. Method The forum includes a tutorial offering readers instructions on how to engage in community-based participatory research (Holt, 2021). Through two clinical focus articles, readers will recognize how AAE develops during the preschool years and is expressed across various linguistic contexts and elicitation tasks (Newkirk-Turner & Green, 2021) and identify markers of developmental language disorder within AAE from language samples analyzed in Computerized Language Analysis (Overton et al., 2021). Seven empirical articles employ such designs as quantitative (Byrd & Brown, 2021; Diehm & Hendricks, 2021; Hendricks & Jimenez, 2021; Maher et al., 2021; Mahurin-Smith et al., 2021), qualitative (Hamilton & DeThorne, 2021), and mixed methods (Mills et al., 2021). These articles will help readers identify ways in which AAE affects how teachers view its speakers' language skills and communicative practices and relates to its speakers' literacy outcomes. Conclusion The goal of the forum is to make a lasting contribution to the discipline with a concentrated focus on how to assess and address communicative variation in the U.S. classroom.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document